The Limitations on Dialog and Toleration

by Bishop Fabian W. Bruskewitz

I am deeply honored and humbled by the Institute for Religious Life giving me this award. I was somewhat amazed that such a dignity would come to me. My acceptance is undertaken only with the genuine acknowledgment of my unworthiness, and, indeed, my genuine insignificance in relationship to the excellent work that so many bishops, priests, and consecrated religious have devoted to the promotion of genuine consecrated religious life in our country and throughout the world. I hope that the wonderful work of the Institute for Religious Life will ever go forward with increasing energy and constant good effects.

I thought this evening that I would speak about the limits of dialog and toleration. I want to begin by stating very emphatically that I favor both dialog and toleration. I say that so that my subsequent remarks will not be in any way misconstrued or misunderstood. I also want to say that I think it is imperative that we constantly be alert to improving the methods by which we discourse with each other within the Catholic Church particularly, but also in our present, pluralistic, cultural context. It is vital, in my opinion, that civility and genuine civilized courtesy be an ever-present constituent of any kind of discourse. For Christians, of course, courtesy and politeness are concrete expressions of Christian charity, and so they are imposed upon us by a double imperative: that which requires civilized behavior and comportment as well as that which requires Christian attitudes and approaches to our fellow human beings, remembering always the old adage that "a stranger is merely a friend you have not yet met, and every enemy is really a potential friend."

The reason, however, that I feel it is necessary to revisit the limitations on dialog and toleration is that in certain sectors of our cultural milieu, we find tolerance and dialog exalted to such an extent that they supersede other, and superior, values and qualities, such as (in some instances) truth itself.

Let us, first of all, talk about dialog. Jesus, in the Gospel, is not known to have told His disciples to go out into the world and dialog. I think that the words that are appropriate in our Lord's last instructions to us are mathutusein and didaskein, which mean "go out and make disciples," and "go out and teach" Now let me be the first to say, that on some occasions, dialog is a very effective method to make disciples, and can be an excellent pedagogical method as well. However, a method is not, in itself, a goal or an end, but rather a means to achieve an end. The first limitation I see to dialog is that it cannot rationally be accepted as a permanent state of affairs. Dialog is a way in which we strive to achieve some purpose or goal. Perpetual and eternal dialog does not seem to me to be an appropriate method in which Christians can live, although one can apply the word dialog in prayer and the relationship between God and His people in dialogic terms.

Truth Does Not Always Win

The second limitation, as I see it, is that when the Church and/or Catholics in the Church engage in dialog, they have no guarantee that this process will always result in the emergence of truth. We all know that there is no guarantee in any kind of dialogic discussion that truth will be the victor. Theoretically, with human minds always open to the reality of truth, one could hope this is the case. De facto, however, it isn't. In Adam Smith's Classic Economics, it is the better mousetrap that wins in the marketplace, and the world beats a path to the door of the man who invented it. We know, however, that in the world of reality, that does not often happen. It is rather the person who can pass off shoddy goods as genuine and good, the person who manipulates and lies in advertising, the person who underpays workers, and so on, who could just as well prevail in the marketplace as the noble inventor of the mousetrap.

Similarly, someone can possess truth in a dialogic relationship and still be, so to speak, conquered by someone who is more glib, more articulate, better-looking, who can state and simplify — indeed, oversimplify — presentations. Audiences can think as much with their glands sometimes as with their minds. We have only to recall Benjamin Desraeli's famous remark that seeing certain officials freely elected by free people makes it easier to understand how the ancient Egyptians could have worshiped an insect.

The second limitation, then, is that those who engage in dialog should always be aware that truth does not necessarily prevail as the outcome of every dialog.

The third limitation that I see in what is called dialog is that it can very seriously result in the mutilation or marginalizing of truth. Things can be so ordered that consensus and good feeling are the major outcomes desired in dialog, and therefore, there can be a normal human tendency to trivialize things that are relatively important for the sake of compromise and consensus. We all know that consensus is not always a process which results in truth, any more than dialog itself always results in truth. Consequently, we can, particularly in a pluralistic society when we are very desirous of living in comity and reasonable comfort with neighbors with whom we disagree, arrive at the conclusion that certain matters are not really of any kind of earth-shaking dimensions, and really have no eternal repercussions.

