By ALICE von HILDEBRAND
We are repeatedly told today that we should not be “judgmental.” I even suspect that it is a new word that has crept into our vocabulary.
The constant warning given us in homilies, on talk shows, radio programs, and magazines that “we should not judge,” should be a welcome reminder that the danger of pharisaism is deeply rooted in our fallen nature. We enjoy passing judgment on others; we enjoy feeling ourselves above these admonitions. As long as we live, we need these warnings to be strengthened against the ever-rampant temptation to sit in judgment on others.
But you must also have noticed that this has led to another danger. In our eagerness to wage war on Pharisaism, many of us fall into another trap which is as dangerous, namely to assume that any moral judgment is illegitimate, “judgmental” and therefore Pharisaical.
Let me be more concrete: I have heard people accuse others of being “judgmental” because they condemn abortion, or the practice of homosexuality, or child molestation. As soon as these judgments are uttered, there will be someone accusing the speaker of being a Pharisee.
Once again, we are facing “our” problem: There are things which seem similar and yet are at antipodes.
When it is said in the Gospel “do not judge that ye not be judged” (what a precious admonition and how difficult it is to practice it), we are told that no one, absolutely no one, except God, has an “inside” view of the soul of a particular individual.
God alone knows this person’s “makeup,” his background, his temptations and their degree of intensity; his victories, his defeats, his motivation. We see how a person acts; we do not know and cannot know all the factors which have brought about this act, and therefore, abominable and repugnant as the act might be, we should not condemn the person who commits it.
St. Francis de Sales used to say that our neighbor’s soul is the tree of the science of good and evil, which we are not permitted to touch because God alone has the key to good and evil. He added that we are all tempted to pass judgment on others when we are in no way equipped to do so, and we refrain to pass judgment on ourselves when we have all the necessary data to do so (The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales, Msgr. Jean Pierre Camus, p. 219).
The saint tells us further that even if a person dies in a seemingly abominable state of soul, and gives no sign of repentance for terrible and numerous sins, nevertheless, we can still hope, nay, we should hope, that he will be saved through God’s infinite mercy, for we do not know what happened between this soul and God at the very moment of death (The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales, by Msgr. Camus, p. 223).
In the life of St. Jean Vianney, the Cur of Ars (see the biography by Francis Trochu), it is related that a lady came to the Curé in a state bordering on despair. Her husband, who had left the Church, had committed suicide, throwing himself down from a bridge into a river. The saint put her mental tortures at rest by saying: “Believe me, my daughter, between the bridge and the water, he turned to God and begged for forgiveness.”
This is the true Christian spirit.
But it is in no way Christian to assume that because we cannot pass judgment on individual persons — and rob God of His unique position as judge of the living and the dead — we should no longer draw the line between good and evil, truth and error, light and darkness.
This stance contradicts biblical teaching. The Bible condemns again and again in the strongest possible terms murder, adultery, blasphemy, sodomy, theft, and more (in Veritatis Splendor, Pope St. John Paul II tells us that there are acts which are intrinsically evil, in all places, at all times, under all circumstances, n. 70). To proclaim loudly that abortion is a terrible crime, far from being judgmental, is a strict duty of all those whose spiritual eyesight has not been darkened by the clever wiles of propaganda.
Hand in hand with this clear intellectual vision goes the ardent desire to help those afflicted by moral blindness so that they may regain their sight, and turn away from an evil so great that it must make the angels weep in Heaven. Abortion is an abominable offense toward God who is the Author and giver of life; abortion destroys the life of an innocent; abortion destroys the femininity of the woman who freely chooses it, and desecrates motherhood. (St. Francis de Sales: Treatise on the Love of God, book XI, chapter X, condemnation of abortion; and condemnation of the practice of homosexuality, book XI, chapter XI).
Isaiah wrote: “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter” (6:20ff.).
The true Christian — therefore — cannot be eloquent enough in condemning moral aberrations, and loving enough toward those who perpetrate them, praying like Christ on the cross: “My God, forgive them; they do not know what they are doing.”
To condemn immoral acts and to be judgmental are therefore at antipodes. The first should be coupled with a loving concern for those who sin; the latter, alas, often leads to indifferentism and relativism, confused today with mercifulness and charity. Today, tolerance is viewed as a capital virtue, while in fact it usually means indifference toward both the offense to God implied in every immoral act, and the lack of interest in the spiritual welfare of the sinner.
This confusion is intimately linked to another one: namely, the identification of love with “softness.” Again and again, one hears on television programs that the Church claims to be a Church of love, while ruthlessly condemning certain actions as being intrinsically evil.
This confusion is so serious that it deserves to be addressed separately. I hope that I have made this clear.
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