Cronin: Evolution of acceptable truth

Languages and words evolve over time. Take the word “tolerance” for example. We used to say things like “to each his own” and “live and let live,” and as a rule, people generally suffered opposing points of view with patience and grace. In today’s more enlightened culture, however, it sometimes seems the contemporary understanding of that word has since morphed into something more akin to this: the only acceptable truth is our truth.

Consider acceptable truth the proverbial slippery slope, a patient continuum of imperceptibly diminishing tolerance of others with whom we disagree. How and where does it begin? Think small.

Acceptable truth is imposed incrementally. We Americans love our comedy and what could possibly be any more harmless than Gayle King and Charlie Rose on CBS This Morning yucking it up like a couple silly sophomores over the latest David Letterman Top 10 jokes mocking the pope? There is absolutely nothing wrong with humor. On the contrary, was it not by gravity that Satan fell? It is just that this stuff is a funny sword. What better Trojan horse to sneak acceptable truth past the gate than humor that cuts?

Meanwhile, in San Francisco, Archbishop Cordeleone has been under intense pressure to reverse his earlier decision requiring teachers at Catholic schools within the diocese to follow Catholic principles and remain true to the teachings of the Vatican. In addition to all the other protests and objections, the city’s board of supervisors has even threatened legal action, claiming his actions were “contrary to shared San Francisco values” and violated “non-discrimination, women’s rights, inclusion, and equality for all humans.” Imagine. Catholic schools actually wanting to teach Catholicism. How dare they?

And then we have the Federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act, originally intended to safeguard Native American spiritual beliefs. Interestingly, Christian business owners attempting to cite that same legislation, or some state derivative thereof, have instead been pilloried as hateful, angry, intolerant bigots who discriminate. I suspect they are not any of these things at all but rather are simply holding fast to the truth as they believe it to be as revealed by the Rabbi in Matthew 19:15. It really is just that simple. This ancient truth, however, is becoming increasingly unacceptable. Leveraging almost limitless support, champions of truth are systematically compelling these unreasonable Christian people to accept the new reality that Jesus Christ was simply wrong. These people must be forced to abandon those obsolete values and beliefs. Or else!

All this does beg the inevitable question. Just how far will the new guardians of tolerance go in their effort to subjugate these irritating, stiff-necked people of faith who continually refuse to embrace the new acceptable truth? Even now, many people of influence are demanding orthodox religions embrace the morality of abortion, homosexuality, and same sex unions. And their numbers are growing.

Many denominations have already acquiesced to the pressure. Some never will. But how bad could this actually get? In what was perhaps an unnecessarily dramatic fashion, Chicago’s Cardinal George nonetheless did say the following while expressing his thoughts about what the complete secularization of our society could possibly bring. “I expect to die in bed. My successor will die in prison. His successor will die a martyr in the public square.” Hyperbole, of course.

Maybe this young, liberal, college sophomore named Taylor Schmidt said it best of all in his brilliant lament on the death of civilized discourse on campus. In the article “How campus progressives ruined liberalism for the rest of us,” he wrote this. “What is stereotypically ‘liberal’ is not always right, and what fits most cleanly into our belief systems is not always true. Unwillingness to listen to opinions differing from the mainstream and attempting to silence opposing viewpoints is completely illiberal. Silencing minority viewpoints does not prove them wrong and says more about those doing the silencing than those being silenced.”