Opening The Door To Nihilism

The fourth limitation I see in dialog is that it sometimes skews the relationship of teacher and student. Granted the Socratic interrogatories and various kinds of dialogic procedures can be extraordinarily useful, particularly when dealing with mature students, adults and the like, at the same time the flow in teaching must go from teacher to the student who is being taught. There is some backflow into the teacher, and that is also quite normal. At the same time, if the Church, for example, as such, enters into dialog, it must be clearly seen that the Church is already in possession of a certain measure of truth, and the purpose of dialog is to make sure that the terminology in which this truth is phrased is acceptable and can be accommodated by the one who is the partner in the dialog. What may happen, of course, is that the perception can be given, sometimes by the participants in the dialog and sometimes by onlookers, that truth is really an open-ended matter in religion, and, therefore, it is quite acceptable to assume that no party owns or possesses the truth in these matters, and by means of the dialog, we will somehow or another arrive at truth. Needless, to say, this opens doors to what Pope John Paul II calls in his new encyclical "historicism, scientism, eclecticism, and ultimately, nihilism." It makes truth quite a relativistic notion and can have the effect of reducing truth to something genuinely unattainable, and epistemologically, something that is merely opinion at the best. In a certain sense, then, dialog has the possibility to convert, but it also keeps open the possibility to pervert.

Dialog certainly can be desirable. The Church can and must dialog with those about her, with the secular world/with the unbelieving world, the diversity of non-Christian religions, well as those churches and denominations that once in history may have had an association with the Catholic Church and still claim sometimes to be rooted in Sacred Scripture and perhaps in Christ Himself. If dialog is meant to be a device for evangelization and persuasion, if it is a device by which civil conversation can ensue, and a device by which mutual educational efforts can be undertaken, dialog is highly desirable. However, dialog can be a danger if it is seen as some type of manipulation or clever way to insinuate a kind of proselytism unworthy of Christian discourse, if it can be a device by which the unwary or the unskilled can be persuaded to adopt a position which is untrue, or to abandon truth, or to embrace error. Unlimited dialog, then, in my view, is not something to be extraordinarily or highly desired, but rather is a procedure, a technique, a method of conversation which, while it holds much promise, also holds many perils.

Correcting Error

Speaking now about toleration. It is my view that this word, and this attitude and procedure must also be treated as desirable in some instances, but it can be perilous in others. The scholastic definition of toleration is: "Toleratio est permissio negativa mali." Literally, it means that tolerance is a negative permission of evil, a patient forbearance in the face of evil, either real or imaginary. Tolerance and toleration do not really concern human beings. We are not allowed to tolerate human beings; we are required by our religion to love all human beings. Also, we are not allowed to tolerate the good. That which is good must be approved, accepted, and promoted as well as fostered. Tolerance always refers to some kind of evil, physical, moral, intellectual, whether real or imagined.

There is a famous story about a little boy saying his night prayers, praying, "O God, please make Omaha the capital of Nebraska." His mother asked him why he wanted Omaha to be the capital of Nebraska, and he replied, "Because that's what I put down on my social studies examination in school today." Now, the little boy's examination contained an incorrect answer and an untruth, in other words, an intellectual error. The teacher of that little boy who is obliged, if he or she is Christian, to love the child, is, it seems to me, equally obliged to correct the error. Not to do so would be a matter of serious neglect.

The first limit on toleration, then, seems to be that of love. If we truly love our neighbor we must be impatient with the evil, physical, moral, or intellectual, under which our neighbor suffers, and to the extent we are able or responsible, we are obliged to relieve the suffering that comes from this evil.

Naturally, there is a serious measure of balance in correction of evil. We must be exceptionally cautious that we do not cause harm to others by some kind of arrogant assumption that we, personally, are in possession of truth and the others are benighted and unfamiliar with what we possess. At the same time, we must also be very careful that words like caution and prudence are not simply used as an excuse for inaction, inability, sloth, or cowardice which prevents us from sharing a truth with others.

Obviously, we who are Catholics possess, in a certain measure, truth, which at least partly is not in the possession of those who are non-Catholics, and this is not due, as the Vatican Council says so eloquently, to our own merits, but to God's mercy and grace. At the same time, we are not acting responsibly if we do not allow love to overcome tolerance to a significant extent. To be harsh, to be prideful, to be cruel, in asserting the truth, to use the truth as a bludgeon with which to hurt people emotionally or even intellectually is certainly a violation of Christian charity. At the same time, to be indifferent to truth, or to allow truth, especially doctrinal and moral truth, to be relegated by the general culture to a mere matter of opinion open to variance and contradiction by anyone, is not doing a service to our neighbor nor fulfilling our obligations in Christian charity, deriving from Baptism and Confirmation.

John Henry Cardinal Newman once wrote: "Truth and error lie over and against each other, with a valley between them, and David goes forward in the sight of all men and from his own camp to engage the Philistine. Such is the providential overruling of that principle of toleration which was conceived in the spirit of unbelief and ordered to the destruction of Catholicity."

Cardinal Newman sagely observes, "It is a miserable time when a man's Catholic profession is no voucher for his orthodoxy, and when a teacher of religion may be within the Church's pale yet external to her faith. Such has been for a season the trial of her children in various eras in her history. It was the state of things during the dreadful Arian ascendancy, when the flock had to keep aloof from the shepherd, and the unsuspicious fathers of the western councils trusted and followed some consecrated sophist from Greece or Syria. It was the case in those passages of medieval history when simony resisted the Supreme Pontiff, or when heresy lurked in the universities. It was a longer and more tedious trial when the controversies listed with the Monophysites of old, and the Jansenists in the modern times. A great scandal it is, and a perplexity to the little ones of Christ, to have to choose between rival claimants upon their allegiance, or to find a condemnation at length pronounced upon one whom in their simplicity they have admired."

