c. 1999 Religion News Service
(Andrew M. Greeley is a Roman Catholic priest, best-selling novelist and a sociologist at the University of Chicago National Opinion Research Center. Check out his home page at http://www.agreeley.com or contact him via e-mail at agreel(at)aol.com.)
UNDATED _ Spiritual writers tell us about a great gift very few have. They call it”scrutatio cordium”_ the ability to read human hearts, to discern the emotions, the motivations, the flaws and the strengths, the limitations and resources, the guilt and the innocence of the human personality.
The only one we can be sure possesses this gift is God. Perhaps the angels do too, although I kind of doubt it. Some saints are alleged to have it, but one is wise to be skeptical.
Only those who do have the gift are qualified to judge anyone besides themselves. Or to put the matter differently, God has to have it, since God has the final word to speak in judgment, which on the basis of the stories in the Gospels is the word of forgiveness and love.
Recently a Scottish church announced to the waiting world that Cardinal Basil Hume is in hell _ thus establishing that the harsh portrait of the church in the film”Breaking the Waves”was not exaggerated.
In America today there are tens of millions of people, especially media people, who assume they have the gift of reading the heart and understanding motives.
Most recently they have manifested their confidence in the possession of the gift by reading the hearts of the president and the first lady. They will assign the precise moral guilt of the president and explain exactly why the first lady does not end their marriage, which most think she ought to do.
Recently Hillary Rodham Clinton said she stays with the president because she loves him. Nonsense, say the scrutatores cordium. She stays with him because she is politically ambitious.
How the hell do they know so much unless they’re God? Or unless God has given them a special revelation?
In her explanation of her loyalty to her husband, the first lady referred in passing to the traumas of his childhood, which are well known and on the public record. The media vultures descended en masse, accompanied by their psychiatric talking heads to claim that this was nonsense. Childhood trauma does not explain sexual addiction, they said. The president is responsible for his extramarital adventures. Few seemed to bother to note neither Mrs. Clinton nor the president claimed he was not fully responsible.
It may reasonably be doubted Bill Clinton is any more fully responsible than the rest of us are for our own sexual misconduct.
Responsible? Yes. How responsible? God knows, she’s not telling, and we should not usurp her role.
The license of any psychiatrist who says addictions are not in part rooted in childhood experiences ought to be revoked. Do these experiences diminish the moral responsibility of an adult addict? Of course they do. Do they eliminate moral responsibility? Certainly not. In the case of the president, how much is his responsibility diminished? The whole point is that we don’t know and have no way of knowing. God alone knows and he isn’t telling.
When the issue is our own moral responsibility for our actions, we have to assume our responsibility is not diminished, though a confessor or spiritual guide would tell us we are still loved by God as long as we keep trying.
But when the issue is the moral responsibility of someone else, we ought to concede the power of mitigating factors because we don’t know and can’t know how responsible that person is. What the person does is objectively wrong? Yes. Subjectively? Leave him/her to heaven!
Does Mrs. Clinton stay with her husband because she believes he is a good man and still loves him? She says this is so, and we have no right to doubt her honesty unless we are blessed with scrutatio cordium.
DEA END GREELEY
