Several years ago, at the March for Life in Washington, some boys from a Catholic school in Kentucky were being harassed by a native American protester and by a group of black activists, taunting them and refusing to let them be. One of the boys, having in vain confronted the protester, stood like stone, taking the abuse, while some of the others cheered, and a few of them decided to give tit for tat, taunting the protester in turn. It should have been greeted with a shrug and a reminder to those who did respond in kind that there are better and more Christian ways to deal with revilement.
Instead, people across the country leapt to condemn the boys, and even to fantasize about making them objects of their violence, especially the one among them who showed some real courage and restraint. That was to be expected, given the general contempt wherein boys are held—boys, I mean, who have the ordinary and natural feelings of boys. What I did not expect, and what at the time I could make no sense of, was the speed with which their bishop joined in rushing to judgment, far from defending those members of his flock from the general odium, far even from attempting to understand the situation the particular boy was in.
I think I can now make sense of it, though I do not like the sense it makes. As I write, Catholics in America are treated to the unedifying spectacle of what I will call transferred Samaritanism. Suppose the Pharisee, seeing the beaten man at the side of the road, and noting a Samaritan working in the fields nearby, were to call the fellow over and demand that he behave in an open-hearted and inclusive way.
“Let’s see your purse,” says the Pharisee. “Here, take some of these coppers, go and tend to that man in the ditch, and take him to your house. When he gets better, he will want to share your work and your remuneration, which means, of course, that you and your family will get somewhat less than what you get now, but that is just a part of the life of charity that you must live. In fact, the man may end up replacing you entirely, and then think how happy you must be!”
“But if you’re so eager to help,” the Samaritan protests, “why don’t you let him have your position instead of mine?”
“Moi?” says the Pharisee, for I imagine that into every human language a little French must fall. “Oh, I would gladly do so,” he says, “but you see, he’s a peasant as you are, and so he has to do the kind of work you do. I can’t help it. Those are just the facts.” And he hugs himself for his generosity.
“So you have no feeling for me at all?”
“Look,” says the Play-Actor, “let’s get this straight. I put up with you, and you ought to be thankful for that much. You’re a Samaritan, right? Thick in the head, always thinking of yourself, rough and crude, sticking up for your kind. We don’t like you. Shut up and be charitable already.”
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