Truth and Tolerance |
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Q. If we are supposed to be tolerant of others and respect their opinions, how can we ever know anything that is true? A. Mary gives some background on questions like this one. Check out her article: Reclaiming the Truth about Tolerance Mary R. Joyce When "tolerance" moves in, truth moves out. But it is not really tolerance that takes over the scene. Something else, mistakenly called by the same name, infects the air we breathe. The names of other good qualities, such as love and freedom, are similarly misused. Much of what is called love should be more accurately identified by another term. And what could be more out of control than the use of the word freedom? True tolerance is a very paradoxical virtue. It makes possible charity toward homosexuals and abortionists while rejecting their immoral actions. But if this polar, yet finely integrated, habit of the soul is not developed enough, it can easily break down into opposing vices. Both intolerance and permissiveness can result, either going their separate ways, or combining in permissive individuals who are intolerant toward others who think differently. At the same time, the vice of permissiveness might still be called tolerance. Reclaiming the truth about the virtue then becomes necessary. Some Examples We can assume that psychologists once were authentically tolerant toward homoerotic persons and women who had abortions, that is, ready to help with the healing of their patients without condemning them. But this general attitude of the profession, if it ever was a true virtue, readily became a vice. In 1973, the same year in which the U.S. Supreme Court legalized abortion by choice until birth, the American Psychological Association (APA) declared homoeroticism normal. What psychologists previously saw as a disorientation, they now see as a positive orientation. Not only that, the APA actually became one of the groups that endorsed a pro-homosexual booklet sent nationwide to school superintendents. Thinking it is being tolerant of true diversity, the APA is really being permissive toward immorality to such an extent that what is immoral becomes viewed as moral. Thus, the vice of permissiveness tries to transform itself and other vices into virtues. Until 1994, the same Association's Manual of Mental Disorders listed abortion as a "psycho-social stressor" with effects similar to the post-traumatic stress disorder. But when the APA became "politically correct" on abortion, this true information was excised from its manual. Various researchers continue to document the unhealthy effects of abortion on women. (1) But "tolerance" for women's so-called reproductive rights causes the establishment and the culture to ignore the evidence. When sickness becomes health, and wrongs become rights -- all in the name of tolerance -- facts become fictions, and truths become lies. Denial becomes the essence of the sophistry and suave sophistication of non-judgmental liberalism. This is a morally and mentally pathological condition, and is not the result of the true virtue of tolerance. Permissiveness and Preference "You have your truth, and I have mine, and one is just as good as the other." That's our culture's take on truth. Preference -- not objective perception -- rules the mind. Will -- not intellect -- says what's true. Choice -- not insight -- is supreme. And all of us must be "tolerant" of each other's preferences and choices no matter what the evidence is against them. Permissiveness is characterized not only by indifference to evidence, but also by unwillingness to hurt other people's feelings or to challenge their preferences. An example is the case where Christmas carols were not allowed in a public gathering because Moslems were present and Christian songs might offend them. Would a group of Moslems refrain from getting down on their knees and bowing toward Mecca at the appointed time if Christians were present? Because they see religion as a conviction, not as a mere preference, they wouldn't even think of being so impotent. Permissiveness is emotionally weak and mentally feeble, though most often practiced by intellectuals. It bases itself on the whims of feelings, and lacks commitment to "telling it like it is." Intolerance and Principles "Abortion is wrong. So, if you have sex outside of marriage and become pregnant, take the consequences. I won't have anything to do with Birthline to help people like you, because that would only encourage others of your kind to get into trouble." The principle regarding abortion is true, but its adherent is blind to the real needs of the other person involved, and is thus intolerant. As the permissive attitude is too weak to be virtuous, the intolerant attitude is too strong. Bigots and fanatics lack the authentic firmness that is essential to virtue; they substitute cold rigidity instead. While permissiveness is characterized by indifference to truth, intolerance is characterized by arrogance about having the truth, and has an "I am the manager of the universe" attitude. Both vices are self-centric and