What ‘Men of Good Will’?

November/December 2008 Issue | Posted by Rebecca Teti in Faith&Culture

The angels sang peace on earth to men of good will, but what is good will?

This summer, new evidence proved definitively that JonBenet Ramsey’s parents had nothing to do with her assault and murder. The truth eventually will come out, but in this case not before the grieving mother had gone to her death of cancer with her heart twice broken: her little girl gone and her own name tainted with dark suspicions.

On what basis did most of the country think ill of the Ramseys? How many of us knew them personally enough to make a sound evaluation of their character?

Who had firsthand knowledge of the police investigation so as to distinguish fact from allegation in the press? No more than a handful of people at best.

The rest of us, if we’re honest, drew our conclusions from the endlessly re-run photos we saw of little JonBenet in heavy make-up for a beauty pageant. We the people disapproved, and made a wildly inappropriate leap of logic. That’s called rash judgment, and it is formal cooperation in a lie.

It’s easy to understand the responsibility speakers have to tell the truth. We resent being misled. The Catechism of the Catholic Church (No. 2477) lists under sins against the Eighth Commandment both calumny — the lie outright — and detraction, which is exposing another person’s faults without just cause.

We know we shouldn’t gossip, that another person’s news, good or ill, is usually not ours to tell.

What is less obvious is that hearers, too, have obligations to the truth. But there it is, listed with calumny and detraction: “He becomes guilty of rash judgment who, even tacitly, assumes as true, without sufficient foundation, the moral fault of a neighbor.”

To protect our neighbor’s reputation and ourselves from pride, the Catechism (No. 2478) enjoins, “To avoid rash judgment, everyone should be careful to interpret insofar as possible his neighbor’s thoughts, words, and deeds in a favorable way: Every good Christian ought to be more ready to give a favorable interpretation to another’s statement than to condemn it. But if he cannot do so, let him ask how the other understands it.”

It is a spiritual work of mercy to correct the sinner, but we’re obligated to be certain he’s actually sinning before doing so, and to understand what he’s trying to do so we can correct him as winsomely as possible.

Charity is an intellectual virtue, too! This thinking well of others is not only a kindness, it’s also the foundation of all learning.

We aren’t free to criticize another person’s position until we first understand it as he does, and that requires careful examination, not smug dismissal.

As Benedict the XVI is at pains to point out in both of his first encyclicals, self-government depends on the faculty of reason, and reason must constantly be purified of self-interest and passions.

It’s a vice to go looking for either gaffes or slights. Jumping to believe the worst, we encourage the lowest elements among us to wage their battles by slander, be it in schools, corporations, public life, or even the Church. If we allow slander to work, it hardly matters that we ourselves are honest; we’ll have ceded the world to the father of lies.

Media loved it when the Pope wrote that Jesus of Nazareth wasn’t a magisterial document, so anyone was free to disagree with him. Hardly anyone noticed the next line of his foreword, far more important for the times in which we live: “I would only ask my readers for that initial good will without which there can be no understanding.”

Peace on earth is for everyone, but only people of good will can receive it.E

Rebecca Ryskind Teti is

Faith & Family’s contributing editor.

What We’re Watching

I Confess: How swiftly a good priest’s friends believe ill of him!

To Kill a Mockingbird: Good will is “walking a mile in another man’s moccasins.”

 Print Article   Email a Friend