I felt compassion for the poor people who were taken in by these follies. And now I think that I was at least as much to be pitied myself. Not that experience has since shown me anything surpassing my first beliefs, and that through no fault of my curiosity; but reason has taught me that to condemn a thing thus, dogmatically, as false and impossible, is to assume the advantage of knowing the bounds and limits of God's will and the power of our mother Nature; and that there is no more notable folly in the world than to reduce these things to the measure of our capacity and competence. If we call prodigies or miracles whatever our reason cannot reach, how many of these appear continually to our eyes! Let us consider through what clouds and how gropingly we are led to the knowledge of most of the things that are right in our hands; assuredly we shall find that it is rather familiarity than knowledge that takes away their strangeness.
It is a dangerous and fateful presumption, besides the absurd temerity that it implies, to disdain what we do not comprehend. For after you have established, according to your fine understanding, the limits of truth and falsehood, and it turns out that you must necessarily believe things even stranger than those you deny, you are obliged from then on to abandon these limits. Now, what seems to me to bring as much disorder into our consciences as anything, in these religious troubles that we are in, is this partial surrender of their beliefs by Catholics. It seems to them that they are being very moderate and understanding when they yield to their opponents some articles in dispute. But, besides the fact that they do not see what an advantage it is to a man charging you for you to begin to give ground and withdraw, and how much that encourages him to pursue his point, those articles which they select as the most trivial are sometimes very important. We must either submit completely to the authority of our ecclesiastical government, or do without it completely. It is not for us to decide what portion of obedience we owe it.
Moreover, I can say this for having tried it. In other days I exercised this freedom of personal choice and selection, regarding with negligence certain points in the observance of our Church which seem more vain or strange than others; until, coming to discuss them with learned men, I found that these things have a massive and very solid foundation, and that is only stupidity and ignorance that makes us receive them with less reverence than the rest. Why do we not remember how much contradiction we sense even in our own judgment? How many things were articles of faith to us yesterday, which are fables to us today? Vainglory and curiosity are the two scourges of our soul.
The color of a person's eyes, like their skin, may matter, but not for the reasons generally given. Democrats say that you shouldn't vote for Republicans because they are war-mongerers and support the rich and are racists, not because Democrats believe that wars won't achieve what they think they will nor because wars are evil, and not because they believe that tax cuts will not benefit low-income families as much as they will benefit those with higher incomes. The Republicans say you shouldn't vote for Democrats because they want to give control of the country to other nations, because they play to the victim mentality and don't believe in good honest hard work, not because presenting a strong presence on the international level will benefit US interests nor because continuing unemployment benefits enables people. We--and you can define this term however you feel necessary--have become adept at telling strong stories that preempt logical arguments. Immigrants are illegal drug-running aliens who all probably belong to a gang; laws against abortion curtail women's rights and extend male hegemony; and the people who blew up the World Trade Towers are terrorists who cackle evilly and enjoy destruction. If you can find the right name, the right story, for your opposition, you don't have to worry about what they say at all. If you need any more proof of this, have you ever heard a cogent explanation of 9-11 from the people who did the bombing? Contrast the paucity of such explanations with the vast effort we expend explaining why we are in Iraq and Afghanistan.
However, I think it's equally dangerous to fall into the trap of meeting only the argument and ignoring the color of eye and skin and faith. It seems to me that we are eager to dismiss these colors because when it comes down to it, we don't understand them. They point out to us that there really are differences among humans. In a perfect world of logic, if we knew all the information, and had all the clarity of reasoning power at our disposal, no one in their right mind could disagree with anyone else. But you only have to look at a person's eyes and note the color there, to be assured that no amount of reasoning is ever going to bring about such broad agreement. At least for now, these things remain to remind us that there is still so much that we do not comprehend.
No comments:
Post a Comment