It can sometimes seem that killing people \u00ad- somehow putting them to death \u00ad- possesses\u00a0enduring appeal, the allure of it circulating deeply and even ineradicably in the human\u00a0condition.<\/p>\n
At one level, of course, not all killings are the same. On one side there is what we might\u00a0call regulated<\/em> killing: just wars, capital punishment, perhaps self\u00ad-defence. Apart from\u00a0these, though perhaps interacting with them, there\u2019s an idea of justice<\/em> according to which\u00a0even un<\/em>regulated killing can appear fitting: in such circumstances we might say that\u00a0certain people get what they deserve<\/em>. Meanwhile, on the other side, there are all the other<\/em>\u00a0killings, the wrongful<\/em> killings, the killings which we call murder<\/em>. Of these, of course, we\u00a0disapprove, and of some of them, at least, we do so passionately.<\/p>\n So we distinguish just from unjust killing. Complex theoretical arguments underlie this\u00a0distinction, and at that level they have real plausibility. But at another level -\u00ad at which the\u00a0theoretical becomes consequential existentially -\u00ad the situation is perhaps more\u00a0complicated. Conceptual clarity, and the arguments, distinctions and conclusions it makes\u00a0possible, intersect, of course, with real life, but they do not always readily contain it. This\u00a0can be especially so when we are dealing with a phenomenon as spiritually deep and\u00a0pervasive as the impulse to kill. This impulse circulates in history, in culture and in the\u00a0human psyche at levels that cannot always be brought reassuringly to the surface, where\u00a0abstract reasoning is most at home. We must reckon with the subterranean effects of what\u00a0is unacknowledged<\/em> and perhaps even unthought<\/em>. Arguments for the legitimacy of killing \u00adin just wars, capital punishment or self\u00ad-defence \u00ad can then appear in a new light: or rather,\u00a0they can seem to pass into a kind of obscurity, subject to a disconcerting but intangible\u00a0uncertainty. In such arguments, are we reasoning<\/em> or are we rationalizing<\/em>? The presence\u00a0among us, and within us, of the impulse to kill, at once more primitive and more\u00a0sophisticated than we can comfortably acknowledge, begins to haunt and destabilize our\u00a0concepts and the reasonings which they sustain. Are we in fact able to secure for ourselves\u00a0what we would like -\u00ad the supreme, because supremely reasonable<\/em>, reassurance that in\u00a0certain circumstances, purified of every ambiguity and ambivalence, we are killing justly<\/em>?<\/p>\n Given the immemorial, mysteriously charismatic and almost gravitational<\/em> attraction\u00a0exercised by the impulse to kill, we may legitimately doubt it. It isn\u2019t that our rational\u00a0theories about just and unjust killing are disproved<\/em>. But they can<\/em> come to seem naively\u00a0incomplete. For there are forces here which it is difficult even to perceive<\/em> steadily, forces\u00a0which, as apparently rational agents, we cannot aspire to comprehend<\/em> and master<\/em>. Is our\u00a0hope that reason can regulate the impulse to kill sometimes too self\u00ad-assured and too\u00a0easily self\u00ad-serving? It can seem to be. We may then feel the need to think differently, to\u00a0live<\/em> differently, hearing the call to a deeper renunciation.<\/p>\n But what renunciation? For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the\u00a0scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. You have heard it\u00a0said to the men of old, \u2018You shall not kill; and whoever kills shall be liable to judgment.\u2019\u00a0But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother shall be liable to judgment;\u00a0whoever insults his brother shall be liable to the council, and whoever says, \u2018You fool!\u2019\u00a0shall be liable to the hell of fire.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n In these words, an answer opens out. We are to renounce not only killing, but every way\u00a0we have of negating<\/em> another person: despoiling, reducing, demeaning -\u00ad in short, every\u00a0way we have of diminishing the presence and the weight of his or her humanity.<\/p>\n \u2018Not only<\/em> killing, but also<\/em> negating\u2019. It\u2019s a difficult teaching to receive. And the difficulty is\u00a0in fact deeper than we first realize. Christ separates killing and negating only to unite\u00a0them again. Our strategies of negation are revealed as having a kind of mystical affinity\u00a0<\/em>with killing: killing and negating belong to each othe<\/em>r spiritually, negating is more than a\u00a0remote origin or even a proximate anticipation of killing, but it is already alive with the\u00a0putting to death that killing simply brings to consummation. This mystical affinity is\u00a0certainly mysterious \u00ad but, for all that, it is not unprecedented. Think of adultery in the\u00a0heart<\/em> -\u00ad not adultery strictly speaking, yet primordially unfaithful. In the same way, to\u00a0negate a person is already to exercise a lethal energy. There is a bond and inherence here\u00a0which is made explicit by St John: Anyone who hates his brother is a murderer<\/em>.