Will the Good of the Other – Bishop Barron's Sunday Sermon

0:00 Peace be with you. Friends, I just finished reading a really interesting book called Suicidal Empathy by a man with a very poetic name. His name is Gad Saad. And Gad Saad is a Canadian, let's call him social psychologist. And the book, I think, along with Chris Rufo's America's Cultural Revolution and James Lindsay's critical or cynical theories, I think it's the best exposure and takedown of the lunacy at the heart of much of the wokest philosophy that dominates things today. And Saad's analysis focuses on empathy. Now, what's empathy? Empathy is, you know, feeling the feelings of somebody else, entering into the feelings of another person, and let's say a desire not to hurt or wound those feelings. That's empathy.

0:54 Is empathy a good thing? Yeah. Perfectly decent thing. All things being equal, you know, you should be empathetic with people. All things being equal don't hurt people's feelings. Here's the problem, and I think he's right about this. But empathy is not a supreme value. Empathy is not something which is always and everywhere the right thing to do. Empathy is not the center around which all of our value system revolves. And see, in the measure that it's become that, lots of mischief has happened. happen. It's become so exaggerated, in fact, that it threatens truth, reality, justice, and I'll get to this, love. If you put empathy, so defined, in the center of your preoccupation, truth, reality, justice, and love are going to be threatened. Now, cases in point abound. All you have to do is look around the culture today. What do you find? Well, so they won't feel bad about themselves will let biological men compete in women's sports and frustrate the dreams of thousands of young women. So as not to undermine the self-esteem of minorities, we'll allow them, even if they're unqualified, to have positions in universities in the corporate world.

2:15 So that everybody might feel included, we'll characterize the meritocracy as white privilege, et cetera. So most of the moves of wokeism are predicated upon the primacy of empathy. Our supreme value is don't hurt the feelings of other people. Well, but what if what we're doing is unjust? What if it's unfair? What if it's not really good for people? Well, that takes second place to empathy. It becomes so exaggerated, Gad said, argues, that it becomes, in fact, suicidal. That it undermines society itself. Now, as I was reading his book, so he's not coming at this from a religious standpoint. He's doing it more from the standpoint of social psychology. But as I was reading his book, I kept thinking of the distinction between empathy and love.

3:13 Love is indeed the supreme value taught to us by the Bible. Love is indeed what stands at the heart of the moral life. But love, everybody, does not mean primarily feeling the feelings of somebody else. Love does not mean primarily not hurting people's feelings. Uh-oh, no. Love, as Thomas Aquinas teaches, means to will the good of the other. Empathy is to feel the feelings of the other and don't harm the feelings of the other. Love is willing the good of the other Does that mean that sometimes loving involves hurting people's feelings? You bet You bet I'll give you a couple simple examples You're a conscientious college professor Someone turns in their work and it's pretty bad Mediocre at best And so you give that paper a C or C-.

4:21 Will you hurt the person's feelings? Yeah, undoubtedly. If I got a C, I'd feel terrible. I'd probably be angry. My self-esteem would be wounded. My feelings would be hurt, certainly. But what would that conscientious professor be doing? He would, in fact, be loving that student. Why? He'd be telling him the truth about the quality of his work and probably incentivizing him to do better,

4:56 encouraging him to become a better writer, a better researcher, a more careful student. The C hurt his feelings, to be sure, but that C was, in fact, an act of love. How about a priest in the confessional? Suppose someone confesses a very serious crime, and the priest, of course, can't violate the seal himself, but he could tell the penitent, look, you need to go to the police, and you need to turn yourself in.

5:25 Is he hurting his feelings? I'm sure. Is he making his life more difficult? No question about it. Is he wounding his self-esteem? Probably. But is he loving that person? Absolutely. By telling him to turn himself in, to do what's right, to do the just thing, he's willing the good of the other. He's loving him even as he hurts his feelings. And look, any parent listening to me right now, you get this. What if a parent truly said, my purpose vis-a-vis my kids is never to hurt their feelings? My purpose is so to empathize with my kids that I never hurt their feelings, wound their pride, make them feel bad about themselves. Well, welcome to being the worst parent of the year, right?

