Few would disagree that tolerance is an absolute necessity in a large pluralistic society such as ours. Our system is held together by people’s general willingness to respect each other, cooperate with one another, and observe the Golden Rule. The alternative would be to devolve into the kind of strife, hatred and terror we see in places like Bosnia and Algeria.
But can we go too far in observing this doctrine of absolute tolerance? In a worthy effort to stamp out discrimination and persecution against people of different races or religions, are we slowly sacrificing the right to voice opinions contrary to those on the editorial pages of popular news magazines? Why has tolerance become such an unquestioned virtue?
Today’s idea of tolerance has its origins in England’s old policy of religious toleration.
For many centuries, England tolerated Catholics, who were regarded as heretics due to their loyalty to a foreign power — the Vatican. But Catholics were also barred from public office, academia and other positions of influence. Toleration wasn’t considered a virtue; it was merely a policy predicated on the assumption that ideally there should be no Catholics in England. In other words, Catholicism was allowed to exist, but the king’s subjects were discouraged from embracing it.
By today’s standards, such tolerance was highly intolerant. These days, we not only put up with what used to be considered vice (i.e., prostitution and pornography), but we give it moral sanction. Modern day parades for homosexual awareness, for example, are given a moral equivalency with parades honoring St. Patrick. Vices are not simply tolerated these days, they’re exalted as freedoms and basic human rights.
Everything in moderation, we were always told. Clearly this must apply to tolerance as well. The kind of absolute tolerance we’re being asked to practice these days is unwise at best, dangerous at worst.
By absolute tolerance I mean the view that suggests we are guilty of intolerance whenever we are “judgmental.” We are expected to be absolutely tolerant not only of people who differ from us in race, religion, gender and political persuasion, but also of those with radically different moral values and philosophical opinions.
Of course we have no right to persecute individuals whose beliefs and behaviors we find repugnant, but do we have to agree with them? I think not. Yet the debate these days is skewed in favor of those who oppose the Biblical view of restraint, fortitude and recognition of your body as a temple of the Holy Spirit. The absolute tolerance and non-judgmentalism held up as the ideal to emulate is enforced in one direction only.
Greg Erlandson, editor-in-chief of Our Sunday Visitor, believes the very state of being Catholic is interpreted by some as an affront. “In the dictatorship of tolerance that is American culture,” he writes, “those who say yes to God and yes to their faith are invariably saying no to something else.” Therefore, moral disapproval of such things as promiscuous sex and abortion are construed as intolerance or even hate.
In the hedonistic, materialistic culture in which we are living, many Catholics find themselves at odds with popular attitudes about public and private morality.
In the name of tolerance, the mainstream culture reacts with outrage when a journalist espouses Judeo-Christian values, or a pharmacist refuses to fill a prescription for contraceptives, or a physician refuses to participate in the abortion culture. Pundits denounce political candidates who oppose “choice,” and school boards marginalize parents who stand against sex education in schools.
The foundation for this notion of absolute tolerance is the relativist viewpoint that holds that there is no objective moral law, and that truth either doesn’t exist or is impossible to identify. Where you stand on any issue depends entirely upon where you sit.
We are therefore left to chart our own moral course and construct our own notion of truth wherein no one is ever really right or wrong. We have no grounds for disagreeing with each other because each individual is entitled to his or her particular viewpoint.
The obvious problem here is that this allows nazis and anarchists and racists and pedophiles to have a place at the table and be above condemnation. The moral equivalency that our cultural regime doggedly enforces cannot distinguish between vice and virtue, and therefore the holy man is on the same moral plane as the rapist.
The irony here is that absolute tolerance will inevitably bring about absolute intolerance. And the reason is that, in this model, God has been removed from the equation. People, not the Creator, have devised the value system by which we all should live.
Perhaps the proliferation of hate crimes we are seeing is the result of this super-tolerant system that absolute non-judgmentalism creates. Perhaps our growing reluctance to speak out about the abhorrent behaviors on display all around us explains why we live in an age of moral meltdown.
Tolerance is a virtue when it inspires us to charitable patience with human failings for the sake of peace and harmony. It becomes a vice when it causes one to abandon Biblical truth in order to accommodate some mistaken, passing view of right and wrong.
