Authenticity is one of those concepts that is in vogue these days, particularly among young people. They often maintain that the important thing is to be sincere and authentic, and they use this argument to reject many social conventions. They feel that following social conventions does not reflect one’s true self and is therefore hypocritical. I want to be me, as the saying goes.

There are at least two errors in this logic.

First of all, conduct can only be branded as hypocritical if it is done to obtain something for oneself. Imagine a father who arrives home after a very hard day of work dead tired and with a headache. He does not feel like talking or smiling or doing anything except eating and going to bed. Yet, before he opens the front door he thinks about how his wife has been working hard all day and is now preparing supper with a brood of rambunctious kids clamoring for her attention. So when he enters the house he puts on a cheerful face, smiles, kisses his wife and takes the kids off her hands to play with them so his wife can finish preparing supper in peace. After supper he offers to wash the dishes so his wife can sit down and rest. His conduct is not hypocritical but rather heroic. This is all the more true if his love for his wife, which leads him to do this, is a love in Christ, and hence a pure love. The most sublime example of this is Our Lord dying on the Cross for love of mankind. He did not feel like carrying the Cross (this is clear from his Agony in the Garden), but he embraced it with love because he saw in it the instrument of our salvation. His Passion and Death were the opposite of hypocritical.

So the first point is that when we do something that is not in itself immoral in order to live charity with another, it is not hypocrisy even if we find it difficult to do and even out of character.

A second problem with the I want to be me authenticity stance stems from the doctrine of original sin, which teaches that we are all seriously flawed individuals. We all suffer from pride, vanity, laziness, sensuality, concupiscence, etc. It is a mistake to think that the natural me that I wish to flaunt is a thing of great value in itself. Christianity teaches that it is only by losing my life that I will save it and it is only by forgetting about my self (not being selfish) that I will become the kind of person I am meant to be. St. Paul teaches repeatedly that we have to put to death the natural man, the old man of concupiscence and put on the Lord Jesus Christ (cf. Rom. 6: 6; Eph. 4: 22-24; Col. 3: 5-11). Our value lies in that we are made in the image and likeness of God and, having been redeemed by the precious blood of Christ, we have become children of God. So our public persona should be one in which we seek to be as we ought to be (imitators of Christ) and not as we feel like being. We try to give an example of virtue in the hope that we will become as good as the example we are putting forth and in the hope of influencing those around us to imitate our virtue.

The defender of authenticity will object that giving an example of virtue is vanity. But again, as we have already shown, it depends on the motive. If we put on a virtuous public persona to be admired and elicit praise we are certainly falling into vanity. However, when we do so for love of God and neighbour it is virtue and not vanity.

There are also other reasons for cultivating the social graces.

We all have certain social obligations that we must fulfill. We live in society and as a consequence of human nature there are a whole series of links that bind us to others in mutual interdependence. In relations with others a Christian should seek to give a good example, to live charity and to be apostolic (to draw others closer to the Faith). All of these reasons should lead a Christian to cultivate the social graces. We can briefly look at each one.

There are several Gospel passages in which Christ our model teaches us the importance of the social graces. He wore a seamless tunic, thereby showing us that our dress should not be a matter of indifference, but that good taste in dress is important. In the home of Simon the Pharisee, he reproached his host for failing to welcome him with those details of courtesy and politeness that were customary at the time, thereby showing us the importance of good manners, good taste and poise in dealing with others. We see Jesus at several feasts (Cana, the home of Matthew, the home of Simon the Pharisee). He evidently sanctified all he did, and so his presence at these feasts shows us that social life should be sanctified. We will see more of what this means below.

The role of those in the Church who remain secular (i.e.; the laity and secular priests) is precisely to sanctify the temporal order, to sanctify society from within, to restore all things in Christ. This means to sanctify daily work, family life, social life etc. Christians are to be leaven in society, sanctifying it from within by engaging in temporal affairs and imbuing them with the Christian spirit and shaping them in keeping with God’s plan which is to take the whole world up again in Christ and make of it a new creation.

In accomplishing this mission we have to navigate between two extremes: that of being too other worldly and that of becoming too worldly. As for the danger of becoming too other worldly, we should keep in mind that we should in no way flee the world or adopt a way of being modeled on the spirituality of religious orders. The spirituality of religious orders is one of Contemptus Mundi – a disdain for the things of the world. A member of a religious order is called by God to renounce the world, to give a public and formal witness of Poverty, Chastity and Obedience by taking vows and separating himself or herself from the world and retiring to a monastery, giving up worldly possessions, marriage, etc.

