Mercy to the merciless.

READ TIME: 12 minutes

Hypothetical & Familiar Scenarios

1. A woman is charged with violating the rights of an impassioned member of an "oppressed" minority, a member of a state protected class. The woman, an artist, is taken to court, and prosecuted for attempted discrimination for refusing to design content that she acknowledges is incompatible with her religious beliefs. Lower courts side with state prosecutors. The nation's highest court says wait a cotton pickin' minute, and overturns the lower courts' attempts to infringe upon the woman's right to freedom of expression. Those angered by the highest court's decision are likely to continue targeting businesses and individuals who are obstacles to their demands to have their destructive behaviours made acceptable, and likely to continue using the courts to legislate imagined rights.
2. A student weaponzies her response to a teacher's opposition to her calumny and disruptive behaviour. She attempts to blame her teacher for harassing her after the teacher confronted her for intimidating her peers and for avoiding responsibility for her own words and actions, which are malicious and divisive. The student engages a process and manipulates her advocates into prosecuting an individual who defended other students and stood up to her bullying. The teacher is given a "leave of absence" while the teacher's actions are reviewed. The student's behaviour is well known to others, others who dismissed her threats as ridiculous. Yet others, less critically-minded and less diligent in the pursuit of the facts, allow a process to continue that intimidates a teacher into submission. The student, though culpable for contributing to a climate of conflict and disrespect, suffers no consequences.
3. An accomplished educator is passed over for a job for which he, among three candidates, is best qualified. Several times he is recommended for the job by a selection panel, only to have upper administration override the committee's decision in favour of another candidate who better fits the terms of equity, diversity and inclusivity. Instead of an equality of opportunity, upper administration enacts an "equality" of results against the recommendations of the committee empowered to make hiring decisions, thus marginalizing a candidate who by far merits the award of the position while also disregarding the fair-minded work of a duly appointed committee of experts. Administration is guilty of enacting an injustice despite its claims to the contrary.
4. Two teens admitted to fatally assaulting their teacher with a baseball bat. Student One received a life sentence with the prospect of release after 35 years. The judge referred to his behaviour as sinister and evil. Student One expressed regret earlier in the day and apologised to the teacher's family, his own family, and the community. He apologised profusely to the teacher's family, saying, "I'm truly sorry for the trouble I've caused you." Too little too late. "I accept responsibility for my carelessness and ignorance. What I did was wrong." Carelessness? According to Student Two, the teacher was assassinated according to a plan designed by Student One. The 60-year-old teacher's body was hidden by a tarp, a wheelbarrow and railway ties. She suffered severe head trauma. According to court records, the teenagers observed the teacher's daily routine, ambushed her on her daily walk, carried her corpse into the woods, and bashed her with a baseball bat. According to the prosecution, the two students were upset with the instructor because Student One was failing the teacher's class. Student Two testified that they had been plotting the murder for roughly two weeks and that they both attacked the teacher before hiding her corpse.

Resisting a bully's threats takes strength and courage of conviction. Ignoring a bully's threats may allow the bully to become emboldened. In an unavoidable serious confrontation, does one protect another person and oneself with wit and a camera in hand or, if necessary, offer justifiable proportionate defensive force, verbal and/or physical fists at the ready, or perhaps enlist the aid of the police or a lawyer and the courts to deter further aggression?

Bullies must learn boundaries and respect, otherwise their unchecked bad behaviour will escalate, and victims will multiply. Wit might inflame and complicate the situation. Physical force typically escalates the violence. Proportionate force may be necessary to protect oneself and/or another from harm.

CCC 2309 The evaluation of these conditions for moral legitimacy belongs to the prudential judgment of those who have responsibility for the common good.

Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. - St John 15:13

The above scenarios are not uncommon. A passing read of the daily news confirms any number of examples of a culture occupied by the "in-crowd" who routinely demonstrate brattish and brutish behaviour, a mob aided by their box-checking virtue-signalling allies eager to win the award for appeasing the gods of wrath while sacrificing coworkers upon the altar of self righteousness and feigned indignation.