6:20 It's a disaster for you and for them. No, no, every good parent knows to will the good of your kids. In fact, frequently, you have to hurt their feelings. Frequently, you have to wound their self-esteem because you're doing what's right, not what's empathetic. See, everybody, upon that distinction, so much turn, so much rest. Now, listen to St. Paul. It's our second reading for today. We're still reading from Paul to the Romans, this master text of our tradition. Listen to Paul. He's saying a mouthful there. For a Jew of Paul's time, the law, the Torah, it was everything.

7:18 I mean, it was to walk the path of the Lord. How do you fulfill the entirety of the law? Paul says through love. Mind you, he doesn't say through empathy. He doesn't say by not hurting people's feelings. No, by loving, by willing the good of others, I fulfill the law. Now, he gets more specific. Listen, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not kill, you shall not steal, you shall not covet. That's pretty hard-edged stuff. He's not wishy-washy about what's good, what's evil. No, these commandments that are delineating, you know, what should be avoided, what should be pursued, these laws that govern life. Yeah, follow those and you'll be expressing love.

8:08 It's all summed up, Paul says in the saying, I'm quoting him, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. Good. Now, let's go back to wokeism for a minute. I know the game that everybody plays, which is, oh, no, no, wokeism. To be woke just means you're alert to social injustice and you care about the suffering of the poor. Look, just for the record, I'm for social justice. I'm for caring for the poor. But that's not what wokeism means, everybody. That's a kind of cloak put around it. Wokeism, and I've read the avatars of wokeism, is a popularization of critical theory, which is a postmodern theory coming up out of the French and German academies. Names like Max Horkheimer, Theodore Adorno, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Herbert Marcuse, many others. What's one of the marks now of this postmodern critical theory, which is morphed into wokeism?

9:07 One of the distinctive marks of it is that there are no objective epistemic and moral truths. In fact, claims to know the truth, epistemically or morally, is seen by critical theory as a power play. It's what's used by powerful people to keep marginalized people down. And so what they do very often in this French and German critical theory is they try to unmask and deconstruct and get behind claims to objective moral and epistemic truth to get at the oppressive power games that are really going on. Now, any of that sound familiar? Because it's all over the wokest rhetoric and literature today. But see, watch what happens. If you say there are no objective moral and epistemic values, just my truth, your truth, what I think is good, what you think is good, but there's no objective truth or goodness.

10:03 What's left? Empathy. You see, what's left is empathy. There's no objective truth or good. And so, well, let's just tolerate each other, and let's try not to hurt each other's feelings. It makes perfect sense to me how empathy has moved into the center because these objectivities that Paul's talking about, adultery and murder and stealing and so on, they've been marginalized. And so, what moves into the center is empathy. Now, in light of all this, can you see why Jesus didn't say, have empathy for one another? What he said was, love one another.

10:52 How St. John does not say, God is empathy. No, he says, God is love. to get upon that distinction everybody so much turns if we if we allow love to devolve into empathy then we have this collapse that we see all around us today you know i think of uh chesterton's famous line when when men stop believing in god they don't believe in nothing they'll believe in anything he says think you know nature pours a vacuum same is true at the intellectual level. When something moves out of the center, well, something else is going to move in. I often wondered whether wokeism is a result of Christianity losing its place at the center of the culture. You know, go back to even 50 years ago. A consensus around the great sort of moral and spiritual values that ought to undergird a society.

11:54 When people said, okay, will the good of the other, they knew what that meant. They knew what those goods were. But see, as that has receded, as Christianity has become unsure of itself and has retreated from the public square, what's moved in this postmodern, wokest theorizing, which has replaced love with empathy? what orders our lives?

12:24 I had the same question from last week. You know, Paul's talking about becoming a living sacrifice. What orders our wills, our minds? What gathers us? Well, you see, there's always something that's going to be in the center. There's always some magnetic point. Wokeism says empathy. And Gad said is right, it seems to me. In the measure that that becomes the center, the society ends up committing suicide.

12:52 We need, I think, to reassert with biblical boldness that what stands at the center of our society is not refraining from hurting people's feelings, but is the kind of hard-edged language of love. Remember, it was Dostoevsky who said, love is a harsh and dreadful thing. It's dead right. It's dead right. Love is not sentimentality. Love is not refraining from hurting feelings. Love is willing the good of another. And that can involve something very demanding. Don't retreat, biblical people. Don't retreat to the cultural sidelines. But bring this great teaching about the centrality of love back into the cultural conversation.