DISTANT PAIN, DOMESTIC PAIN; DISTANT SHAME, DOMESTIC SHAME: THINKING OUT LOUD

 

…The same conduct that appear disgraceful in a stranger becomes understandable in a kinsman. What we call corruption in another man’s hands becomes a political strategy in ours. What we condemned as manipulation when practised by our opponents becomes cleverness when our own people benefit. Oops… 

Prologue: When Sorrow Comes Home

Have you noticed that there is a big difference between hearing that someone has died and standing beside the corpse of someone you love? 

There is also a difference between reading about a corrupt politician in a distant state and discovering that the man disgracing public office is your own kinsman. Or, don’t you think so too?

There is a difference, too, between hearing that another community is supporting a failed government, defending an unlawful political mandate, or celebrating an administration whose failures are painfully evident, and discovering that your own people are among its most enthusiastic supporters and promoters.

The first may move us to tears; the second may break our hearts. The first may provoke our indignation; the second may expose our conscience.

Why?

Because human affection has its order, and human responsibility has its degrees of intimacy. The death of a stranger is a genuine cause for sorrow, but the death of one’s father, mother, child, or sibling ordinarily strikes deeper. The disgraceful conduct of a distant politician may embarrass us as citizens, but when our own relatives or kinsmen are implicated, the shame becomes personal. And when our own people enthusiastically defend political wrongdoing, the embarrassment may become even more uncomfortable.

We can no longer observe the problem from a comfortable distance. The problem has come home.

Yet here lies a danger: we may mistake the natural intensity of our affections for the measure of moral truth. We may grieve more for our own and gradually become indifferent to others. We may condemn corruption in strangers and defend it in our relatives and kinsmen. We may denounce an illegitimate political arrangement elsewhere but enthusiastically promote one that benefits our own people. We may condemn governmental failure in another region and manufacture excuses for it when our preferred political interests are involved.

We may even celebrate the crumbs thrown at us while ignoring the larger injustice that keeps us hungry.

A traditional Catholic understanding of charity helps us distinguish these things.

We do not owe every person the same degree of intimacy, but we owe no person a different standard of truth and justice merely because he is not one of our own.

We may have special obligations towards our families, villages, tribes, and communities. But these obligations do not give us permission to excuse their sins, defend their injustices, or applaud their political mistakes.

This is a reflection on the order of our affections, the obligations of kinship, the shame of political partiality, the promotion of failed and unlawfully constituted governments, and the difference between loving our own people and becoming accomplices in their wrongdoing.

1. The Hierarchy of Charity: Must We Love Everyone Equally?

Catholic moral theology does not teach that we must love every human being with an identical degree of affection, intimacy, or practical attention.

Charity is universal in its scope, but it has an order.

We must love God above all things. We must love our neighbour for God’s sake. Among our neighbours, particular obligations arise from the relationships Providence has established: parents and children, husband and wife, members of a household, relatives, benefactors, neighbours, fellow citizens, and others towards whom we have special duties.

St Thomas Aquinas treats this question explicitly in the Summa Theologiae (II–II, q. 26). He explains that the order of charity takes account of the closeness of our relationships, the particular goods involved, and the circumstances in which help must be given.

A man ordinarily has a greater obligation to provide for his dependent child than for the child of a stranger. A son has a special duty towards his aged parents. A person entrusted with the care of a household cannot abandon those responsibilities on the pretext that he must give precisely the same practical attention to everybody in the world.

This is not selfishness. It is ordered charity.

The family is not an obstacle to universal charity; it is one of the principal schools in which charity is learned and practised.

But the hierarchy of charity must never be confused with a hierarchy of human worth. Our relatives are not more human than strangers. Their lives are not intrinsically more sacred. Their sins do not become less sinful because we share their blood.

Charity has an order; truth has no tribal exception.

We may owe our own more immediate assistance, greater personal attention, and more intimate affection. We may not, however, call evil good because the evildoer is our brother.

St Thomas teaches that we must love all our neighbours in charity, even though we do not love all with the same degree of intimacy or have the same obligations towards all. (ST II–II, qq. 25–26.)

This distinction illuminates both our grief and our shame.

2. Distant Death and Domestic Grief: When News Becomes a Wound

A tragedy occurs in a distant community. A child dies in an avoidable accident. A family loses its breadwinner. Innocent people are murdered. A promising young person dies before his time.

