Matthew 18 done right

A reader writes:

Just saw your response to Dymphna’s criticism, and then read Dymphna’s criticism; and then pondered it all for awhile. I started to post this as a comment, and then decided to send it to you personally. Respond, or not, just as you like. (Note that I rarely read comment threads, so I’m responding to your main posts.)

First, as I’ve written before, I’ve found your blog and books very helpful; they are among the (many) things Jesus used to lead me back to the Catholic Church. You’re fighting the good fight, so don’t lose heart. (Oh, and congratulations on the imprimatur!)

All that said, no one is perfect; and I thought you might appreciate criticism from one who has no axe to grind against you, and is, indeed, favourably disposed. (Good grief, how pompous can I get?)

Feel free to stop reading. 🙂

First, you can be dismissively rude about groups with whom you disagree (the Evil Party, the Rubber Hose Right, the Rad-Trads, the New Atheists). The thing that doesn’t always come across, I think, is that you use each of these labels for a set of ideas, and only secondarily for a set of people: the people who hold the ideas you’re rejecting. More than this, you use the labels as a shorthand: you don’t define them thoroughly each time you use them. (I’m not suggesting you should, mind you.) Given all that, I expect that the set of people who feel targetted by one or another of these labels is rather larger (possibly much larger) than the set of people to whom they actually apply. And this, of course, can lead to hurts that you do not intend.

For example, consider the guy who has never thought much about torture one way or another, but loves his country and wants it to be protected. Dangerous times require extreme measures, he thinks, and terrorists are evil people and need to be suppressed by any means necessary. If torture is needed, it’s needed. This guy holds this position, but vaguely–he’s not thought it out in any detail.

As you’ve noted frequently and at great length, that position isn’t in accord with the Church’s teaching; and this guy, if he’s Catholic, needs to come to terms with that. But he might easily stumble upon one of your briefer denunciations of the Rubber Hose Right, and think you’re denouncing *him*. And then, quite likely, instead of saving your brother, you’ve polarized him.

I dunno what you can do about this; it might just be part of the cost of punditry. But there it is.

Second, Chesterton was famous for being able to cross swords with men who whom he disagreed utterly, and do so in a spirit of good humour, and yet remain friends with them. Chesterton being one of your heroes, I imagine you’re trying to do the same; but it’s much harder than it looks, alas. (Chesterton strikes me as a man of great sense, of great wit, and of great intellectual integrity, but not as a man of heroic virtue–expect in this one surprising regard. And he made it look so *easy*.)

As a consequence, I suspect that many readers mistake your tone. Your reproof of Dymphna struck me, on first reading, as sincere, and not as nasty-spirited. I suspect that Dymphna will read it as sneering, supercilious, superior, arrogant, and condescending. (It might be a little condescending.)

Again, I don’t know what you can do about that.

Hope this is helpful; if not, feel free to cast it into the outer darkness.

May God bless you and keep you and make his face to shine upon you!

Thanks much for all of your writing.

First, thanks for your kind words. I appreciate it, because they make clear that you know you are treating with a person and not simply a bogeyman. It’s better than I do sometimes, which, of course, is why you are writing and why your criticism seems reasonable to me.

FWIW, I often bring these sorts of things to confession. Of course, to my enemies, this simply proves my insincerity. To those of you disposed to charity, a prayer to GKC on my behalf would not be out of order.