A Catholic friend of mine recently had a supervisor who criticized him for his tendency to disregard underperforming colleagues with a frankness others found hurtful or embarrassing. “He’s a Christian,” the supervisor said. “He’s supposed to be nice!”
Now one can debate whether Jesus calls his followers to be “nice.” Gracious, charitable and forgiving, yes—but not necessarily “nice.” At least as our contemporary culture defines it, “nice” often implies an understanding of tolerance that is averse to offering candid if necessary truth, even criticism. A “nice” person, for example, isn’t the type to bluntly tell a colleague that his work is poor, or warn a friend that his sexual lifestyle threatens the survival of his very soul.
Unsurprisingly, my Catholic friend was not happy when he became aware of that criticism, in part because of the above concern over our culture’s (skewed) conception of “nice.” Regardless of the accuracy of that professional assessment, I thought his boss’s comments were, implicitly, a compliment. My friend’s Catholic faith was so public in character that people took notice, and, fair or not, judged his actions according to their perceptions of Christianity.
I presume that I’m not the only Catholic with a secular job who struggles with what it means to live one’s faith in the workplace. As far as my employer is concerned, I’m paid to do a job—not preach my faith. Thankfully, at least for now, that doesn’t preclude me from sharing my beliefs with coworkers in appropriate venues, such as during lunch. Nor should anyone take offense if, when I am asked what I did over the weekend, I tell them I participated in Sunday Mass, attended a baptism, or hosted a priest for dinner. Moreover, it’s hard not to wear my Catholicism on my sleeve—no one else in my office has five children, nor has an icon at his desk.
And I’m surely not the only Catholic who wonders (and even worries) what his colleagues think of his faith. Do people think I’m a religious fanatic because I obey church teaching on contraception? Do they consider me strange for praying rosaries or venerating relics? Do they label me a bigot for my Catholic beliefs about homosexuality and transgenderism, or a dim-witted fool for following the teachings of an “antiquated,” “patriarchal” religious institution?
Sometimes I find myself conjuring retorts to all those imagined criticisms from colleagues. After all, as Catholics, we believe our faith to be a reasonable one. “Always be prepared to make a defense to anyone who calls you to account for the hope that is in you, yet do it with gentleness and reverence” (1 Pet. 3:15b). But it’s more than just a desire to prove that the claims of the Catholic Church are defensible and logical—it’s also a desire to prove that I’m reasonable. I want people to think Catholics can be intelligent, respectable, normal. And that desire, however understandable, can deceptively erode that very same Catholic zeal to share the faith.
Ida Friederike Görres (1901-1971) the Austrian-Japanese Catholic writer, was well aware of this temptation to present Catholicism as something acceptable in and to polite society. In The Church in the Flesh, recently translated into English by Jennifer S. Bryson, Görres notes our human desire to search for Christian heroes who possess the qualities of nobility. “He [the saint] has to be ‘sunny and radiant,’ so enchanting that his smile conquers the unruliest hearts by storm… popular and with an interesting personality and having such good manners that one can put him on display in the most demanding circles.”
Wouldn’t we prefer our saints to be attractive, presenting as winsome and endlessly interesting on their own YouTube channel or podcast? Shouldn’t they be handsome, beautiful, witty, and entertaining? Like our secular celebrities, shouldn’t the saints be likable?
Ours is indeed a celebrity culture, far more even than in the decades in which Görres wrote. We no longer have only famous actors, athletes, and “public intellectuals”—we have a dizzying diversity of “influencers,” all with their own platforms on social media. We devotedly follow their posts in which they opine on all the latest trending topics, be they religious, political, or fashion. We may even cough up a few hundred dollars a year for special subscriber-only content on Substack or Patreon. Often we follow them not only because of what they say, but what they are, because what they are selling is more than just ideas, but a lifestyle.
Yet the lifestyle such influencers are selling is usually not the saintly one, but the successful one, measured not by virtue and holiness, but by health, wealth, and popularity. And even when, to their credit, they are seeking to promote saintliness, the medium, as Marshall McLuhan and Neil Postman would say, invariably counteracts those noble motives. We are hungry for models to emulate, and our celebrity culture and its digital mediums give it to us in spades, carefully curated to heighten the emotional impact and induce those dopamine hits.
The problem, at least from a Catholic perspective, is that many saints fail to fit the mold of our celebrity culture. Writes Görres: “In contrast to all the enticing advertising images that are put in front of us, aren’t the really pious people far more often by no means so attractive?” St. Bernadette probably had a learning disability; St. John of God likely had a mental illness; St. Catherine of Siena may have had an eating disorder; St. Gemma Galgani and St. Padre Pio suffered the bloody, unappealing stigmata.
Saintliness and attractiveness, at least according to human judgments, are often not synonymous. The saints are supposed to provoke, not validate us. Görres compares the pursuit of holiness to a rushing stream, “roaring rapids, dangerous and flooding, then again tamed, channeled, dwindling, and speaking into ‘bourgeois life.’”