We hear the news and feel sorrow. We may pray for the dead, sympathise with the bereaved, condemn the circumstances, and wish that such things had never happened.

Then we return to our work.

Our sorrow need not have been insincere. We are simply not living within the immediate circle of that family’s bereavement.

But let death enter our own household.

The father whose voice we have heard for decades is gone. The mother whose presence made the house a home is no more. The child whose future we imagined has been taken away. The brother or sister whose ordinary presence we scarcely noticed has become an absence we cannot ignore.

The empty chair now has a history. The silence has a face. Familiar objects become reminders. Ordinary routines suddenly reveal the place occupied by someone who will no longer participate in them.

We have moved from hearing about death to suffering a particular loss.

This is why domestic grief ordinarily penetrates more deeply than distant grief. Our affections have been formed by shared life, daily encounters, sacrifices, memories, and expectations. Death tears through that network of relationships.

The greater intensity of our grief is not proof that the deceased was worth more than a stranger. It is evidence of the intimacy of our bond.

We should not be ashamed that we mourn our own more deeply. We should be ashamed only if our intimate sorrow makes us indifferent to the sufferings of others.

The Catholic must learn to hold two truths together: I have a special duty to those whom Providence has placed closest to me, and I must never forget that those outside my household are also my neighbours.

The Good Samaritan did not know the wounded man as a relative. Yet the man’s need made a claim upon his charity. (Luke 10:30–37.)

Our circle of intimate affection may be limited. Our recognition of the neighbour’s dignity must not be.

3. Distant Shame and Domestic Shame: When the Culprit Bears Our Name

Now consider political wrongdoing.

We hear that a politician in another region has diverted public funds, manipulated elections, incited violence, exploited the poor, or used public office to enrich himself. We condemn him without hesitation.

We may even wonder how his people can tolerate such a man.

Then we discover that the culprit is our own tribesman, relative, village son, or political champion.

Suddenly, our moral vocabulary changes.

“He is not the only one.”

“At least he remembers his people.”

“Politics is a dirty game.”

“Let him enjoy his turn.”

“Other people have done worse.”

“He has helped some families.”

The same conduct that appeared disgraceful in a stranger becomes understandable in a kinsman. What we call corruption in another man’s hands becomes a political strategy in ours. What we condemned as manipulation when practised by our opponents becomes cleverness when our own people benefit.

And what began as public shame becomes a test of private integrity.

The question is no longer merely whether a politician has disgraced his office. It is whether we have allowed our affection, ethnic solidarity, political ambition, or hope of personal benefit to corrupt our judgement.

We may not have stolen public money ourselves. But have we defended the thief? Have we silenced those who exposed him? Have we attacked the messenger because the message threatened our preferred candidate? Have we celebrated his private gifts while ignoring the public damage?

The shame becomes more painful because it brings us face to face with our own possible complicity.

Yet we must distinguish between the shame of association and the guilt of participation. A person is not guilty of another’s sin merely because they belong to the same family, village, or tribe. Guilt depends upon one’s own knowledge, consent, conduct, and responsibilities.

Nevertheless, when we have encouraged wrongdoing, defended it knowingly, or helped it to continue, we can no longer hide behind mere kinship.

The deepest domestic shame is not that a wrongdoer comes from our people. It is that we may have preferred his success to the truth, and our advantage to the common good.

4. Domestic Political Shame: Promoting a Failed Government and an Unlawful Mandate

There is another form of domestic shame that deserves particular attention: actively supporting, defending, and promoting a failed government, especially one whose claim to political authority originates in illegality.

We may hear that another community is defending an administration whose mandate has been established to be unlawful, even if manufactured evidence says otherwise; celebrating a government that has failed in its responsibilities, or enthusiastically promoting political arrangements that ought to have been condemned.

We may wonder how reasonable people can continue to defend such an arrangement.

But what happens when the government in question is supported by our own people? What happens when our kinsmen become its most enthusiastic defenders, when our community celebrates its political beneficiaries, or when we ourselves become active agents in promoting its acceptance?

Suddenly, the language changes.

We begin to hear that the government deserves time. That the opposition is worse. That the circumstances were exceptional. That our people must support their own. That the government has appointed some of our sons and daughters. That we must not embarrass those who brought us into the political arrangement.

