The first experience was this: I was talking with two friends about the aspiring candidates who want to represent their political parties in the upcoming Presidential election, and I said "Don't people recognize that Donald Trump hates people from different racial, ethnic, and religious groups, that he makes fun of people with disabilities, that he talks contemptuously about women, and that he is supported by White Supremacists? All those attitudes are contrary to Christian teaching - no true Christian should support him for President!"
Today I received an email from a friend that said in effect that since abortion is a crime, the willful destruction of human life, and that in America babies are aborted by the millions every year, that no true Christian can vote for the candidate of a political party that supports Planned Parenthood and abortion. I read that, and seethed: I am TOTALLY against abortion, and the Republican party is against abortion - but, how can someone tell me that I'm not a true Christian if I follow my conscience on other issues and vote for a Democrat or an Independent?
Then it hit me: hadn't I just said to two friends that no true Christian could vote for Donald Trump? What a hypocrite I am! Don't I believe in what the Catholic Church teaches about the primacy of the individual conscience? The Church teaches that when we need to make a moral decision (which is what choosing whom to vote for is - a moral decision) we need to pray, to become familiar with all aspects of a situation, (in this case, what the candidate's views are on a number of topics), consult our Church's teachings, and consult with wise men and women. In the case of voting, neither the Democratic or Republican candidates or their party's platforms adhere to all the moral teachings of the Bible or the Church. In choosing whom to vote for, we each need to pray, prioritize what moral values are most important to us, look at each candidate's personalities, moral values, statements, and track records, and let our individual consciences be our guides.
I am ashamed of those words that condemned other Christians when they have a moral right to their political opinions. Yet, how easily those words tripped off my tongue! How easy it is to make snap judgements, to act as if we have godlike knowledge and are superior to others in our judgements.
Yes, we can judge for ourselves a candidate's worthiness for office based on his or her beliefs, attitudes, and actions. We can judge for ourselves whether we think an act or attitude is sinful in itself. But we can't judge other people's souls. We have no right to judge other people's consciences or call someone else a traitor to Christianity who makes different political choices. We have no right to judge others' lives or speak of them in a hateful or judgmental manner. If our tongues' comments uncharitably divide people into "us" and "them," we are spreading divisiveness, wounding our communities, and causing violence to escalate.
Calling ourselves Christians does not protect us from individual or communal blindness of heart and soul. Each generation faces its own temptations to be judgmental and prejudiced. My parents' generation categorized all Jews as being godless, dishonest, and immoral. After all, it was said, weren't the Jews the people who killed Jesus? This idea conveniently ignored the fact that Jesus was crucified two thousand years ago, not by today's Jewish people, and that it was the religious leaders who connived against him and then duped the people through "mob psychology" into shouting for his death. And a Roman, Pontius Pilate, condemned him to death! Today some leaders connive against all Muslims and dupe the people through "mob psychology" into condemning and hating all of them as being godless and immoral.
But prejudice against Jews still exists. We continue to scapegoat them for Jesus' death when it was everyone's sins that Jesus carried. We all bear responsibility for Jesus' death! We may dupe ourselves into believing Nazi attitudes about the inferiority of Jews no longer exists among enlightened Christians. Then why did the following incident occur? Recently in the Boston area, Catholic Memorial School students were playing students from Newton North School, a heavily Jewish school, in the South Division 1 boys' basketball final. Suddenly Catholic Memorial student fans began to chant "You killed Jesus" at Newton North's crowd.
As soon as Catholic Memorial administrators heard the chant, they stopped it, and then had the offending fans apologize to Newton North's Principal after the game. Catholic Memorial School released a statement that the school was "deeply disturbed." The Archdiocese of Boston released a statement calling the students' chant and attitudes "unacceptable." But I'm sure that untold damage had already been done by these students' tongues. At least one parent at the game was deeply shaken. In fact, when I posted the story on Facebook, a Jewish friend, Beth, commented that she was heartbroken that such attitudes still existed; as she reminded me, so few Jews are left.
My question is: whose tongues damaged the minds and hearts of those Catholic Memorial student fans to begin with? Did they hear words of hatred against Jews from someone at the school? Or in their homes? We may say that those must all be wonderful teachers, those must all be wonderful parents to sacrifice money to send their children to a private school. But those fans heard inflammatory, prejudicial, antisemitic, un-Christian language from SOMEONE or they wouldn't have thought up that chant!
Our inner attitudes towards others will often surface in unkind, damaging words that can drive others away from us and from our communities. We may think we are upholding our Church's teachings, but it's the choice of words and the manner in which we treat others that determines whether we are acting like Christ. Christ called others to him in love, welcomed them, spent time with sinners, those his society judged to be "unclean," and the rejected. Why? Because he saw their worth, their individuality, their gifts and talents that society could benefit from if only they were part of their community. And Christ alone judged their hearts and determined if they sinned.
Jesus is the judge of human hearts, not us. Fr. James Martin, S.J., reminds us of the Gospel story of the woman caught in adultery and how Jesus gently called the crowd to look at their own sins first before they condemned another, and how gently Jesus told the woman that he did not condemn her, did not sentence her to death by stones or by the verbal stones of strong disapproval and censure. Instead he only told her briefly to go and sin no more. Fr. Martin says:
"But it's Jesus doing the judging, not the crowd. That's what people forget in the Catholic Church. They see someone doing what they think is wrong and they instantly take it upon themselves to be the judge and jury, when Jesus says very clearly, here and elsewhere, stop judging. Leave that to me. Ignoring Jesus' words can have the severest consequences. For the woman in the story, it could have killed her. For us today, it can kill in another way. Judging others can exclude others from the community. Judging others can turn others against them often with violent results. Judging others can impose feelings of shame and unworthiness.
"How often do we do this in our Church, with LGBT Catholics, with divorced and remarried Catholics, with Catholics who don't agree with our political views. And on and on. It excludes, it distances, it shames, and so it kills the Church too.
"Now again, is there a place for calling others to conversion? Of course! That's one of the ways to help our friends grow. But it must be preceded by love....For Jesus, it's community first, conversion second. That's what he's doing with the woman caught in adultery: welcoming her, telling her she's valuable, and then calling her to conversion....For Jesus: community first, conversion second. In other words, it's love first. Everything else comes second."
St. Paul tells us that if we speak with the greatest gifts of rhetoric but do not have love, we sound like discordant, jarring cymbals. Every day of our lives we need to ask ourselves, do our words kill or heal? Do our words discourage or encourage? Are our words addressed to a whole person, in all his or her giftedness and glory and frailty, or only to the part which we consider sinful or unclean? May our words always reflect Jesus' prayer to the Father for us - that we may all be one as he and his Father are one.