What Religious Liberty?
The Incredible Ever-Expanding Dead End
Anti-Cure, Anti-Life
Whose Values in
Education?
Toppling
Dominos
Anti-Christians
don't have to be Hypocrites but Many Volunteer
Intolerant Tolerance
The Emperor's
Clothes or a Cheap Tuxedo
The Myth of
Hitler's Pope, Part I
The Myth of
Hitler's Pope, Part II
Embryonic
Stem Cell Research Again
The Madness of
Secularism
"Don't Impose Your
Religion on Me"
Dictatorship of Relativism
Two Babies at Christmas
Living Will or Death
Warrant?
Court Ordered
Slow Motion Torture-Death Sentence
Men in Black
A Lot of Hot Air
The Culture War
Battles
"Stay with us, Lord"
Secular-to-English Dictionary
Moral Guidance for
Catholics in this Election
Christians
Losing America
Stem Cell Wars
Catholic
Pro-Abortion Politicians and Communion
Useful Idiots
Who Killed Jesus?
A Primer on Gay
Marriage
Whose Side are You
on?
Vouchers Revisited
Real and Fake
Cloning Bans
Broken Compasses
No Room in the Inn
Killing Fields
Revisited
Gay but not Merry
Adam and Steve?
The Battle for the Court
Victimless Crimes
More Salt, Please
The Next Big Fight
When Religion
Becomes Evil
Virginity Making a Comeback?
You've Come a Long Way,
Baby
The Incarnational
Approach
The Many Meanings of ACLU
Things Your Media Never Told
You
A Nasty Little Secret
Two Points of View on the Birth of Jesus
You Gotta Kill Them. How Else
Are They Going To Learn?
Perplexing Christmas Questions
How Do You See Christ Today?
Now that there is Another Ewe, will there be
Another You?
What is Conscience Anyhow?
Divorce of Love and Life
What Counts as a Mass?
What is a Covenant?
I Wish I had Your Faith
Are there Too Many Decrees of
Nullity?
Dutch Treats
Ecumenism
Going from Baby Doe to Granny Doe
Comments of Evangelium Vitae
The Exception Corrupts the Rule
Good Morality or
Good Medicine
Generation-X'ers Smart in Every Way But
One
A Matter of Good Breeding
Herod and Pontius Pilate at the
Polls
Hitler's Pope or Righteous Gentile?
The Unknown God
What exactly is wrong with
homosexuality?
Ideology Trumps Science, Reality,
and Common Sense
What Exactly is an Indulgence?
Infallibility and Error in the Church
Pilate Asked, "What is Truth?"
The Truth about Families
New Killing Fields
Choice of Language and Language of
Choice
A Lexicon for Our Day
Why are there so many bodies?
Marijuana, Medicine or Menace?
Medical Research and Ethics
Meditation
"You Taught me well,
Mommie dearest"
Moral Fallout
Neutral on the Wrong
Side
"These are the
Nineties After All"
Many are Wed but Few
are Married
"...Prepare him for
additional obligations"
A Useful Lie
A Partridge in a
Pear Tree
Religious Persecution in
the U.S.?
What Makes a Person a
Person?
The Point of a Point of
View
Politically Correct,
Morally Depraved
Population
Controllers out of Control
Practical Dreamers
Social Progress
through Immorality
Shall we Do Evil for
Goodness Sake?
Reason and Faith
Resurrection Glory
Same Sex Marriages?
Pearl of Great Price
"I used to be
schizophrenic, but we're all right now"
Sexual Morality
Irrelevant in Judging Public Officials?
Undesirable Side Effects
Some News is Good News
SOSSLQ's, not POSSLQ's
Spoils of Splits
Why Attend Mass
Every Sunday?
Is it All Right to Pull
the Plug?
An Appeal for Intolerance
Topics Catechetical
A Voting Catechism
A Moral Guide to
Voting
Vouchers: Has Their Time Come?
What Child is This?
What did they die of?
You are the Man
You may be a liberal
if...
Get Rid of that Worthless
Relative
Planned Un-Parenthood
Weighing Pro-Life Issues
Prior to Voting
|
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by Monsignor James C. Brunner |
Faith Points |
Intolerant Tolerance
A virtue rightfully prized in Americans is tolerance. Tolerance can be good or bad depending on what one tolerates. Many in our society have moved away from morality defined as a set of universally binding principles to a morality that is a synthesis of popular opinion.
It is now impolite and a boorish breach of good manners to advocate universal, unvarying moral standards and employ these as a critique of conduct. Our new civility, chiefly inculcated by secular humanists of all stripes, demands that we refrain from identifying evil and calling it such. Kofi Annan, Secretary General of the UN, sums up the attitude: “If we are intent on naming evil, then let us name it intolerance.”