Although that spirituality of the religious orders is the will of God for them, it is totally inadequate for the vast majority of those who are called by God to seek holiness precisely in and through their every day activity. Trying to accommodate the religious spirituality to the normal situation of one in society (someone who is married, works at a professional job, engages in social life, or is a diocesan priest, etc.), by adapting it cannot work well, since by its very nature it is meant by God for those who separate themselves from the world. One ends up with someone who is a semi-religious, out of place in the hubbub of modern society, trying to impose on his life a structure that simply does not fit and feeling that he can only go part way towards holiness and be only a second class Christian because he or she is unable to live the full demands of the religious vocation. However, Saint Josemaria insisted that all the Baptized are called to the fullness of Christian life and his teaching was formally ratified by Vatican II.

A Christian carries out his baptismal vocation to holiness by living a unity of life. This means that he maintains a constant awareness that he is a child of God and seeks to actualize this divine sonship in all he does, seeking to make his Faith inform, imbue and give meaning to all he does, seeking to act always with an upright intention moved by love of God and not by selfish motives. By acting in this way one also avoids the second danger: that of becoming too worldly.

Since Christ assumed human nature and took up human work, family life and social life, all of these have become sanctifying and sanctifiable realities. So we are all called to sanctify these realities. Now, to sanctify something is to do it as well as we possibly can, moved primarily by love of God, offering it to God in union with the sacrifice of the Mass, for the glory of God and the salvation of men. We must not offer to God something poorly done. Rather, a good Christian seeks to do everything well, trying to offer to God his or her best efforts.

So, as regards social life and the social virtues, as in everything else, the Christian will seek to live human perfection. Since he is just one more among his peers, he should seek to stand out only by his virtue. Far from rebelling against social conventions, he should seek to sanctify them by living them exquisitely well. To neglect these things on purpose is to fail to seek excellence and therefore to fail to seek sanctity in our social life. It means rupturing our unity of life by excluding our social life from our ongoing attempt to have our Faith inform and give meaning to all we do.

Certainly the Christian will reject any custom that is immoral and will avoid the hedonism and materialism he finds around himself. But he will do this while dressing with good taste, living refinement in his relationship with others, speaking and writing well. It is only in this way that he will attract others and be salt, light and leaven. If he falls into an extreme otherworldliness by, for example, dressing in a sloppy way, not combing his hair, not living good manners when eating or interacting with others, neglecting the rules of grammar and spelling when writing, he will pass the erroneous message that everyday things do not need to be sanctified.

This brings up the crucial question of apostolate. A man or woman living in the heart of civil society is called to be an apostle. And if we are going to teach others about sanctifying daily life we have first of all to give an example ourselves. People will only listen to us in the measure that we have prestige in their eyes. If we are perceived as someone who does not practice what we preach we will not be listened to. So, in order to talk to someone about sanctifying their work they must see us at least as competent, hard working, loyal and successful in our chosen way of life.

It is not just the poor and uneducated who need to be evangelized. It is a great thing if the person who cleans the office of Bill Gates is a saintly Catholic. But if Bill Gates were also one, he could have a far greater impact on the Church in the U.S. than the janitor of the building. If, in the future you come into contact with CEOs, top university profs, prestigious medical doctors, etc., you are going to want to help them in their spiritual lives. They will not listen to you if you do not move at their level. This includes dressing properly (clean clothes, chosen with good taste, that fit well and are always properly ironed; being well groomed, conducting yourself with poise, speaking articulately and writing well). If you send one of them an e-mail with the spelling and grammar jumbled, you will have lost his respect.

Of course, there is a big difference between the way a student conducts himself and the way a professional man does so. It would be out of place for a student, to dress like a professional man. But on the question of correctness in one’s correspondence, there is no reason why you can’t begin now trying to improve your writing skills. Perhaps you can use the e-mails you send as an opportunity to hone your skills at that. You know, the correspondence of famous men of letters is a real joy to read (Thomas More, Newman, Tolkein, etc.). Their letters are masterpieces of English. What if your cause of beatification is opened one day and your correspondence is read? Correctness in writing also reflects in some way how much importance you give to the person to whom you are writing. Essentially you are saying (or at least he might think you are saying) that you do not consider him important enough to take care of grammar and spelling in the e-mails you send him).

In summary, it is important to cultivate the social graces in order to imitate Christ, in order to live our vocation in the heart of society, to live charity with others and to be apostolically effective. So I invite you to consider whether it might not be a good idea for you to begin using your e-mail correspondence as a way to improve your writing skills so that each one ends up as a masterpiece of English prose.

By Anthony Schratz
Photo by Katarina Bubenikova on Unsplash