Whereas we prefer our heroes to conform to a certain respectable uniformity, the saints are as diverse as humanity: brilliant or slow, wealthy or impoverished, beautiful or revolting, personally accessible or bizarrely aloof. What unites the saints is an unswerving devotion to God and relentless aversion to sin, qualities that cannot help but make ordinary folk, comfortable in their sin, feel, well, uncomfortable. To be a saint is to be, in some sense, strange. Many saints, Görres observes, “stand there as a contradiction and judgment to their whole environment.” They are “typified by being unrecognizable.” No one was ever beatified for being “normal.”
Rather, argues Görres, the saint is the one “in whom God’s victory over sin has been revealed.” They do not excuse or shrug off the smaller sins. “The saints take every excuse from us,” says Görres in one of the most memorable sentences in the book.
Such a description of the saintly life — to which all of us Catholics are called regardless of our vocation, personal or professional circumstances — stands in marked tension with any desire we may possess to simply “get along” with coworkers, to collect a paycheck and keep our mouths shut. If we think we can domesticate the Catholic faith in ways that will always be appealing (or at least banal) to our unchurched neighbors, how are we truly different from the world? The distinction between us and them becomes practically indistinguishable.
None of this, of course, means Catholics can’t be “nice.” Undoubtedly, we should be friendly and solicitous, the type of people our neighbors and colleagues can count on to help in their hour of need, who celebrate their successes and mourn their losses. But the testimony of the saints and their otherworldliness represents a caution to those of us (myself included) who hope to persuade others that Catholicism is, as it were, ordinary, or even urbane.
The teachings of Christ, rather, create the kind of religion that can sever relationships, even among family, and demand of us our very lives (c.f. Matthew 10:34-29). It demands of us something that will inevitably be a “sign of contradiction” to “health and wellness” or “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (Acts 28:22). Trying to pretend otherwise, as Görres warns, may, for a time, allow us to hide the more controversial elements of our faith. But it also constitutes a form of self-deception that hides the Gospel not only from our neighbors who desperately need to hear it, but, even more dangerously, ourselves. And that would not be very nice, would it?
The Church in the Flesh
By Ida Friederike Görres
Translated by Jennifer S. Bryson
Cluny Media, 2023
Paperback, 302 pages
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When Our Lord cleared the money changers from the Temple, was he being ‘nice’? Sometimes doing what should be done requires actions that may not seem ‘nice’.
About the money changers:
First Josef PIEPER: “Christ drove the money-changers from the temple with a whip, and when the most patient of men stood before the high priest and was struck in the face by a servant, he did NOT turn the other cheek, but answered: ‘If there was harm in what I said, tell us what was harmful in it, but if not, why dost thou strike me?’” (Jn 18:23).
Then he quotes AQUINAS in his commentary on St. John’s Gospel:
“Holy Scripture must be understood in the light of what Christ and his saints have actually practiced. Christ did not offer his other cheek, nor Paul either. Thus to interpret the injunction of the Sermon on the Mount [turning the other cheek] LITERALLY [italics] is to misunderstand it. This injunction signifies rather the readiness of the soul to bear, IF IT BE NECESSARY [italics], such things and worse, without bitterness against the attacker. This readiness our Lord showed, when he gave up his body to be crucified. That response of the Lord was useful, therefore, for our instruction” (Pieper, “Fortitude and Temperance,” 1954; citing Aquinas John 18, lect. 4,2).
St Thomas Aquinas taught that the greatest kindness is to share the Truth “graciously, charitably”
Having a choleric temperament, I understand well the admonishment to “be nice” about dangerous behaviors. However, if a car is careening towards a cliff, will it matter if my voice becomes alarmingly shrill rather than quietly measured to suit the phlegmatic driver. While we cannot judge any individual soul–his or her eternal destination– we most certainly must forewarn our neighbors if they are headed towards separation from God…forever… especially if they are close to the precipice. This includes speaking in the public square though prudence should steer us in how and when. Moreover, we should not be nagging. Most importantly, we should live like we believe Truth with courage, conviction, and commitment.
I worked in hospital labs (microbiology) for 31 years, including at one hospital for much of that time until I retired. Because we are isolated from patients in a “lab” (usually in the basement!), we were generally freer to hold discussions and talk about controversial issues than many other hospital employees who are around patients. This freedom to converse was especially helpful during the 9/11 attack on the NYC Towers–our department was right across the hall from the “break room”, which had a TV, and I remember being on break, seeing the plane crash into the Tower, and when I came back to my department, telling my co-workers that “some stupid pilot crashed his plane into the Trade Towers in NYC!” Within a few minutes, though, we all realized that this was a terrorist attack, and everyone in the lab spent as much time as they could spare watching the television and discussing it. There were no I-phones at that time to stare at. We talked face-to-face and it was informative and very comforting to be with fellow Americans and fellow human-beings. No one worried about offending anyone (even though we had Muslims working with us, they were Americans and joined the discussion).
