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Contents © 1999
by Jim Holman.
All rights reserved.

Getting Along Is Not The Same As Charity

by Broderick Barker

Recently, I spoke with Father Harry Neely, an Augustinian who teaches at St. Augustine's High School here in San Diego. During our conversation, I got the feeling that I was in the presence of a truly holy man, one who saw the world aright, and not through the inverted, self-centered lens that I often use. There was no whiff of detatched piety about him; his holiness showed in the sensibility from which his thoughts proceeded. When he said, "I know God is my lover," for instance, he was not fishing for the spark of interest that may come from speaking of God in such intimate terms. He was stating a fact.

But fishing or no, I felt the spark. The word "love" has been emptied out, watered down, twisted and generally misused to the point where its association with true charity seems forced, inauthentic. When I hear the association made from the pulpit, I sometimes sense a certain discomfort in the speaker, a defensiveness against the world, as if we were doing the twisting, the misusing.

I sense it because I see it in myself: a timidity about my Catholicism, an embarrassment, almost. I never hesitate to admit that I am a Catholic, but the fact that I feel as if I am admitting it is problem enough. I am not bold; I do not boast in the Lord. I fear I am most comfortable regarding myself as the member of a particularly enlightened sect, a thought which runs contrary to the very name of my faith--Catholic, universal. I envy my brother, who is at ease with the claim that the Catholic Church sees the world as it really is, that our view is true and universal and coherent. It is the world that is mistaken, the world that twists our words.

Father Neely was using "lover" in the sense of one who seeks union with the beloved. This is most properly applied to the relation of God and man, who in beatitude can achieve a more perfect union than any here on earth. But through the inverted lens I mentioned earlier, "lover" looks as if it is borrowed from conjugal love, instead of the other way around. Perhaps this is part of why I judged him holy--the way he said "lover" betrayed no regard for the world's reaction.

Besides the world's effect on "love," I sense its influence when homilists use "peace." When I hear peace spoken of, I often think, "Thou criest 'Peace, peace ' but there is no peace." The angels at the Nativity procaimed, "Peace on earth," but they directed their proclamation "to men of good will." Christ came to bring peace, to heal a division between God and man, but he left behind a Church Militant.

C.S. Lewis wrote that, "Every inch of the cosmos is claimed by Christ and counterclaimed by Satan." A spiritual war is raging within us, but the only war I hear about at Mass is earthly--people not getting along. It's as if the Old Covenant was never replaced, as if the circumcised heart was not what God desired, as if the kingdom of God was of this world, after all.

Granted, we are perfected in part by loving our neighbor. But getting along is not the same as charity, and if it is held up as the greatest good, it can run contrary to charity. I think of the old line about evil triumphing because good men do nothing.

I cannot lay the blame for my own timidity, my own inverted lens, on the Church. But I still long for leadership, for the general's rallying cry. As it is, I sometimes forget the war even exists. As long as there is sin, man will not be at peace with God, not fully. John says in his first letter that "if we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us." I know I've sinned, but I don't always know how.

Countless times, I have heard the phrase, "practical application to real life" used when a priest begins to comment on the Gospel. But what I come away with is some abstract lesson about being kind. "Practical" gets equated with "exterior." I know about the exterior. The world knows about the exterior. A man can be a timid Catholic and still be concerned with kindness. It's the interior battle that is more difficult, both to recognize and to wage, and more important. It's a battle that requires more boldness, more militancy. What I need is the name of the enemy in all his particular forms, his tactics, his weapons, his weaknesses.

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