I believe this is from about 2012. Thoughts?
"Tolerance is not a Christian virtue. Charity, Justice, Mercy, Prudence, Honesty - These are Christian virtues. Tolerating grave evil within society is itself a serious form of evil.
Tolerance comes from the Latin words tolerare , which means to bear or sustain, and tollere , which means to lift up. It implies bearing other people and their beliefs the way we bear a burden or a really nasty migraine headache. It's a negative. And it's not a Christian virtue. As Catholics we have a duty to treat all people, regardless of their beliefs, with justice, charity, mercy, prudence, patience, and understanding. We're not asked to "tolerate" them but to love them, which is a much more demanding task. Obviously, tolerance is an important democratic working principle. Most of the time, it's a good and vital thing. But tolerating lies about the nature of the human person is a sin. Tolerating grave evil in a society is an equally grave evil. And using "tolerance" as an excuse for not living and witnessing Jesus Christ in our private lives and in our public actions is not an act of civility. It's a form of cowardice.
You know, there's a reason why "spirituality" is so popular in the United States today and religion is so criticized. Private spirituality can be quite satisfying. But it can also become a designer experience. In fact, the word spirituality can mean just about anything a person wants it to mean. It's private, it's personal, and, ultimately, it doesn't place any more demands on the individual than what he or she wants. Religion is a very different creature. The word religion comes from the Latin word religare to bind. Religious believers bind themselves to a set of beliefs. They submit themselves to a community of faith with shared convictions and hopes. A community of believers has a common history. It also has a shared purpose and future that are much bigger than any political authority. And that has implications. Individuals pose no threat to any state. They can be lied to, bullied, arrested, or killed. But communities of faith do pose a threat. Religious witness does have power, and communities of faith are much harder to silence or kill. This is why active religious faith has always been so distrusted and feared by every one of the big modern ideologies whether it's Marxism, or fascism, or the cult of selfishness and comfortable atheism that we see in Europe and the United States today.
People who take the question of human truth, freedom and meaning seriously will never remain silent about it. They can't. They'll always act on what they believe, even at the cost of their reputations and lives. That's the way it should be. Religious faith is always personal, but it's never private. It always has social consequences, or it isn't real. And this is why any definition of "tolerance" that tries to turn religious faith into a private idiosyncrasy, or a set of personal opinions that we can have at home but that we need to be quiet about in public, is doomed to fail. The mentality of suspicion toward religion is becoming its own form of intolerance. I have seen a kind of secular intolerance develop in our own country over the past two decades. The modern secular view of the world assumes that religion is superstitious and false; that it creates division and conflict; and that real freedom can only be ensured by keeping God out of the public square. But if we remove God from public discourse, we also remove the only authority higher than political authority, and the only authority that guarantees the sanctity of the individual."
Archbishop Charles J Caput
"Tolerance is not a Christian virtue. Charity, Justice, Mercy, Prudence, Honesty - These are Christian virtues. Tolerating grave evil within society is itself a serious form of evil.
Tolerance comes from the Latin words tolerare , which means to bear or sustain, and tollere , which means to lift up. It implies bearing other people and their beliefs the way we bear a burden or a really nasty migraine headache. It's a negative. And it's not a Christian virtue. As Catholics we have a duty to treat all people, regardless of their beliefs, with justice, charity, mercy, prudence, patience, and understanding. We're not asked to "tolerate" them but to love them, which is a much more demanding task. Obviously, tolerance is an important democratic working principle. Most of the time, it's a good and vital thing. But tolerating lies about the nature of the human person is a sin. Tolerating grave evil in a society is an equally grave evil. And using "tolerance" as an excuse for not living and witnessing Jesus Christ in our private lives and in our public actions is not an act of civility. It's a form of cowardice.
You know, there's a reason why "spirituality" is so popular in the United States today and religion is so criticized. Private spirituality can be quite satisfying. But it can also become a designer experience. In fact, the word spirituality can mean just about anything a person wants it to mean. It's private, it's personal, and, ultimately, it doesn't place any more demands on the individual than what he or she wants. Religion is a very different creature. The word religion comes from the Latin word religare to bind. Religious believers bind themselves to a set of beliefs. They submit themselves to a community of faith with shared convictions and hopes. A community of believers has a common history. It also has a shared purpose and future that are much bigger than any political authority. And that has implications. Individuals pose no threat to any state. They can be lied to, bullied, arrested, or killed. But communities of faith do pose a threat. Religious witness does have power, and communities of faith are much harder to silence or kill. This is why active religious faith has always been so distrusted and feared by every one of the big modern ideologies whether it's Marxism, or fascism, or the cult of selfishness and comfortable atheism that we see in Europe and the United States today.
People who take the question of human truth, freedom and meaning seriously will never remain silent about it. They can't. They'll always act on what they believe, even at the cost of their reputations and lives. That's the way it should be. Religious faith is always personal, but it's never private. It always has social consequences, or it isn't real. And this is why any definition of "tolerance" that tries to turn religious faith into a private idiosyncrasy, or a set of personal opinions that we can have at home but that we need to be quiet about in public, is doomed to fail. The mentality of suspicion toward religion is becoming its own form of intolerance. I have seen a kind of secular intolerance develop in our own country over the past two decades. The modern secular view of the world assumes that religion is superstitious and false; that it creates division and conflict; and that real freedom can only be ensured by keeping God out of the public square. But if we remove God from public discourse, we also remove the only authority higher than political authority, and the only authority that guarantees the sanctity of the individual."
Archbishop Charles J Caput