We are living in occupied territory, surviving in societies that have largely surrendered the civilizing strength of a Judeo-Christian ethos to the uncertain and unpredictably dangerous ideologies of misguided academics, hack therapists and malicious political opportunists. It's time to stop enabling demagogues, the pretend intellectuals who are bullies, tyrants... .

The opiate of the masses is... sexual ideology... and opioids and... .

People wonder why there is a depression crisis, an opioid crisis and a suicide crisis. The obvious escapes the understanding of most social scientists. The conditions for an epidemic of depression have been made possible by the incremental removal of faith and morals from the public square. Robbed of authentic spirituality, spiritual psychology and the truth about the human condition, and isolated behind cell phones that flood viewers with cheap and dangerous "life hacks", the young and old medicate themselves with deadly drugs - fentanyl, xylazine, methamphetamine, etc. - in an attempt to alleviate the burden of a life, of a culture, emptied of meaning, emptied of hope. Seventy-six years of Soviet communism and the attending destruction of the human spirit and the loss of tens of millions of lives has not taught people anything, apparently, about the dangers of inhuman ideologies nesting in people's lives and tearing apart the human spirit.

Many, if not most "suicide detection and prevention" organizations, state sponsored and private, fail to include in their recommended approaches to mitigating suicide the involvement of a patient in a faith community. One wonders how many people would have been and still could be helped if counselors didn't have their hands tied by policies that restrict conversations about faith and spirituality.

If we are enjoined, then, to love our enemies, as I have remarked above, whom have we to hate? If injured, we are forbidden to retaliate, lest we become as bad ourselves: who can suffer injury at our hands? - Chapter 37, Apology, Tertullian (Translated by S. Thelwall. From Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. 3. Edited by Alexander Roberts, James Donaldson, and A. Cleveland Coxe. (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1885.)

Jesus commands us to love our enemies and to pray for our persecutors. Being an ally of truth could and usually does mean putting oneself in harm's way. Being an ally of the Truth, i.e., being a disciple of Jesus Christ, necessitates loving one's enemies by sharing the truth in a loving way. By so doing, we ally ourselves to God's agenda. By His grace, our lives become an alloy of the advocacy of the Holy Spirit. Of course, the enemies of decency and goodwill do not play by the same rules.

CCC 1731 Freedom is the power, rooted in reason and will, to act or not to act, to do this or that, and so to perform deliberate actions on one's own responsibility. By free will one shapes one's own life. Human freedom is a force for growth and maturity in truth and goodness; it attains its perfection when directed toward God, our beatitude.

The Christian responses to diabolical social constructs do not mimic the tactics of bullies. Turning the other cheek is not acquiescence to a physical or administrative or legal threat. It is a response born of a confidence that throws water on the fire of irrationality and wrath - most often, yes, at the cost of personal safety and a loss of reputation simply for conforming to the will of God. The saints know this.

The consequences of being a disciple of Jesus are many. The Lord reminds us

Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when men revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so men persecuted the prophets who were before you. - St Matthew 5:10-12

Turning the other cheek acknowledges the sovereignty of God, and avoids the temptation to give in to malice and vengeance, which if adopted - malice and vengeance, that is - becomes an acid in the soul that corrodes joy and hope into cynicism, despair and wrath. A soul graced by God is able to embrace humiliation with prayer, patience and peace.

Tangled Web

The student in scenario two was emboldened and enabled by others to act badly. The lower courts in scenario one and the administrators in scenario three are tools for injustice. Those guilty of scapegoating are perpetuating a culture of violence.

How does one mitigate injustice? Fighting fire with fire? By insisting on an eye for an eye? Suffering love isn't merely consigning oneself to an unfortunate outcome while holding a subtle grudge. Breaking the cycle of violence requires divine assistance.

