Truth Without Love And Love Without Truth

As the only native English speaker in a community replete with Italians and Argentinians, I often get requests to clarify the pronunciation of certain English words. Most of the community can read English without difficulty, but translating the written word into a coherent sound is a much more challenging feat.

A short while ago, as we set the table, one of the Italians passed the silverware and asked:

“This is . . . a KUH-nife?”

“Yeah, but we don’t pronounce the k. It’s just knife. The k is silent.”

“But you say KUH-nee!”

“Oh, but we don’t. We just say knee.”

“But . . . but you say KUH-night!”

“No, we actually don’t say that either. It’s just knight.”

As my confrère’s imaginary English paradigms fell, his knowledge knocked down and knitted together in new ways, as it were, his frustration with our Anglo-Saxon oddities grew more and more. Finally, he blurted out: “But why do you say it that way?!”

Honestly, I don’t know the reasoning behind the pronunciation! Certainly, etymologists and philologists could give a detailed historical explanation, but for the majority of us, we simply know that words which begin with kn have a silent k. This is all I could say to him.

One possible response

Now, my confrère could have made any number of possible responses to me: he could have claimed that I was discriminating against his personal pronunciation of English, his individualized interpretation of my mother tongue. Indeed, he would be right. The word discriminate comes from late Latin discriminare meaning “to divide, separate,” and hence today it is used to mean the making or pointing out of a distinction.

By correcting his English variant, I do indeed discriminate: I make a distinction between what is standard usage and what is not. However, since there is a real foundation to the difference, and not simply a whim or bias, it is what the Church calls a “just discrimination”.

It’s the same sort of discrimination a heart patient makes when he asks to be treated by the head of cardiology and not by the head custodian. Now, there’s nothing wrong per se with the head custodian; he might even be very personable, doing his job wholeheartedly, and excellent at building maintenance, etc., but surely he knows little about heart maintenance. Likewise, the cardiologist might be a rather arrogant and heartless person, but he knows about cardiac pathologies, which is what concerns the patient.

Nevertheless, to label my correction as simply discriminatory and to leave it at that would be rather superficial: I made a distinction, and while the profound reasoning for the difference might take some time and research to discover, if my friend were to reject it outright, he would lose the opportunity to grow in his knowledge of English and to uncover further challenges.

If knife and knee are offensive, how could I ever introduce him to phrases like “the gauze wound around the wound”, or “what produce the farmer wants to produce”? How could I desert him in the desert with his dessert?

Another possible response

My confrère could also have rejected my correction as a personal attack, as simply mean-spirited. Depending on the tone of my voice, my body language, word choice, and any other number of factors, I could have easily given credence to this interpretation.

While correct in stating that in standard usage the “k” in knife is silent, if I inform my brother priest of this fact by some statement akin to “Look here, stupid! KUH-nife doesn’t exist! The only people who talk like that are KUH-avepeople!” he would be right to receive my commentary negatively. No matter how correct my correction is, phrased in this way, it is more like a knife to the spirit.

However, if I offer my correction in all charity, he could be offended, but the problem is now with him. Correcting in charity is a delicate procedure: it requires that we know the person and have a sense of how best to approach him or her. Indeed, sometimes the most charitable corrections with the most reason go awry simply because the timing is wrong or because we don’t have enough personal capital to be able to make ourselves heard.

The best response

However, my confrère chose neither alternative. Instead, he accepted the correction, shrugged his shoulders, and said, “English is weird.” In that, we were both in agreement, and, with that, we left our English pronunciation lessons for another day.

The point of this story is not to discuss the finer points of English pronunciation. Rather, this is a scene that plays itself out thousands of times a day on hundreds of stages: between friends, family members, co-workers, communities, parishes, and the Church at large. The scene is this confrontation between those of us who know and (at least attempt to) live the truths of our faith and those who reject them for whatever reason, be it ignorance, spite, vice, or any other cause.

The truth

The first difficulty in these interactions is the fact that there is a truth. There is a certain irony that my confrère accepted my pronunciation of “knife” as justified based solely upon my personal experience as a native speaker of a language that, as scholars tell us, reached its modern form around 1550; whereas many people reject as unjustly discriminatory the pronouncements of a Church that encompasses a worldwide experience of over 2,000 years and includes the intellectual fruits of some of the most brilliant men and women in history.

Intellectual integrity would require that both dissenters and supporters of a position study the reasons behind it: the former to know what they are rejecting and why, and the latter to know what they are accepting and why. “Always be ready to give an explanation to anyone who asks you for a reason for your hope,” writes Saint Peter (1 Peter 3:15).

Sometimes we are confronted with people who simply don’t know what the Church teaches. However, we often find people who refuse to study and instead simply reject what they don’t like. Writing in Sickness unto Death, Søren Kierkegaard notes: “Socrates explains that he who does not do the right thing has not understood it; but Christianity goes a little further back and says, it is because he will not understand it, and this in turn is because he does not will the right.”

Where there is no desire to know the truth, excuses can always be found. Nonetheless, learning about our faith strengthens our resolve and prepares us to answer when the grace of God opens a crack in hardened hearts.

The presentation

Likewise, simply knowing the truth isn’t enough. We must spread the truth in charity or, to put it in other words, we must make the truth loveable. Many reject the Church’s teachings because they seem “restricting”, “cold”, or “unloving.”

Yes, doctrines and dogmas are restricting: that’s the point. To borrow an analogy from Fulton Sheen, like the banks of a river, Church teachings keep thought within healthy bounds. Water outside the river isn’t free; it’s destructive.

In the same vein, G. K. Chesterton in Orthodoxy notes that “Catholic doctrine and discipline may be walls; but they are the walls of a playground”: it is the place where we are free to explore what Christ has left us, without the danger of getting destroyed. The temptation of Eden has returned: the Church makes clear what foods are out of reach for us, and there’s no need for us to desire them. Was Eve free after she ate the fruit? Did she not rather find she had lost much more than she had gained?

Are the Church’s teachings “cold” and “unloving”? This is perhaps more related to the presentation we make of them. Just as I can use the truth as an invitation, I can also use it as an axe. The truth is the truth, not because I make it so, but because it is so ordered in God’s wisdom.

Indeed, there is an inescapable order in the universe: sin makes no one happy for long because it can’t. It is impossible since sin is a lack of goodness and peace. It leaves incomplete whatever it takes hold of, and the Church presents the truth of the dangers of sin as a mother presents her child with the dangers of the fireplace. It might be colder not having one’s hand in the fire, but it is much safer. In the same way, it might seem cold not to allow the fire of one’s passions to overcome their life, but it prepares the way for a much warmer fire: that of the Holy Spirit’s transforming grace.

Conclusion

The German theologian Eberhard Arnold wrote that truth without love kills, but love without truth lies.

I would modify that insight ever so slightly: the truth without love kills, but love without the truth kills as well. It kills grace, it kills the life of the soul, and it kills any possibility for an honest dialogue and genuine friendship.

Only in the presence of both truth and love can we draw close to others in an authentic way and allow God to knock, letting in the knowledge of His love.