And so, what we would condemn elsewhere becomes something we are prepared to defend at home.

But let us ask some simple questions.

Does illegality become legality because our people benefit from it? Does an unlawful mandate acquire legitimacy because we repeat our approval of it? Does governmental failure become achievement because our political favourites are in office?

And what exactly are we promoting?

There is a difference between acknowledging the existence of a government, dealing with the practical realities of its administration, hoping that it will correct its failures, and actively endorsing the circumstances through which it acquired power.

One may desire peace, pray for those in authority, and hope for the welfare of the country without becoming an apologist for illegality or governmental incompetence.

Where a government’s mandate has been established to be invalid despite what fabricated evidence claims, political convenience cannot make it valid. Where its failures are evident, propaganda cannot turn them into achievements. Where injustice has been committed, the identity of the beneficiaries cannot make it right.

Nor does the presence of our relatives and kinsmen in government automatically mean that our community is progressing.

A few political appointments, contracts, personal favours, and occasional financial benefits may create the appearance of inclusion. But are the roads better? Are the schools improving? Are the hospitals functioning? Are ordinary people enjoying greater security and opportunity? Is public money being properly accounted for? Is the common good being served?

Or are we simply celebrating our access to those in power while the wider population continues to suffer?

There is something particularly embarrassing about discovering that our own people are not merely tolerating political wrongdoing but actively advertising it, defending it, and recruiting others to accept it.

This is domestic shame in another form: the shame of seeing our people become willing instruments in the normalisation of illegality and failure.

A government does not become legitimate because our people support it. Illegality does not become justice because our people benefit from it. Failure does not become achievement because our people are employed to advertise it.

Our loyalty to our people must never become an obligation to defend every government they support.

Sometimes the most charitable service we can render our community is to refuse to participate in its political self-deception.

5. When Kinship Becomes an Excuse for Sin

The love of one’s family and people is natural and good. Catholic moral teaching does not demand that we become strangers to our own relations in order to prove that we love humanity.

But natural affection must be governed by reason and perfected by charity.

A father who excuses every fault of his child does not necessarily love him well. A friend who conceals a friend’s destructive habits may be protecting his own comfort rather than serving his friend’s true good. A community that defends a corrupt leader because he is one of its sons may be sacrificing its future on the altar of misplaced loyalty.

There is a difference between standing by a person and standing by his sin.

We should stand by the sinner in the sense of desiring his conversion, praying for him, encouraging him to repent, and assisting him to make restitution where possible. We must not stand by his wrongdoing as though fidelity to a person requires infidelity to the moral law.

Our Lord’s commandment to love our neighbour does not abolish the distinction between good and evil. Neither does charity require us to approve what God forbids.

Indeed, genuine charity sometimes requires fraternal correction. St Thomas treats the duty of correcting a sinning neighbour as an act of charity, subject to the relevant circumstances and the manner in which correction can be given. (ST II–II, q. 33.)

A relative who is destroying himself through wrongdoing does not need us to manufacture excuses for him. He needs us to desire his true good more than we desire the convenience of keeping him pleased.

A kinsman who abuses public office does not need our tribal defence. He needs our honest admonition and, where necessary, our refusal to cooperate with his evil.

A community whose political champion is corrupt does not need flattering songs. It needs the courage to tell the truth.

And a community promoting an unlawful or failed government does not need more political cheerleaders. It needs people who can distinguish political advantage from justice, propaganda from achievement, and loyalty from complicity.

To love a man is not to certify that he is innocent. To love him rightly is to desire that he become good.

6. The Political Patron: A Benefactor or a Public Robber?

Imagine a politician who presides over a system of public neglect. Roads remain impassable, schools deteriorate, healthcare is inaccessible, and young people struggle to find opportunities.

Yet he returns to his village with money to distribute. He sponsors a celebration, assists a few families, and receives a heroic welcome.

The village praises him as a benefactor.

But what exactly are the people celebrating?

Are they celebrating the proper discharge of public responsibility, or are they celebrating the private favours of a man whose public office ought to serve the common good?

A private gift may be genuinely helpful. We need not deny the immediate good received by a family that has been assisted. But a gift does not automatically excuse injustice, and personal generosity does not cancel the misuse of public resources.

The question is whether the community has confused patronage with public service.

