Saint Socrates Society

Readers of this blog may know that there is a fiery debate out there in the grammar world about whether you should have one or two spaces after sentence ending punctuation.  This seems to be, in part, a generational issue.  My experience is that those who were born in the 1970s or earlier tend to use two spaces, since they learned to type on typewriters (typesetting standards led to that convention).  People born in the 1980s or later are a mixed bag, but are often taught to use only a single space, since computers do proportional typesetting which no longer requires the extra space.

As with many grammar debates (such as the debate over the ghastly practice of pairing a plural pronoun with a single noun), the proper approach is to pick a side and then fight to the death for it.  For the record, I am decidedly on the side of two spaces.  But this is increasingly a minority view.  While style guides are mixed on the question (Chicago requires one space, Modern Language encourages one but allows two, whereas the APA style guide actually changed back to the two space convention in their 6th edition though they defer to publisher standards for final manuscripts), overall publication practices favor one space.

But I think they are wrong.  A sentence end is a full stop, and the reader should be alerted to this by having an extra pause (space).  My experience as a reader is that this make the text more readable.  And Two Spacers can rejoice, since Science appears to be on our side.  Specifically, a recent study looking at the “psychophysics” of reading suggests that readers read faster and with better comprehension when sentences end with two spaces.  Read about it here.

The phrase “love the sinner and hate the sin” has been a pretty standard part of Christian morality for a long time.  The exact phrase does not appear in the Bible, though it seems an apt summary of a number of Biblical passages (Romans 12:9, Jude 1:23, Matthew 6:14-15, Psalm 97:10, Matter 5:43-44, etc). Augustine is credited with coining the phrase, and its influence has spread far beyond Christianity (Ghandi, for example, used the phrase).  The idea is that it is not incompatible to judge deeds as wrong while also valuing the person who committed those deeds.

But “love the sinner and hate the sin” has fallen on hard times.  If you google the phrase, you will find dozens of articles arguing we should stop saying it.  James Madison University distributes to its students a speech guide which lists “love the sinner, hate the sin” as one of “35 dumb things well-intentioned people say”.  It would seem that “woke” people don’t use the phrase (sorry Ghandi).

The debate over this phrase reminds me of a panel discussion on gay marriage I participated in a few years ago.  After making orthodox arguments about sexual morality, a representative from another church began her remarks by saying, “I guess my church is different because we welcome everyone.”

The implication here was clear — if you pass judgment on the actions of others, you cannot be welcoming and loving of them.  Hating the sin means hating the sinner too.

I think that is plainly false.  But it is a very common point of view these days, so even though distinguishing between the judgment of deeds and the dignity of persons was pretty obvious to everyone until 10 minutes ago, perhaps today it is worth a brief exploration.

For my purposes here, I want to step away from the particular issue in the panel discussion (which had to do with sexual morality).  My purpose here is instead to establish a general principle about moral judgment and the dignity of persons.

Let’s consider some particular cases.  It is wrong to lie.  Lying is destructive of trust and community and is a way of using other people to your own ends.  Greed is a vice, because it is impairs the flourishing of our social nature.  If I catch one of my children lying or being greedy, moral instruction will follow.  I hope it is obvious that I do not “hate” my child when she does something wrong.  Quite to the contrary, it is because I love her that I offer moral correction.  This is a very important point: the moral correction is an act of love because she is engaging in actions that will frustrate her own capacity to flourish and to be happy.  And so “hating the sin” does not mean that one does not love the sinner.  In fact, “hating the sin” is an act of love for the sinner.

Of course one needs to use great prudence when they seek to correct moral error in others.  First of all, we should be mindful of the beam in our own eye before fussing over the speck in the eye of another.  And even when we do offer moral correction to others, one should prudently gauge a number of factors.  How close of a relationship do I have with the person?  What kind of moral instruction is likely to edify instead of close the person off?  etc.  And is my moral correction for their sake (an act of love) or is it for my own power and self-aggrandizement?

And we should never tire of remembering and reminding that every person deserves to be treated with dignity because every person has intrinsic and inviolable dignity in virtue of the kind of thing they are and in virtue of being children of God, made in His image and likeness.  So whether a person is guilty of telling a white lie or guilty of murder, that person has intrinsic value and dignity.

But loving other people and recognizing their intrinsic dignity cannot mean that we no longer make moral judgments about deeds.  Loving others means willing their good for their sake.  If your child or dear friend is engaging in actions that are contrary to their own flourishing and happiness, prudently offering moral correction is an act of love – a way of manifesting that you are willing their own good.  If what we meant by “loving” or “accepting” or “welcoming” others is that we would never make any judgments about their actions, that would mean we would abandon all moral language and would abandon others (and indeed ourselves) to lives of vice and unhappiness.

So loving the murderer does not mean we condone murder.  Loving the covetous man does not mean we license covetousness.  In fact, just to the contrary – loving the covetous man might mean that we save him by “snatching him from the fire” (Jude 1:23).

To say otherwise is to smuggle in relativism.  Those who reject “loving the sinner and hating the sin” are insinuating that to pass moral judgment is to be “intolerant” or “rigid”.  There are no objective truths, live and let live.  Saying someone is doing something “viceful” is akin to devaluing their personhood.  This is how we – in our age of identity politics – increasingly speak.

But this is madness.  Of course I should pass moral judgment and provide moral instruction when I see my daughter being violent to her sister.  And I should pass moral judgment and provide moral instruction because I love her.  The point is basic to virtue ethics.  Vice cannot make you happy.  Viceful actions and a viceful character frustrate your capacity to flourish as a human person and prevent you from being really happy.

It would do us a great deal of good if we could move past this impulse to think that whenever someone makes a judgment about the uprightness of something, they are “hating” the persons engaged in that action.  Of course we can debate which actions are really viceful or sinful.  Intelligent people might disagree about whether or not action X frustrates human flourishing or contributes to it.  That is well and good.  But a condition for the possibility of a sincere debate on those questions is that we do not begin by assuming that passing moral judgment on actions entails “hating” the other person.

For those interested, there will be a Stations of the Cross devotion every Friday during Lent at the St Jerome Newman Center at noon.  (So every Friday beginning this Friday the 16th and continuing through Good Friday on March 30th).  As in past years, we will be using the method of Saint Francis, so this is a very old (13th century) and traditional devotional prayer.  We provide booklets, so it is easy to follow along.

For those unfamiliar, the Stations of the Cross (Via Dolorosa or Way of Sorrow) are an ancient Christian devotion.  In the early church, some would make a pilgrimage to the Holy Land to walk from Jerusalem to various holy sites.  The Franciscans officially developed the Via Dolorosa in Jerusalem in the 15th century, winding through Jerusalem for nine stations and ending with five stations at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.

By the 4th century you begin to see something resembling the Stations of the Cross in monasteries and churches in Europe.  These devotions in churches were accelerated as it become more difficult and dangerous to make the pilgrimage to the Holy Lands, and by the late 16th century the fourteen stations were common in almost all Catholic Churches.  Today, every Catholic Church in the world will have the 14 stations (in stained glass or icons).

The stations are a mix of Passion events taken from scripture and tradition, beginning with Jesus being condemned to death through his crucifixion, death, and burial.  Through the prayers, we can meditate on and be brought close to the suffering and death of Christ.