By DONALD DeMARCO
Marcus Tullius Cicero (106 BC-43 BC) was a philosopher, politician, lawyer, orator, political theorist, consul, constitutionalist, and translator. He was well equipped by nature and training to gain proficiency in each of these endeavors. His enthusiasm for learning, very much like that of his predecessor, Aristotle, was based on his firm conviction that “our minds possess by nature an insatiable desire to know the truth.”
Cicero offers us a worthy example of a man whose passion for truth was crowned with brilliance of achievement.
It is one of the fundamental paradoxes of the human being that alongside of this insatiable desire is a reluctance to accept truth when it is found. It is like having a roaring appetite and then losing it at the very moment a mouth-watering plate of food is served. Man is one being, but spends a great deal of his life divided against himself. He is, as the medieval philosophers dubbed him, Homo duplex. We know all too well that in the contemporary world, although there can be no justice without truth, the clamor for the social justice is not commensurate with a comparable enthusiasm for truth.
Pontius Pilate’s deathless question, “What is truth?” continues to be a shibboleth for modern skepticism. It is a curious thing for the modern secularist to be afraid of the dark when he is young and afraid of the light once he is “educated.” Education is not always the passage from darkness to light.
“Men are most anxious to find truth,” writes the noted philosopher/historian Etienne Gilson, “but very reluctant to accept it. We do not like to be cornered by rational evidence…even though truth is there, in its impersonal and commanding objectivity.”
Our passion for truth is natural, but our willingness to accept it, when found, requires two virtues, and we are not born virtuous. First, it requires courage because the truth often brings challenges that we may find too daunting. We often find ignorance to be more blissful. Second, it requires humility, for truth is not “mine,” or “yours,” or “ours,” but something that originates outside of any of us. Without humility it is difficult for many people to say “yes” to something that is not theirs, even though it is something that they need.
Our passion for truth cools when we realize that it can be demanding as well as humbling. Therefore, as Gilson goes on to say, “Finding truth is not so hard; what is hard is not to run away once we have found it.”
Winston Churchill would have agreed wholeheartedly with Gilson. “Truth is incontrovertible,” he wrote. “Panic may resent it, ignorance may deride it, malice may distort it, but there it is.”
The abortion issue offers us a perfect example of what England’s former prime minister was saying. A woman may panic when she discovers that she is carrying an unwanted child. At that point, the word “child” is deleted and “unwanted” stands alone, thereby denying the reality of the unborn child. Harry Blackmun chose to plead ignorance of the nature of the unborn child in his written defense of Roe v. Wade.
Malice is often directed against those who support life by labeling them as “anti-choice,” “bigots,” and far worse epithets. Yet, the unborn child is there, in all its “commanding objectivity.”
Winston Churchill was an unbeliever, though he very much believed in the reality of truth and the duty to follow it. This was his strength as a leader in a time of war. But he seemed, in this regard, tantalizingly close to accepting the Christian faith. Truth loses whatever abstract character people may ascribe to it when it is incarnated in the person of Jesus Christ.
“I am the way and the truth and the life,” He proclaimed (John 14:6). In the Greek language, “I am” is a very intense way of referring to oneself. It is equivalent to saying, “I myself, and only I, am.” Christ is the embodiment of truth, but He is also the source of all truth. The truth that we can possess leads to the Truth that we can worship.
The step that Churchill did not take, was taken by Eugenio Zolli, the former chief rabbi of Rome, when he became a Christian. His first words, appearing in the preface of his autobiography, Why I Became a Catholic, are these: “The figure of Christ over the altar symbolizes the greatest sorrow the world knows. Truth is crucified; the highest Wisdom, the Wisdom of God, is crucified. Charity is crucified; love is crucified; God is crucified in His Son.”
World War II was a crucifixion of Truth. Therefore, avoidance of war rests on a reverence for truth. Those who oppose war and at the same time deride truth are actually apostles of war, even if they are unaware of the fact. The war against the unborn serves as a tragic example of how a rejection of truth leads, ultimately, to violence.
Our hunger for truth is inseparable from our hunger for beatitude. But the bridge between the two is constructed of courage and humility. Without these two virtues, the bridge is not crossed and truth lies in shambles.
“The greatest among philosophers,” Gilson concludes, “are those who do not flinch in the presence of truth, but welcome it with the simple words: yes, Amen.”
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(Dr. Donald DeMarco is a senior fellow of Human Life International. He is professor emeritus at St. Jerome’s University in Waterloo, Ontario, an adjunct professor at Holy Apostles College in Cromwell, Conn., and a regular columnist for St. Austin Review. His latest works, How to Remain Sane in a World That Is Going Mad; Poetry That Enters the Mind and Warms the Heart; and How to Flourish in a Fallen World are available through Amazon.com. Some of his recent writings may be found at Human Life International’s Truth and Charity Forum.
(He is the 2015 Catholic Civil Rights League recipient of the prestigious Exner Award for “Catholic excellence in social service.”)
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