By suffering injustice, one becomes a channel of grace and an icon modelling change. A loss of one's power in the eyes of those who cling to power is nothing to be concerned about, for power is fleeting and eventually those committing injustices against you must face a greater power, possibly the retribution of their own peers who avoid them or consume them, and most definitely the authority of God. We can mediate that greater power - the love of God, that is - by embodying truth and goodness, by our docility to the Holy Spirit Who is the Advocate of the person who is faithful to the commandments of Jesus.

The truth of the Gospel is not measured by our worldly successes but rather by the success of love, the incremental progress of daily love ultimately lived for the salvation of souls.

The loss of a soul grieves God, and it should us too. However, an individual enamoured in worldly successes - i.e., his power over others, or her power of preserving her own "safety" (which is most often a form of power acquired at the cost of the well being of another) - cannot be forced to abandon his or her deadly addiction. Often it takes a major crises to expose the error of one's thoughts and actions, the impotence of one's gods, that renders a person vulnerable to the creative influence of Almighty God and that frees one from the allure and illusion of a control that blinds a person to life and true relationship. God does not cause those crises, but He is always and entirely present to us, ready to help us turn away from sin to the newness of life offered by, in and through Jesus Christ.

Shutting down the scapegoat mechanism

In mimetic theory, mimesis refers to human desire, which (Rene) Girard thought was not linear but the product of a mimetic process in which people imitate models who endow objects with value. Girard called this phenomenon "mimetic desire", and described mimetic desire as the foundation of his theory:

"Man is the creature who does not know what to desire, and he turns to others in order to make up his mind. We desire what others desire because we imitate their desires."

Mimetic theory posits that mimetic desire leads to natural rivalry and eventually to scapegoating - Girard called this the scapegoat mechanism. In his study of history, Girard formed the hypothesis that societies unify their imitative desires around the destruction of a collectively agreed-upon scapegoat.

In the examples provided, victims suffering the harm of a false justice, those inflicting the injustice, and those observing from the sidelines, are participating in a primordial evil that only Jesus is able to overcome for us. We must seek the grace of God to sustain us in our cooperation with Him. To overcome the cycle of violence, we must repent and embrace the saving Passion of Jesus Christ.

Scapegoating serves as a psychological relief for a group of people. (Rene) Girard contends that this is what happened in the narrative of Jesus of Nazareth, the central figure in Christianity. The difference between the scapegoating of Jesus and others, Girard believes, is that in the resurrection of Jesus from the dead, he is shown to be an innocent victim; humanity is thus made aware of its violent tendencies and the cycle is broken. - René Girard and Mimetic Theory, https://www.imitatio.org/brief-intro

Jesus, by His death, destroyed death. Jesus' mission is the rescue of souls from the tyranny of sin and the devil. The Spiritual Works of Mercy help us recognize those in most need of God's mercy and to mediate God's love for the sinner - and we are all sinners in need of God's gift in Jesus Christ. The seven Works depend on our openness to God's influence and our willingness, sustained by God's grace, to cooperate with God for the salvation of souls.

Only God's grace can sustain in us hope, joy, faith and love, and an enthusiasm for the salvation of souls. Let us pray for said grace(s) to renew our commitment as disciples serving the rescue mission under the leadership of our glorious Saviour Jesus Christ.

The Spiritual Works of Mercy

1. To instruct the ignorant (as one would himself hope to be instructed)
2. To counsel the doubtful
3. To admonish sinners
• By exercising any of the first three, by speaking the truth in a loving manner, we may very well invite hostility and retribution. Those addicted to sin can and do get angry when the thought of having their candy taken away enters their minds. Hence the next two works of mercy.
4. To bear wrongs patiently
5. To forgive offences willingly
• So then - we share a solidarity with others.
6. To comfort the afflicted
• Pray, pray and pray some more. Forgive, forgive and keep on forgiving. Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. To triumph over sin requires a healthy daily examination of conscience and an eye on the closest confessional.
7. To pray for the living and the dead
• Pray for those deadened by sin and for those who are most need of God's mercy.