lack the self-sacrificial core of true tolerance. "I care about your preferences only because I care about my own and don't want any laws or sanctions to bother me," says the permissive attitude. At the opposite extreme, the intolerant attitude says, "These are my principles, and I don't want you to threaten my security by challenging them." While both preferences and principles are good in themselves, over-emphasis on either one of them pulls us away from the dynamic center of all virtues: the person as a person. True Tolerance The virtue of tolerance is based on love: love for truth and love for others as persons who have weaknesses and do not always measure up to correct standards of behavior. Authentic love gives tolerance its firmness in relation to truth, and its receptivity to people as they are. Firmness-in-receptivity is exquisitely paradoxical, and requires a certain amount of emotional and mental maturity. A balanced mind is able to "think with two hands," as it were -- to see persons as good, and their ideas and actions as not always good. This means thinking with a paradoxical logic nowhere formally developed as such, but which is latent in the intuitive nature of the human mind. Both permissiveness and intolerance are cases of "thinking with one hand," and are, as a result, falls from the integral polarity of paradoxical tolerance. Because their permissiveness is also an intolerance for truth, the members of the news media have been silent about the full extent of Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton, the U.S. Supreme Court 's abortion decisions. The media is likewise extremely reluctant to inform the public about the true nature of "partial birth abortion." Even on the pro-life side, more tolerance for truth would result in calling this particular atrocity what it really is: a brain-suction method of killing. Companion Virtues While tolerance is basically an intellectual virtue, compassion its companion is largely a virtue of the heart and will. Compassion, too, is easily, and similarly, ruined by permissiveness. For example, compassion for women with stressful pregnancies can fall from virtue into permissiveness when abortion is accepted as a solution to the problem. In this case, true compassion would mean a readiness to offer the woman support in child bearing. It would also involve a recognition of the harmful effects of abortion for the woman (such as a 30 percent increase in the risk of breast cancer (2), and a four times higher chance of death in the year after an abortion than in the year after childbirth (3). Again, the permissive (intolerant-of-truth) news media offers none of this information, and provides little coverage of organizations such as Birthright and Birthline that practice authentic compassion, not only for the woman, but also for her child. No Virtue Stands Alone Every virtue needs the support of all other virtues. True tolerance, for example, needs the virtues of good judgment, justice, moderation, courage, knowledge, understanding, and wisdom. Also humility and patience. Courage, however, seems especially important in an age of nonjudgmental, politically correct, permissiveness. Courageous lovers of truth, when the permissive intolerantly call them inflammatory, incendiary, mean-spirited, narrow-minded, Neanderthal, and more, need the virtue of fortitude to speak and act with conviction, while allowing others to be intolerant and mean-spirited themselves. One of the best examples of true tolerance supported by all the other virtues is Pope John Paul II with his powerful and luminous sense of who the human person is. Some would say that he is lacking as a disciplinarian, and that he borders on permissiveness. Yet he has none of the emotional and mental weaknesses of the permissive. Only love for persons as persons, and rock-bottom firmness in the truth, emanate from his person. Without taking a single disciplinary action, he was instrumental in bringing down a huge atheistic empire. When faced with a world-wide, well-entrenched, culture of permissiveness, how do you discipline such a culture? How can you change it? By influence, by inspiration, by calling upon the Holy Spirit! Conclusion Our fallen culture wrongly identifies the vice of permissiveness with the virtue of tolerance, and becomes obsessively intolerant of anyone who tries to clear the air. For the sake of the truth that is being buried alive, we must reclaim the truth about tolerance. As a virtue among virtues, it is a beautiful, yet challenging, paradox of heart, mind, and soul. (1512 words) ***** Endnotes 1 Cf. Philip Ney and Anna Peters, Ending the Cycle of Abuse, Brunner/Mazel Publishers, 1995. Also, a recent government-funded study in Finland, reviewed by David C. Reardon in The Post-Abortion Review, Elliot Institute, April-June 2000. See Elliot Institute: www.afterabortion.org. 2 According to Britain's Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists as reported in "Abortion-Cancer Study," National Catholic Register, May 7-13, 2000. 3 See footnote (1), Elliot Institute. Posted with permission of the NaProEthics Forum Omaha, Nebraska |
