One of the most memorable exchanges in English literature occurs between James Boswell and Dr. Samuel Johnson. Boswell remarked that he might be less happy if he entered Parliament because he would never sell his vote and would be distressed whenever public affairs went badly. Johnson dismissed this as cant. Public affairs, he said, did not trouble Boswell enough to cost him an hour of sleep or an ounce of meat. Boswell admitted that he had imagined himself deeply vexed and had even taken pride in the feeling, although it had made no practical difference to his life. Johnson then gave him his famous advice: “Clear your mind of cant.”
Johnson was not objecting to the harmless conventions of polite society. We may tell someone that we are sorry about the bad weather he encountered on a journey without claiming to have suffered deeply on his behalf. Such expressions help to make ordinary social life courteous and humane. Nor was Johnson speaking simply about conscious hypocrisy, in which a person deliberately pretends to possess convictions or feelings that he does not have. He was exposing a more subtle form of self-deception. We speak as though we were profoundly disturbed by some public evil, and then congratulate ourselves for the strength of a concern that has demanded nothing from us.
This habit has become increasingly common. We declare ourselves outraged, offended, or heartbroken by events that do not alter our conduct in the slightest. We announce that we stand with those who suffer, although we may do little to support them personally. The declaration itself gives us a sense of moral seriousness. We have expressed the approved opinion and displayed the appropriate emotion, and this can create the illusion that we have fulfilled the demands of conscience.
What we experience in such moments is not always conscience in the proper sense, but a superficial substitute for it. A well-formed conscience does not merely tell us what attitude to display. It judges our conduct and calls us to conversion. It disturbs our complacency, exposes our excuses, and reminds us of duties we would prefer to avoid. We may want comfort, approval, or an easier path, but conscience directs us towards what is true and good. It does not allow us to satisfy ourselves with words when love requires action.
The counterfeit conscience is far more agreeable. It asks us only to affirm the right cause or express the right emotion. Even when it leads to some action, the action may be motivated less by love than by a desire to appear righteous before others or before ourselves. We can then feel morally superior without confronting our selfishness, neglect, or failures in the relationships and duties closest to us. The very language of compassion may become a shield against genuine self-knowledge.
Max Scheler considered this distortion in his study of ressentiment. He contrasted outwardly impressive action with the interior love that gives an action its true worth. In the Gospel, the poor widow places two small coins in the treasury. Her gift is more precious before God than the larger offerings of the wealthy, not merely because she is poor or because the amount is small, but because her action reveals the depth of her love. Saint Paul makes the same point when he says that even if he gives away all he possesses, but has not love, he gains nothing.
Christian love cannot be measured only by usefulness, political effect, or public recognition. We naturally want our efforts to accomplish good, but love is not merely one instrument among others for improving society. It transforms the person who loves and gives a deeper value to his actions. A small act performed with sincere charity may possess greater spiritual worth than a highly visible undertaking carried out through vanity, resentment, or ambition. God sees not only what we do, but the heart from which the action proceeds.
This distinction does not mean that intentions excuse every mistake. We are responsible for forming our judgement and for considering the consequences of our actions. Nevertheless, a mistaken person may sometimes act with real courage and generosity, while a correct observer remains enclosed in complacency. It is possible to possess a sound opinion about a public question and yet respond to another person’s sacrifice with envy or contempt. The opinion then becomes a means of avoiding the uncomfortable recognition that someone else has given more of himself than we have.
The danger can be seen whenever we reduce human actions entirely to political analysis. A person makes a costly sacrifice, but instead of asking what courage, loyalty, or love may have inspired it, we judge only whether he belonged to the correct side. If his judgement was mistaken, we assume that nothing admirable remains in his action. This can allow those who have risked nothing to feel superior to those who have given everything. Their moral satisfaction rests on being right rather than on loving well.
The lives of Dorothy Day and Mother Teresa also reveal the difference between love and ideological approval. Dorothy Day tried to live the Gospel among the poor, accepting a demanding form of poverty and service. Her political judgements can be debated, as can those of any historical person, but such debates should not obscure the reality of her love. Saint Vincent Ferrer supported the wrong claimant to the papacy during the Great Western Schism, yet the Church does not therefore deny his sanctity. A person can make errors of judgement and still possess heroic charity.