But once I-phones became the norm, everyone stopped talking during breaks. The break room was a silent place, and if anyone (like me) asked, “Hey, did you see the Big Game last night?!”, my co-workers would look up and stare at me with obvious displeasure that I had interrupted their perusal of their I-Phones.
Although I have been retired now for two years, and I now have an I-phone, I have never joined any social media other than a few news forums (like this one). The only time I sit and scroll through my phone is when I am alone and there is nothing else to do (e.g., when I am waiting in an office with no TV for my appointment). I talk to people if they are not glued to their phones. I read books or magazines that I carry with me. I probably watch too much TV, but I watch the local and national/international news to stay informed, and I watch NBC, which after watching many other news broadcasts, I think that, as a rule, offers the least-biased reporting on national and world events. I think it’s especially important to keep up with local news in our own cities and towns.
My dad (R.I.P.) used to spend almost every evening with a group of around 40 people, mainly seniors, but some young people joined in–at a McDonald’s in his small town in Illinois. Everyone would order whatever they needed–a full meal, a cup of coffee, perhaps a sweet treat–and they would “solve the problems of the world” by talking about them, sharing opinions (often opposed to each other), offering solutions–and all in a friendly, welcoming, non-condemning atmosphere. What a great way to develop a more realistic and broad-minded outlook on the issues! When my dad died, the McDonald’s sent a giant floral wreath to the funeral.
I wish I had such a “forum” in which to talk (not scroll) and hear others talk. Nowadays, restaurants seemed designed to make sure everyone has privacy instead of togetherness. No wonder there is so much conflict and loneliness in the U.S.
“If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of they friends`s or of thine own were” (John Donne).
Likewise, this website “forum” and us readers would be the less without your contributions.
Oh dear; please rethink your opinion of NBC. It is not worthy of your thoughtful post!
In all honesty, if you are only watching NBC, you are missing the whole picture. Why do you think so many DEMs claimed to be “shocked” at Biden’s mental condition after the debate with Trump? What they saw that evening, millions of us had watched on FOX with growing apprehension for literal YEARS. For US, it sadly was no shock at all. But we had spent those years being attacked for “lying” about Biden’s condition, or supposedly making up edited or AI video about him. Its clear to viewers where FOX stands and they make no bones about it. Their world view is conservative, and viewers know it. Which is far different from the rest of mainstream media which pretends to be impartial. It is nothing of the sort.
Christ doesn’t call us to be “nice” but to speak the truth at all times, to all present and in all ways.
Thank you for this excellent review. It calls to mind for me a classic essay by Prof. D. Q. McInerny, “On Being Charitable,” first published in 2009, which everyone will enjoy at https://fssp.com/on-being-charitable-dennis-mcinerny-series/
Balance in ethics is a central theme in Aristotle and continued through Aquinas. The virtuous mean between excess and defect. Peter’s admonition to ‘be nice’ when defending the faith assumes an assertive form when we’re called to admonish our brother for neglect of the faith.
Unfortunately, Chalk’s reminder of what it means to be Christ’s disciple requires verve as well as gentleness. Knowing when and where is an art acquired first by total commitment to the Gospels followed by practice. A willingness to risk for a greater good. For priests it’s especially required from the pulpit. Our task isn’t to make everybody feel nice, snug and secure in their mediocrity and sin. If we love them we must think damn the torpedoes. Because we’re not in this priesthood to win popularity and invitations to dinner. We will receive a different kind of popularity, more like that achieved by the Apostle, a responsive love that recognizes the sincerity of our love for them.
Laity through their baptism share the common priesthood of all the faithful. Chalk articulates that well.
While being “nice” isn’t required of Christians neither should we be jerks.
Years ago I listened to a Protestant preacher on the radio explain that Christians always seem to be walking a tightrope between two extremes. If either end of the rope slackens we lose balance & fall off. We need to walk a path between courtesy & frankness & feel a remindful tug from either side.
Thanks for stealing my thesis mrscracker. But that’s okay. I’m a nice guy.
Years ago, I had a coworker who was an “in your face” Evangelical. He was forever trying to convert people. When people saw him coming, they went the other way. I had a couple of incidents with him, where I had to be firm. He was not a bad guy, but something of a nuisance.
Yes, you have to walk a fine line. You can be ready to discuss your religion, but not be aggressive.
I like Hilaire Belloc’s viewpoint:
I know that courtesy is less
Than courage of heart or holiness,,
But in my walks it seems to me
That the grace of God is in courtesy.
wrath is one of the 7
Being “nice” won’t save your soul. There are countless “nice” souls in Hell.
Ida Friederike Görres, an author to be reckoned with. She produced a groundbreaking biography of St.Thérèse of the Child Jesus and of the Holy Face published here in 1959. It was instrumental in courageously stripping the fluff off of one more accurately regarded the “Iron Maiden” than the “Petite Fleur.”
Must reading.