This would clearly be the consequence of not recognizing what I call limits of tolerance or toleration. Once again. Cardinal Newman sets the matter forth in an exceptionally coherent way. He says that "what we may be dealing with is a teaching that all religions are tolerated and all are simply matters of opinion. Revealed religion is not a truth, but a sentiment and a taste; not an objective fact, not miraculous, and it is the right of each individual to make it say just what strikes his fancy. Devotion is not necessarily founded on faith. Men may go to Protestant churches and to Catholic, may get good from both and belong to neither. They may fraternize together in spiritual thoughts and feelings without having any views at all of doctrines in common, or any need of them. If a man puts on a new religion every morning, what is that to you? It's as impertinent to think about a man's religion as to think about his sources of income or the management of his family."

He goes on to say that there is the mistaken notion of subjecting to human judgment revealed doctrines which are in their nature beyond and independent of human judgment, and claiming to determine on intrinsic grounds the truth and value of propositions which rest for their reception on the authority of the divine word. This outlook, alien to Christianity, is what Cardinal Newman called liberalism in religion. He opposed this liberalism in religion with what he calls the dogmatical principle. He said that "there is a truth then, and there is one truth. Religious error is in itself of an immoral nature. That its maintainers, unless involuntarily such, are guilty in maintaining it; that the mind is below truth and not above it, is bound not to descant upon it, but to venerate it; that truth and falsehood are set before us for the trial of our hearts; that our choice is an awful giving forth of lots on which salvation or its rejection is described; and that before all things it is necessary to hold the Catholic faith; and that he who would be saved must think thus, and not otherwise. This is the dogmatical principle."

"In opposition" Cardinal Newman says, "is the view that the Governor of this world does not intend that we should gain the truth; that we are not more acceptable to God by believing this than believing that; that no one is answerable for his opinions; that it is enough that we sincerely hold what we profess; that it is a duty to follow what seems to us to be true without any fear lest it should not be true; that we may safely trust to ourselves in matters of faith and need no other guide."

Truth And Freedom

It seems to me that humility and docility which are necessary dispositions in order to be saved are absolutely indispensable in showing that there must necessarily be some limitations to dialog and tolerance or toleration. There were times when our Divine Lord, when He walked on earth, engaged in dialog. One thinks, for example, of the exchange of words with some of His ferocious enemies, the Pharisees. One thinks of His dialog with the Samaritan woman at the well.

On the other hand, there were occasions when dialog was severely limited. It is difficult to imagine Jesus dialoguing with the merchants whom He drove out of the Temple with a whip. Just as there did not seem to be an exceptional amount of dialog with the soldiers who beat and whipped Him, or with Caiaphas and Annas. There are times, I think, when our Lord's example teaches us in our present ecclesiastical circumstances that dialog and toleration have limits.

The dialog between the fly-swatter and the fly, between the fire and the fire department, and between the potter and the clay, is not a dialog that appears rational or in any way reasonable. It seems to me that it is precisely in the inability of our modern political structures and culture to ascertain clearly the limitations in dialog and tolerance, which make it very difficult to accept that vital and essential linkage which exists between truth and freedom.

In our Holy Father's encyclical Fides et Ratio, he discourses at length, as he has in previous writings, on the impossibility of having a genuine freedom if one is not in possession of the truth, following, of course, from our Lord's very clear words, "You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." His purpose in coming into the world was to bear witness to the truth, despite the sarcastic and rhetorical question of Pontius Pilate.

The limitations of tolerance and toleration and dialog are quite clear in the kerygma of the early Church. St. Peter, in the Acts of the Apostles, was apodictic in claiming that the name of Jesus was unique and that no other name existed in which one could possibly be saved. Our Lord, too, seemed to have been incredibly exclusivist when He said with no qualification that no one can come to the Father except through Him.

If then, we allow in our own thought-structure and in our own outlook, tolerance, toleration, and dialog, desirable and good as they are, to be formed up into ultimates, and give them a supremacy of value that they do not deserve, we may be causing great harm to our neighbor, and grave harm to ourselves, and, of course, in this, grave harm to the cause of Christ. Gilbert Keith Chesterton said, "There is an infinity of angles at which one falls, but only one at which one stands." When it comes to dialog, when it comes to tolerance and toleration, I urge us all to unashamedly stand on the rock which is Peter and his legitimate Successors, and to proclaim, with unequivocal and joyous determination, truth, which is not only something, but in the Divine Person of Jesus, Someone.

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