Mother Teresa has likewise been criticized by people who believed that her service to the dying did not advance the correct political or economic programme. Yet she lifted abandoned people from the streets, washed their wounds, and accompanied them at the end of life. Those who have never performed such acts may comfort themselves with the conviction that they hold better opinions about poverty or social reform. Their theories may contain important truths, but correct ideas do not exempt us from the commandment to love the person before us.
We should therefore be cautious when moral concern remains almost entirely abstract. It is often easier to love humanity than to love our neighbour. Humanity does not interrupt us, irritate us, or make inconvenient demands. We can defend distant groups in generous language while treating the members of our own family, community, or workplace with impatience. We may speak eloquently about compassion and remain unwilling to forgive a particular person who has offended us.
Public causes can of course deserve our attention. Christians should care about justice, poverty, war, persecution, and every threat to human dignity. We may have a genuine duty to speak, vote, give money, or work for reform. The danger begins when public concern becomes a substitute for personal conversion. We defend the oppressed elsewhere while ignoring someone lonely nearby, or we denounce injustice in society while behaving unjustly in our own responsibilities. The wider cause then serves as a distraction from the narrower duties in which God is presently asking us to love.
Scheler observed that apparent altruism can sometimes conceal resentment or self-hatred. A person who is unhappy with himself may turn towards public causes, not through an enlargement of the heart, but as a way of escaping his own interior disorder. He needs enemies against whom he can define himself and victims whom he can patronize. His sense of identity depends upon opposition. He is less interested in serving particular people than in belonging to the righteous side of a conflict.
This attitude can also appear in those whose personal lives have become disordered. A person may neglect his marriage, lose the trust of his children, abandon his faith, or despise the community from which he came. Rather than face these failures, he throws himself into causes that allow him to feel virtuous. He declares the approved opinion, supports the approved programme, and surrounds himself with people who assure one another of their moral superiority. None of these actions is necessarily wrong in itself. The question is whether they arise from love or serve as a refuge from conscience.
The counterfeit conscience soothes us because it always directs attention outward. Other people are guilty. Society is corrupt. The opposing group is dangerous. We may be entirely correct about some of these matters, but the truth can still be used dishonestly. A real conscience does not permit us to stop with the sins of others. It asks what we have done, what we have failed to do, whom we have neglected, and where we must change.
A properly formed Christian conscience also refuses to treat political conflict as ultimate. Historical struggles matter, and some questions involve grave moral principles. Yet none of these conflicts defines the whole of reality. Christ calls us to preserve within our souls a region of peace, charity, and forgiveness even while we contend firmly for the truth. Without this interior freedom, we begin to believe that victory over our opponents will save us, or that hatred becomes permissible because our cause is just.
The commandment remains: “You shall love your neighbour as yourself.” Our neighbour is not an abstraction or a political category. He is the actual person God has placed before us, perhaps someone whose opinions we dislike or whose defects try our patience. Love does not require us to approve error or avoid necessary conflict, but it does require us to seek the true good of the other person. We cannot satisfy this commandment merely by displaying the correct position before an approving audience.
Christ promises us life in abundance, but this life demands more than moral posturing. It requires that we leave behind the comfortable image we have constructed of ourselves and allow God to show us the truth. We must examine whether our indignation leads to sacrifice, whether our compassion reaches particular people, and whether our concern for justice begins with justice in our own conduct. These questions are not meant to paralyse us or make us suspicious of every good intention. They help us distinguish between the voice of conscience and the flattering imitation that asks almost nothing of us.
We will not escape self-deception entirely. Mixed motives enter even our best actions, and our concern for others can easily become entangled with vanity or resentment. The remedy is not to abandon public responsibility, but to purify it through prayer, honest examination, and concrete acts of charity. We can ask God to show us where we are hiding behind words and to give us the courage to act when conscience calls.
Johnson’s advice remains valuable: we should clear our minds of cant. For Christians, however, this purification must reach the heart as well as the mind. We need to move beyond the pleasure of appearing good and learn to love in truth. Only then will our concern for the world arise from a conscience that has first allowed God to judge, correct, and transform us.
By the Via Virtutis team
Photo by Milad Fakurian on Unsplash
