Someone once said: “Extremism in defense of liberty is no
vice. Tolerance in the face of
tyranny is no virtue.” He had a point. We
wouldn’t think highly of anyone who was half-hearted about defending liberty,
or who did not condemn tyranny. There
are times when extremism isn’t a bad thing and toleration isn’t a good
thing.
Of course, this is all quite counter-intuitive.
Ordinarily, “extremism” is something we want to avoid.
We wouldn’t want to be caught dead being labeled a “fanatic,” or a
“fundamentalist,” for example. We
associate these with extremism. By
the same token we usually think of “tolerance” as a good thing.
We want people to think we’re open-minded, non-judgmental and
accepting.
But there are times when anything less than extremism would be wrong, and
nothing short of intolerance would be right.
We would not think highly of a law officer in his police cruiser driving
by and refusing to stop and help a little old lady being held up by a gang of
thugs. We wouldn’t praise him for
being “tolerant” of thugs, just as we wouldn’t condemn him as a
“fanatic” or “extremist” for stopping to help the lady or for
handcuffing and arresting the thugs.
Likewise with the truth of the Gospel.
We should not wish to condemn as “extremists” or “fanatics” those
who insist that their children are taught what the Church actually teaches,
anymore than we should wish to praise as “tolerant” or “open-minded”
anyone who subverted the Church’s teaching and fill their little minds with
all sorts of half-baked nonsense.
Having a tolerant,
“balanced attitude” may be a good thing, if we’re talking about
preferences of taste in styles of music, language, art, and culture.
As they say, “there is no disputing matters of taste.”
Here extremism is simply obnoxious, and what is called for is patience,
civility, and compromise.
But it
would be silly to call for moderation and compromise in Church teaching, which
is not a matter of taste but a matter of truth.
To strike a “balance” between Church teaching, on the one hand, and
dissent and heresy on the other, is not the mark of prudence and maturity, but
of folly, cowardice, disloyalty, or delusion.
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© 2003-2004 Philip Blosser