<\/p>\n Such teaching is not only difficult, but, for us, almost insupportable. If killing is simply the\u00a0consummation of our ordinary and seemingly ineradicable antipathies, then either\u00a0everything<\/em> must change, or nothing<\/em>. Articulating a middle way can seem the only path to\u00a0take. It isn\u2019t foolish to hope that moral philosophy can help to constrain the dark energies\u00a0of the lethal, permitting only a sanitized killing to remain in circulation: hence the idea of\u00a0killing justly. But if what Christ says is true, such killing would have to be free from anger\u00a0and insult and every other kind of negation. In theory we can perhaps glimpse such a\u00a0possibility: a pure killing, impersonally serving the abstract reciprocities of justice. But in\u00a0practice the possibility can seem vanishingly remote. Think of the contexts in which\u00a0killing actually takes place, especially the killing we might want to describe as just. Think\u00a0of the real\u00adworld settings, cultural, social and psychic, in which warfare and judicial\u00a0execution actually unfold. And then recall that we are told that anyone who hates his\u00a0brother (does not kill justly but) is a murderer<\/em>.<\/p>\n The renunciation which is asked of us here cuts very deep. In this renunciation, what do\u00a0we lose? In a way, what we lose is ourselves<\/em>. Our self-\u00adaffirmations, even our identities, are\u00a0so often intimately interwoven, not merely with our difference<\/em> from others, but with our\u00a0negations<\/em> of them. I am this<\/em>, because I am not that<\/em>. We point to others and implicitly, often explicitly, disparage them; or else we value them extravagantly, and disparagement\u00a0reverses itself upon ourselves. Affirmation and negation seem almost inescapably to co-operate. Difference as such is so rarely apprehended neutrally, much less opened up to us\u00a0an opportunity to love<\/em>. Instead we experience it under the domination of the impulse to\u00a0negate, to kill. And this is too easily how<\/em> we are who<\/em> we are.<\/p>\n But of course we want to respond that sometimes difference is negative, and therefore\u00a0that negating it is a duty. Religion can appear to confirm this. Judging others negatively\u00a0can seem to be what we owe to Truth, to the Faith, even to God Himself. Isn\u2019t it a mark of\u00a0the seriousness with which we take being Catholic, this courageous vehemence of\u00a0negation, especially towards those whom a decadent and anti\u00ad-Catholic culture celebrates?<\/p>\n Of course we know, because He has told us, that God does not in fact want our judgments\u00a0of others, indeed that by means of them we estrange ourselves from Him. But we reassure\u00a0ourselves that it\u2019s the sin<\/em> we negate, not the sinner<\/em>, whom on the contrary we love. But is\u00a0it? Is it only the sin<\/em> that we negate? And do<\/em> we love the sinner, beyond the kind of love\u00a0which all too easily seems to fulfill itself merely in telling him that a sinner is what he is?\u00a0Sometimes, this is not clear. Sometimes, it sounds<\/em> otherwise.<\/p>\n And besides, is it certain that we are dealing with sin<\/em>, and hence with sinners<\/em>, in the first\u00a0place? Of course, at one level, the answer is clear. The Church teaches that certain things\u00a0are objectively wrong, and it is essential that we both adhere to this ourselves and profess\u00a0it to others. But this doesn\u2019t, as such, bring us to the question of personal<\/em> sin. For\u00a0something to be a personal<\/em> sin, attributable as sin<\/em> to the person who does it, something\u00a0other is required than the objective wrongness of what he does. What is required is that at\u00a0some level he understand<\/em> that what he is doing is wrong, and nonetheless act freely\u00a0against<\/em> his understanding, which is to say against his conscience. If this isn\u2019t the case,\u00a0then although what he does may be objectively wrong, it isn\u2019t a personal sin, and in doing\u00a0it he isn\u2019t, in that sense, a sinner.<\/p>\n Now it is true that there is more to sin than personal<\/em> sin. The release of sin into the world\u00a0means that in various ways it influences us, sometimes seems almost to dominate us, even\u00a0though we may not be personally responsible for the power it exercises, or even be aware\u00a0that it exercises it. The mysteriously diffusive power of sin explains the importance of the\u00a0Church\u2019s insistence on the reality of objective evil -\u00ad among us, within us, undoing us,\u00a0whether we know it or not.