A politician may give a few people money while a much larger population remains deprived of what is rightfully due to it. He may purchase gratitude with benefits that are small compared with the opportunities his policies, negligence, or corruption have destroyed.

And the people who applaud him may be the same people whose children must grow up with the consequences.

This is a grave disorder of judgement. It treats private advantage as though it were the common good.

Catholic social doctrine insists that public authority is ordered to the common good, not merely to the advantage of officeholders, their relatives, or their political supporters. Political power is not private property. Public resources are not a family inheritance. The poor are not instruments for securing votes.

The moral question is therefore not simply, “Has this politician helped our people?”

It is also:

Has he fulfilled his duty to the whole community? Has he respected justice? Has he protected the common good? Has he used public resources honestly?

A village must not be so grateful for occasional gifts that it forgets its right to demand just government.

Nor should it measure political success merely by how much money a leader distributes at home. A leader who makes his people dependent upon personal favours while failing to promote their genuine welfare may be cultivating loyalty without building prosperity.

A community that celebrates the private generosity of its leaders while ignoring public injustice may be applauding the very system that keeps it poor.

And if the leader is our own kinsman, the obligation to judge him honestly becomes more pressing, not less.

7. The Common Good Begins Where Tribal Excuses End

The political problem becomes particularly grave when people apply one moral standard to outsiders and another to their own.

If a politician from another region manipulates an election, we call him a threat to democracy. If our own candidate does the same, we call it political calculation and strategy. 

If an opponent diverts public money, we demand accountability. If our own representative is implicated, we ask whether the allegation will damage his chances of returning to office.

If another community’s leader incites violence, we condemn his wickedness. If our kinsman does it, we speak of provocation, retaliation, or the need to defend our people.

If another community supports a government whose mandate is clearly unlawful, we question its judgement. If our own community does the same, we suddenly discover reasons why political circumstances should be treated differently.

Thus, moral judgement becomes a servant of faction.

The result is not loyalty properly understood. It is the subordination of justice to advantage.

Catholic tradition recognises that the common good concerns the good of the community as a whole. It cannot be reduced to the private gain of a faction. Nor can the legitimate love of one’s family or homeland justify injustice against others.

St Augustine’s distinction between the earthly city and the City of God reminds us how disordered love can become when people seek their own glory rather than the proper order of love. In a political context, the danger is clear: we can become so devoted to the triumph of our own group that we cease to care whether that triumph serves justice.

Patriotism is not the worship of one’s nation. Tribal solidarity is not a sacrament. Kinship is not a dispensation from the moral law.

We may take legitimate pride in our people, rejoice in their achievements, preserve their customs, and assist their development. But we must never make their identity an excuse for conduct we would otherwise condemn.

The true friend of a community does not merely help it win political contests. He helps it become more just, more truthful, more responsible, and more capable of pursuing the common good.

Sometimes that requires defending our people against unjust accusations. At other times, it requires defending the truth against our own people.

Sometimes it requires refusing to applaud a government simply because our people helped to bring it to power. Sometimes it requires telling our political champions that an appointment is not development, patronage is not good governance, and political access is not the same thing as public progress.

The measure of loyalty is not how readily we defend our own. It is whether we desire their genuine good.

8. Equal Moral Standards, Unequal Duties

We must therefore distinguish three things that are often confused.

First, there is the order of affection. We ordinarily love our parents, children, spouses, and close relations with a special intimacy.

Second, there is the order of practical responsibility. We have particular duties towards those entrusted to our care and those whose needs Providence has placed within our reach.

Third, there is the order of moral judgement. Here, our affection and personal interest must not cause us to call evil good or injustice acceptable.

These distinctions allow us to love our own without despising strangers, to serve our household without neglecting every other neighbour, and to remain loyal to our community without excusing its sins.

We are not required to feel equal grief at every death. We are required to recognise the dignity of every human life.

We are not required to give equal practical assistance to every person in every circumstance. We are required to act justly and to fulfil the duties proper to our state in life.

We are not required to feel the same personal shame for every political scandal. We are required to judge wrongdoing truthfully, regardless of the identity of the wrongdoer.

We are not required to support every political arrangement favoured by our community. We are required to distinguish what is lawful from what is unlawful, what is just from what is unjust, and what serves the common good from what merely serves our faction.

The death of our own may wound us more deeply. The misconduct of our own may shame us more intimately. The political failures of our own may embarrass us more personally.

