ENGAGING THE CULTURE
The Cost of Human Respect
One of the most univeral of human failings
(May/June 2000)

BY DONNA M. STEICHEN

WHAT KILLED OUR CAPACITY for outrage? Mainstream American Catholics seem too apathetic today to denounce depravity, or even sacrilege. Little outcry has been heard against a recent parade of social corruptions including the loathsome presidential scandals, the desecration of Montreal's cathedral on International Women's Day, and the blatant abortion propaganda film, Cider House Rules, that won star Michael Caine an Oscar for portraying an abortionist as compassionate. Faced with such passivity, one marvels that there was once an American Revolution. Why doesn't anyone seem to care? How did we become so inordinately tolerant? Has human respect made cowards of us all?

When I was eleven, visiting my aunt at her small town convent, I spent unaccustomed hours in the chapel. In one prayer book, I came on an examination of conscience, and my interest spiked: what sins could nuns possibly find to confess? Among the list of ordinary failings was a puzzling sentence: "Have I sinned out of human respect?"

Human respect a sin? Weren't we supposed to treat all men with respect, because we see Christ in them? Could it mean, "Have I failed to show human respect?" No, that was not the sense of it. Baffled but unwilling to expose my ignorance, I kept my confusion to myself—out of human respect.

I didn't learn what the term meant, though, until I encountered it as an adult and came to understand it as one of the most universal of human failings. Human respect does not mean treating others with proper esteem; it means adopting their standards for fear of their disapproval, even when that involves abandoning the standards of Christ. In the susceptible young, we call it "succumbing to peer pressure." In the media, we call it political correctness, and it mirrors our social corruption.

Among the traditional sources of temptation — the world, the flesh and the Devil — human respect belongs to the world. It is the taproot of the conformity from which we ask to be preserved when we pray for fortitude. "He who wants to win the world for Christ must have the courage to come into conflict with it," Blessed Titus Brandsma observed. Human respect is fatal to that courage, because it arises from fear of what others might do if they know we disagree with them. They could kill us, of course, as the Romans did the early martyrs, as the English crown did under Henry VIII and Elizabeth I, and as China does today. Most often, though, they merely exclude us. But fear of exclusion can be paralyzing; as parents know, schoolchildren would rather die than be shunned by their peers.

Its effects need not be evil; pressure to conform is what makes Weight Watchers work. But even when conformist behavior is objectively good, an action based on human respect is not that of a free adult. Taxes may eventually buy food for the poor, but the taxpayer is not practicing the virtue of charity. His motive is fear of the consequences of noncompliance.

Human respect can be devastating at any age. We all find it agonizing to stand alone. To be comfortable is what we crave. We are social animals, and a hunger to be accepted as part of the group is built into our nature. That longing can become a powerful temptation.

Today, some Catholics base their decisions on human respect because they never learned the Church's moral teachings. Having no other guide, they are swept along by the currents of opinion prevailing in the surrounding culture. They might feel doubtful about certain planks in the platform of political correctness, but if they don't know the truth, they probably silence their consciences by substituting politically approved causes like environmentalism or vegetarianism for the socially despised prolife movement.

Not only the ignorant sin out of human respect. Even catechized and committed Catholics can find their faith eroded by the culture. People who set out to "engage the world" may end by marrying it, sometimes without realizing that they have crossed that fateful line.

Constantly exposed to moral horrors, we can grow so numb to sin that we glance unseeing past obscene magazine covers while waiting in line at supermarket checkouts. In our numbness, we take casual fornication, contraception, abortion, divorce and remarriage for granted. The teachings of the Church, always a scandal to the world, begin to sound unpersuasive even to our own ears, and if we try to defend them we may have to appeal to bare authority, against our own instincts.

That disparity between God's law and our sympathies can explain but not excuse our indifference. Christians cannot expect to be comfortable with society's values; we are not supposed to "fit in." Christ brought us not peace, but a sword, and He said, "He who is not with me is against me." Indifference to evil is not an option for us: we can only choose between resistance and complicity.

[ St. Catherine Review ]