<\/p>\n So sin can be present and active, even if there is no personal<\/em> sin; a person can be being\u00a0harmed by sin, even intimately harmed, he can be harming himself and others<\/em>, and yet\u00a0not be a sinner. That is why he can do good even in<\/em> and through<\/em> behaviour which is\u00a0objectively sinful. And what does all this mean for how we relate to him? The question is\u00a0difficult. But we have at least to bear in mind the following possibility: that the sinner who\u00a0is given to us is not necessarily to be addressed, spoken of or treated as one who has given\u00a0himself to what he knows to be wrong.<\/p>\n But then how should<\/em> we address him? How should we speak and act? Here we may have\u00a0to learn more readily to accept hesitation, even incapacity. An exhilarating and\u00a0adversarial fluency of negation can certainly simplify things \u00ad and simplification is not\u00a0always<\/em> distorting; it can also empower and reassure those who are speaking or listening,\u00a0something of which Catholics may understandably feel in need today. But this is also true:\u00a0for those who are the targets of such speech, it can inflame, embitter or repel; and we\u00a0simply cannot assume that such reactions demonstrate that our discourse has been\u00a0authentically Christian and that the only reason for rejecting it lies in bad faith.<\/p>\n Besides, is Christian witness<\/em> always a matter of Christian<\/em> discourse? In His redemptive\u00a0encounter with the mystery of sin, the Incarnate Word eventually fell silent. On the Cross\u00a0and in His descent to the dead He witnessed beyond<\/em> discourse, spoke only in silence.\u00a0What was it that took the Word beyond words?<\/p>\n Perhaps it was that there was nothing left to say: no self to affirm, no other to negate. He\u00a0was Himself<\/em> only in identifying with us<\/em>, and let Himself be found<\/em> only in His solidarity\u00a0with the lost<\/em>. Perhaps this is the best, and perhaps sometimes the only<\/em>, authentically\u00a0Christian witness. We are not necessarily called to have a public voice, in print, online or\u00a0in person. If we are, then it will be<\/em> a call, a dimension of our vocation<\/em>, not simply an\u00a0expression of zeal or enthusiasm, as if such expression was always and everywhere\u00a0legitimate. And if we are<\/em> called to speak, then underlying our speech there should still be\u00a0our participation in the Word Himself and in His silence, the silence articulating the\u00a0furthest reach of His solidarity with those whom He would save.<\/p>\n His silent solidarity with us was not, of course, a solidarity in<\/em> sin, which in fact annihilates\u00a0solidarity. But it was<\/em> the willingness to bear in Himself everything that sin means<\/em> for us \u00ad-\u00a0even to the apparent loss of the Father, even to death and to dwelling among the dead. In\u00a0the end He, the sinless one, did not wish to be distinguished<\/em> from us, for He carried us on\u00a0our behalf, enduring us all the way through, and only in that way transforming us from\u00a0within. He overcame the alienation that was ours, surpassing it in the encompassing\u00a0embrace of Trinitarian love, but only by loving us to the end, only by identifying with our\u00a0alienation unreservedly. So unreservedly, in fact, that St Paul can say that He, Who knew\u00a0no sin, was made sin for our sake<\/em>, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of\u00a0God<\/em>.<\/p>\n The silently redemptive solidarity with us chosen by the Incarnate Word is a unique\u00a0mystery of love. But precisely because it is a unique mystery of love<\/em>, it can be shared. And\u00a0the Christian vocation is, above and beyond everything else, to share it. What does this\u00a0sharing look like? Pope Benedict XVI, as Cardinal Ratzinger, expressed it, beautifully and\u00a0exactly, as follows:<\/p>\n For the saints [he writes] ‘Hell’ is not…a threat to be hurled at other people but a\u00a0challenge to oneself. It is a challenge to suffer in the dark night of faith, to\u00a0experience communion with Christ in solidarity with his descent into the Night.\u00a0One draws near to the Lord’s radiance by sharing his darkness. One serves the\u00a0salvation of the world by leaving one’s own salvation behind for the sake of the\u00a0others.<\/em><\/p>\n By Fr Philip Cleevely, Cong. Orat.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It can sometimes seem that killing people \u00ad- somehow putting them to death \u00ad- possesses\u00a0enduring appeal, the allure of it circulating deeply and even ineradicably in the human\u00a0condition. 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