“Why do you not judge for yourselves what is right?” Jesus asks his disciples (Lk. 12:57). He asks them—and us—to judge “the signs of the times” (Mt. 6:13), and he has been seeking our judgment ever since. Why? Because they—and we—must discern how best to apply the Gospel to the society and culture in which we live. For the sake of that discernment we must heed the instruction of St. Paul, "Test everything; retain what is good" (1 Thess. 5:21).
To assist us in our discernment, the Church has developed a social teaching. Since the publication of Leo XIII's encyclical (teaching) letter Rerum Novarum (subtitled, "On Capitol and Labor") in 1891, the Popes have carefully elaborated an instruction on social and political life which is, regrettably, one of the best kept secrets in the Church. I mean to begin a series of articles which will make available some of this papal teaching. But before we begin to investigate what the pontiffs have taught, we must first reinstate in our minds and in our conversations the indispensable role of judgment.
Contemporary society fears making judgments. A reluctance to make some judgments is a very good thing. Jesus forbids us to pass sentence on one another: "Stop judging and you will not be judged. Stop condemning and you will not be condemned" (Luke 6:37a). He also warns us that the basis upon which we make such judgments will be the basis upon which we ourselves will be judged, "for the measure with which you measure will in return be measured out to you" (6:38b). There are other judgments, however, that he wants from us. He insists that we judge what is right. These are not judgments that we should be reluctant to make. On the contrary, these are the judgments that are essential to our work of bringing the Gospel to our own time and place. We must be able to understand what is happening in our society and in our culture, and then determine what Our Lord wants done. We must be able to judge what we must say and do. We must judge what is true; we must "test everything and retain what is good."
We must therefore challenge our society—even as we challenge each other—to go ahead and to exercise our judgment. In our present society, this may prove to be a tall order. Not only are we reluctant to judge, we are sometimes actually forbidden to make the judgments that our office requires. A case in point:
Anyone who has had occasion to fly somewhere since 9/11 is aware of the heightened security measures at airports, and the subsequent inconvenience, and indignity, of personal searches. Even if we are not targeted for search, we pass poor unfortunates who are forced to stand spread-eagle in their stocking feet being scanned with a wand, while their personal effects are strewn on a table for the inspection of a government employee, and any other passer-by who cares to look.
Flying as frequently as I do, it is inevitable that I will be searched, and whenever it occurs, I attempt to comport myself gracefully. Recently, however, I had occasion to lose my composure. I had purchased a butane cigarette lighter in the restricted area of the Los Angeles airport, and had it with me in my carry-on luggage as I was changing airlines in Denver. (The particular virtue of this lighter is that it will not go out in the wind.) The security guard informed me that such a lighter is illegal, and indicated that he would have to confiscate it. I suggested, instead, that we empty it so that it would not light. He merely iterated that his instructions were to confiscate such lighters. I suggested that the confiscation of an empty lighter is unreasonable, and to support my point, I asked him if he would mind demonstrating the lethal potentialities of an empty lighter. He looked at me helplessly and reiterated the policy of his department, which is to confiscate all such lighters. In the end I relented, both because I did not have unlimited time to argue the point, and because I did not want to spoil the poor man's day. That he was forbidden to judge the situation was not, after all, his fault.
I do not hold the security guard responsible for the confiscation of my property. I do not hold the saleswoman in the Los Angeles airport responsible for selling me an illegal lighter in the first place. But this, in fact, is very precisely the problem: the agent and the store clerk cannot be held responsible because, as a policy, they have been forbidden to make judgments; their sole obligation is to enforce a policy, even when the enforcement of the policy may be unjust or foolish. The clerk sells whatever her company indicates should be sold, and the security agent confiscates whatever his superiors say should be confiscated.
This scrupulous assertion of the policy is, of course, the first reason that the security measures are bound to be ineffective. The competent agent, who should be making judgments as to who is a risk and what implements are truly dangerous, is forbidden to make judgments. His job is merely to implement the policy. Moreover, because the policy is influenced by politics, overriding the proper objective of security is the apparent objective of equal inconvenience for all. Had the agent not confiscated my empty lighter, so the politician thinks, he would have been showing favoritism. This would be unfair to all of those whose lighters had recently been confiscated. Similarly, the agent is forbidden to profile travelers according to race—or, from my observation, according to age, state of health, physical capacity, or any other reasonable criterion. So it is that I recently witnessed an elderly woman—I would guess in her eighties—who was made to relinquish her cane and teeter uncertainly through the security gate, because she had been randomly selected for search. The poor dear clearly lacked the capacity even to walk unassisted, let alone to hold hostage a plane full of frustrated passengers. Yet, to make a judgment that spared her the indignity of such treatment would be unfair to all of the others: equal inconvenience for all!
The purpose of airport screening is not equal treatment for all of the passengers; the purpose is, or ought to be, security. To guarantee security, proficient agents ought to have the prerogative to judge what is truly dangerous and what is not: for example, empty lighters. They ought to be permitted to judge who poses a threat and who does not: for example, silver-haired octogenarian ladies with canes. They ought, in other words, to be able to exercise responsibility for the security of the passengers. Deprived of their judgment, they have been deprived of their responsibility, and we have all been placed at risk.
According to Catholic tradition, the starting place for all moral thinking is the end (purpose or objective) of the activity. We must first clarify the end that we seek. In every social question we must first ask, "What is the end (or purpose or objective) that we intend?" and then we must settle on the means to achieve it. Determining the end necessitates judgment; choosing the means requires freedom. Unless we make judgments, we will never have clarity with respect to our purpose for acting. Unless we are free to determine the means that we must exercise, we will never have true responsibility for what we do. Our judgment is essential.
There are many instances in our society of judgments that ought to be made and policies which preclude them—in industry, in commerce, in education, in our political discourse. The first obligation, if we are to take seriously the social teaching of the Church, is to begin to identify them, for these are the areas which first require our attention.