The new moral etiquette requires that we bestow equal legitimacy to all moral views. It is not permissible to condemn homosexual relations and marriages, abortion, stem cell research that involves destruction of embryos, abuse of narcotics, or any sexual expression that is consensual.
To say that there are no moral absolutes or that one moral position is as good as another is absurd on its face. Proponents of tolerance of all moral viewpoints say that there is no truth and ask us to accept that as true statement. Jean Paul Sartre wrote in all seriousness, “It is forbidden to forbid.” There can be no tolerance in moral relativism because the obligation to be tolerant violates the rule that there are no moral rules.
In addition to its internal and self-refuting nature tolerance of all moral views in practice leads to absurdities that no one really believes. Can you imagine someone arguing: “I happen to value the ability to speak, write, worship and assemble freely as a value for me, but I do not believe that such freedom is better for anyone else? No one believes his moral system is inferior to others. Believers in freedom are not willing to equate it with tyranny. Proponents of racial equality do not accept that some races are inferior. Monogamists hold that monogamy is superior to polygamy. Persons who value tolerance will not give equal respect to intolerance. Is the “honor killing” of daughters a value equal to that of allowing daughters to marry whomever they choose? No morally sane person believes that child torture, genocide, and suicidal terrorist attacks are morally acceptable activities. The new politeness mandated by the secularists would keep us from condemning the slaughter of 9-11 as evil or to distinguish victims from victimizers. To pretend that we must tolerate those activities on the specious grounds that there are no fixed moral positions offends against common sense if not sanity.
Apart from its absurdity the new tolerance of evil fails to prevent consequences of evil acts. Bad ideas generally have bad consequences. Thus more than 300,000 Americans have died from AIDS contracted chiefly by homosexual activity and needle sharing. Three quarters of these did not live to the age of 45. Tolerating homosexual activity has severely shortened the lives of many human beings. The new tolerance unilaterally disarms those who condemn the evils of Communism which has killed more innocent persons than all the religious wars combined and the toll continues. Why should anyone tolerate their principles? In the religious wars often the protagonists were departing from their principles but the totalitarian regimes of Nazism and Communism committed their execrable deeds in the act of implementing their principles. Why should we give those principles any respect? Everywhere secular atheism has been tried it has failed miserably. It has led to economic, ecological, and cultural collapse. Just look at North Korea, Cuba, China, and the former Nazi and USSR regimes.
The new tolerance turns tolerance topsy-turvy. Classic tolerance meant respecting persons but not their evil ideas or deeds. Modern tolerance demands refraining from criticizing evil behaviors or ideas, but calls for disrespect for persons who do criticize them. Critics of the new morality (really the old immorality) are marginalized and verbally abused as bigoted, ignorant, homophobic, racist, chauvinistic and—worst of all—intolerant. They can be sued, punished by law (e.g., jailing of ministers who condemn homosexuality in Canada), forced to attend re-education programs, and removed from consideration for teaching positions at “tolerant” universities.
The new tolerance appears to be a plea for tolerance of their ideas, not the ideas of those who disagree with them. Larry Summers of Harvard University got into a great deal of trouble when he suggested as a topic of discussion that there might be important differences between men and women. The Harvard faculty had no tolerance for a deviation from the accepted secular doctrine that there are absolutely no differences. The new tolerance also appears to be a cowardly retreat from debating moral issues on their merits. In San Francisco’s rapid transit system (BART) advertisements questioning the wisdom of abortion were torn from the vehicles by “pro-choicers” who tolerate abortion but have no tolerance for the notion that it might be unwise if not immoral. Representatives of the ROTC are barred from some universities because of the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy relative to homosexuals. The new tolerance has no tolerance for any deviation from the current secular dogma about homosexuals.
The tolerance demanded by secular moral relativists eventually degenerates into what Pope Benedict XVI calls “the dictatorship of relativism.” Since the new tolerance allows of no standards applicable to all someone has to determine what may or not be done in a society, e.g., may abortions be performed, may homosexuals marry, or may embryonic stem cell research take place, etc.? Without agreement on universal objective standards the most powerful person or groups in the society make the determination. That is why moral relativism becomes an ideological dictatorship since its adherents have no tolerance for others in the society who disagree with them. This group forces its will on others by judicial activism (hence the bitter fights over Supreme Court nominees) and the persistent drumbeat of the mainstream media.
True tolerance respects persons but not evil behaviors and ideas. Modern tolerance gets it backward. It tolerates evil behaviors but has no tolerance for critics of the behavior. The solution to the evils brought on the society by tolerating bad morals is to embrace a true, objective, and universally applicable morality. “We destroy arguments and every pretension raising itself against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive in obedience to Christ. (II Cor. 10:4-5) We must acknowledge a universal moral objective moral system and listen to Jesus who says, “If you remain in my word, you will truly be my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” (Jn. 8:31-32)
(Printed February, 2006)
St. Mary's Church Pastor & Vicar