Neither fact changes the moral worth of a stranger, the moral character of an offence, or the demands of justice.

And there is a further consideration: when we know a wrongdoer personally, our special relationship may create a special opportunity to correct him. We may be able to speak to him privately, warn him of the consequences, urge him to repent, or refuse to assist him in his wrongdoing.

Our closeness, therefore, is not merely a reason for stronger emotion. It may also be a reason for greater responsibility.

Epilogue: Let the Pain Teach Us, and Let the Shame Correct Us

Perhaps the death of a stranger should make us pause long enough to remember that every family has someone whose absence would shatter its familiar world.

Perhaps the death of our own should teach us something about the grief that other families endure, even when their names and circumstances are unknown to us.

Perhaps the disgrace of a distant politician should remind us that public wrongdoing is not confined to one tribe, region, or party.

And perhaps the disgrace of our own kinsman should force us to ask whether we have been more concerned about protecting our collective image than correcting our collective faults.

Perhaps, too, when we see another community defending an unlawful political mandate or celebrating a failed administration, we should examine our own political loyalties before passing judgement. Are we prepared to condemn in our own camp what we readily condemn in another? Are we willing to acknowledge political failure when our preferred people are responsible? Can we tell our own community that it is wrong, even when the truth is inconvenient?

The hierarchy of charity does not ask us to love our family less in order to love our neighbour. It asks us to love our family rightly, under the authority of God and the demands of truth.

We must care for our own, but not at the expense of justice. We must defend our relatives against false accusations, but not against deserved correction. We must desire the success of our communities, but never a success purchased by the oppression, manipulation, or impoverishment of others.

We must not mistake political representation for development, political patronage for public service, or political loyalty for moral integrity.

The ultimate question is not whether we feel more pain for our own or more shame when our own are implicated. Such differences are understandable.

The question is what we do with those feelings.

Does grief make us more compassionate, or merely more protective of our own? Does shame make us more truthful, or merely more anxious about our reputation? Does loyalty help our people to become better, or does it give them permission to remain as they are? Does political support express a commitment to justice, or merely an attachment to whoever happens to be in power?

A Catholic must resist both the coldness that treats distant suffering as irrelevant and the partiality that excuses domestic wrongdoing.

We should not wait for death to enter our household before we recognise the sanctity of human life. We should not wait for corruption to bear our family name before we recognise its evil. We should not wait for political illegality to benefit our opponents before we condemn it. And we should not wait for governmental failure to ruin our own community before we recognise the danger of promoting it.

We should never imagine that we have done our duty to a wrongdoer merely because we have protected him from public embarrassment. Neither should we imagine that we have served our community merely because we have helped its political favourites to remain popular.

Sometimes charity consoles. Sometimes it assists. Sometimes it forgives. And sometimes it must admonish, refuse cooperation, and insist upon restitution.

For the good of a man is not that he should escape the consequences of every wrong he commits. His good is that he should be brought, as far as possible, to the truth, to repentance, and to a rightly ordered life.

Likewise, the good of a community is not that its political champions should escape criticism. Its good is that its people should acquire the courage to recognise injustice, demand accountability, and refuse to celebrate their own impoverishment.

Love your own in the order of charity. Judge their conduct in the light of truth. Seek their good according to justice.

For what does it profit a family to preserve its reputation while losing its integrity? What does it profit a village to produce influential politicians while remaining morally and materially impoverished? What does it profit a tribe to win political power if its victory depends upon the abandonment of conscience?

What does it profit a community to celebrate its sons and daughters in government while its roads, schools, hospitals, and ordinary livelihoods continue to deteriorate?

And what does it profit a man to defend his kinsman against every accusation, only to help him persevere in the very sins that may destroy his soul?

Let us grieve for our own without becoming indifferent to strangers. Let us be ashamed of our own wrongdoing without making shame an excuse for concealment. Let us love our people enough to tell them the truth. Let us support what is just, reject what is unlawful, and refuse to turn political failure into a communal achievement.

For charity without order becomes confusion; loyalty without truth becomes complicity; political support without moral judgement becomes factional blindness; and shame without repentance becomes nothing more than wounded pride.

The measure of our charity is not that we feel for everyone in precisely the same way. It is that we love each person according to the order of charity, and never permit our love for one to become an excuse for injustice towards another.

Think on it.