Buttiglione: Judgment is Not Discrimination

This is the final in a series of posts from a chapter of Rocco Buttiglione's book Exiting a Dead End Road: a GPS for Christians in Public Discourse, published by Kairos Publications in Vienna, and edited by Gudrun and Martin Kugler. The book can be ordered here.  (The series includes Part I, Part II, Part III, and Part IV.)


Rocco Buttiglione
Being judgmental is not discrimination

Let us stress once again that the right and duty to pass judgments does not imply an attitude of superiority in relation to the (other) sinners. We are not perfect. We know that we are poor and fallible human beings and that we are not better than those whose actions we affirm to be bad. We may easily be equally wrong or even worse on other issues. And we never know if, in a given situation, under the same pressure of circumstances, we would have done any better than the subject whose actions we censure. Nevertheless we know that his actions were wrong, that something has been done that should not have been done and we have a duty to say it in order to help the other to better himself and to better the human quality of our life together. This is also an essential aspect of freedom.

This cannot be confused with hate speech. Hate speech offends, demands the exercise of physical violence against the offender, wants to ban her/him from our society. In our case it is quite the opposite. If I am wrong, my best friend is not the one who lets me sink in my error (for example taking drugs, destroying his family, offending my friends, etc.). He should be the one who tells me the truth even at the risk of exposing himself to my outrage and my reprisals. This also belongs to the essence of freedom (freedom to tell the truth) and tolerance (we must tolerate the freedom of the other of telling the truth or at least what in conscience she or he thinks to be true).

We have gone a long way towards the complete destruction of the true meaning of freedom and tolerance. We do not want to emancipate ourselves from our instinctual drives and we have proclaimed the superiority of pleasure over conscience.

In this way we have lost the idea of happiness, that is the properly human way of taking pleasure not against the other human being or disregarding her/his dignity but together with her/him in a true community of love. We do not want to accept the self discipline and the virtues that we need in order to develop our potentiality for the greater freedom. The greater freedom is what St. Thomas Aquinas would have called a bonum arduum (something very valuable that demands a high price to be won). The reward of the efforts needed to acquire the greater freedom is the possibility to live a great love. As a consequence of our cowardice we, the people of this generation, live only small loves that are not enough to fill our lives, which therefore remain void and tasteless. We say we are tolerant only because we have no passionate interest in the lives of others and only want to be left alone. And we are left alone until our world peters out “not with a bang but with a whimper”.

Can we still have hope? Of course we can. The heart of man naturally longs for love, and for truth and for freedom and this thirst will never be quenched. There will always be martyrs and saints and through their witness the history of freedom can be renewed. We do not know how long the night will be but we do know that it will come to pass.

END

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