I say no!

The recent shootings in Tucson have raised a long-awaited call for tolerance.  In my first year of college at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst I was surprised that so many courses there met a requirement for "tolerance" studies.  Across the curriculum, a concerted effort at eliciting tolerance in the student body had the goal of bringing about a more tolerant campus environment.  But no one told the campus police, who were repeatedly in the press for racial profiling and roughing up minorities.  It is a first step to get young people to observe the rules of tolerance, but the greatest lesson on the matter comes from an intellectual who dominated much of 20th century American Catholic thought.  John Courtney Murray, SJ, explained that tolerance was not meant for people.  "You can tolerate ideas, but not people.  People are meant to be loved, not merely tolerated."

In the world of ideas tolerance needs to be prudently applied.  But in the face of clear injustice, as in the case of the actions of a deranged individual in Tucson (and the mentalities that generated them), we have to set tolerance aside.  We have to draw a line.  Each of us has to say, without hesitation or malice, 'I say no!'

Today's candidate for a world-wide protest against glaring inhumanity:  the Chinese government's threat to overtake an orphange (by force, if necessary) for disabled children currently run by the Catholic Church.  More here: http://www.cardinalkungfoundation.org/press/110111.htm  I say no!