A Flawed Perspective

In his final collection of essays (Second Readings), the late Father James V. Schall describes a visit by a former student who had been studying in Europe. The student had met some Norwegian students, and visited Norway with them. During that visit, the student met the grandfather of one of the Norwegian students. The grandfather had fought the Nazis invading Norway during World War II, and recounted his capture - and apparent torture - by the Nazis.

According to Father Schall's report of the conversation, his former student said to his Norwegian hosts, "Ah, you see, this shows pretty clearly that a difference between good and evil exists."

But the Norwegian soldier's granddaughter responded, "We cannot impose our ideas on past times. The Nazis had their own culture. It is wrong to judge."

Father Schall went on to reflect about relativism and the abandonment of concepts of good and evil.

I thought about the specific example - the Nazis. But others occurred to me.

Using the Norwegian student's line of reasoning, there are any number of past actions which we can't "judge" because the perpetrators had their own "culture."

Thus we can't judge those who practiced human sacrifice - including child sacrifice.

We can't judge slave owners.

We can't judge the Turks for what they did to the Armenians.

We can't judge those who carried out the Rwandan Genocide.

We can't judge the policies of Mao or Stalin.

And so on.

Of course, the problem with that line of reasoning is that it requires abandoning notions of right and wrong. It means ignoring absolute values.

Sadly, it is the same kind of reasoning that leads to legal abortion on demand, the watering down of traditional marriage and gender identity, the adoption of self-interest as the sole criteria for guiding actions and decisions.

Pax et bonum