WHEN EVIL BECOMES COMMON SENSE
Slave sale, Charleston, South Carolina from a sketch by Eyre Crowe (1856) New York Public Library, Image ID - 812592.
What can common sense know about evil? If I witness an act of violence or even a system designed to oppress people, it is in the purview of my common sense to name as evil what I perceive as a violent act or oppressive system. What does common sense know about overcoming evil? For example, I might by “common sense” advocate that Black Lives Matter is a movement crucial to overcoming the evil of racism only to be confronted someone whose “common sense” equates Black Lives Matter with terrorism. We have all, most likely, encountered someone whose common sense understanding is contrary to our own. What does this tell us about "common sense”? Bernard Lonergan explains in Insight that common sense is capable of achieving understanding to the end of generating a public store of knowledge, yet common sense understanding, unlike theoretical understanding, is limited to the "concrete and particular, the immediate and practical." (1) Theoretical knowledge, on the other hand, aspires to a level of understanding that is universally valid knowledge. So when asking questions about evil, common sense understanding attempts to say something about a concrete and particular instance of evil, while theoretical knowledge seeks to know something universal about evil as it relates to concepts. Thus, theoretical understanding of evil should allow us to gain insight into all concrete and particular instances of evil.
Now, I would be remiss if I continued without addressing a disturbing point of view that I mentioned was a matter of common sense for sizable segment of the United States' populace. What is happening when people as a matter of common sense think that Black Lives Matter should be equated with terrorism? How does one perceive a group of people historically and to this day oppressed on the basis of race, who are crying out for justice, to be terrorists? For Lonergan, the answer is the concept of bias. Bias is "the more or less conscious deliberate choice" to refuse understanding to the end of self-preservation of ourselves and the way we understand the world. (2) Bias is selfish, shortsighted, and perversely loves ignorance and falsehood. Racism is a bias that revels in stupidity, obstructs insight, and forms a selfish, distorted view of reality. How we understand reality is dependent upon our horizon, which is what it is possible for us to pay attention to from a metaphorical standpoint. Our horizon determines what our minds might be able to understand and what obstructs our understanding. A racist horizon stems from bias. A white racially biased horizon forms the immediate and practical understanding of common sense applied in concrete situations to greater and lesser extent by white Americans.
Is it enough to confront the common sense derived from white racial bias by employing common sense that is (hopefully) less biased? Common sense seeks practical answers to concrete situations, yet true practical solutions often elude anyone who excludes questions that are not seen as immediately useful. In contrast, sociologists, economists, philosophers, and other theorist have already moved beyond common sense understanding when addressing racism as systemic, and by creating technical terms such as "white privilege" and "white fragility." My aim, however, is not theorize a solution to racism; my hubris has limits. Nor as a white male can I assume that racists are always persons other than myself or those with whom I associate. Yet, as a priest I must take responsibility for the community of faith that I lead; racism in our churches and communities should be confronted. Also, the vocation of the church is nothing short of transforming evil into the good by reconciliation in and through the love and grace of Christ. Inasmuch as racism is evil, the church must take responsibility to stand in solidarity with those who seek justice and to overcome racism. If common sense understanding will not provide a way to overcome racism, what theoretical understanding does the church have? The Christianity that will best join its voice to those who seek racial justice is a Christianity that has a profound and robust understanding of the cross, for it is in and through the cross that God in Christ directly confronts evil.
The Law of the Cross is an idea Lonergan developed in the posthumously published essay "Sacralization and Secularization." In its most basic form, is that one should love one’s enemies and do good to those that do one evil. The structure of the Law of the Cross is found embodied in Jesus’ life in a threefold manner. First, Jesus was crucified because of sin. Jesus offered himself as a sacrifice to free humanity from sin. Also, it was a grave sin for humanity embodied by the Jewish and Roman nations to kill Jesus, God incarnate, who was perfect and without sin. Second, by voluntarily taking up the cross Jesus transformed the evil done to him into a good. Jesus’ death defeated the power of sin that attempted to kill him. (3) By voluntarily taking up the cross Jesus demonstrates loving his enemies; thus, he takes what would be an act of evil and transforms it into an act of devotion to God. Third, God raised Jesus from the dead establishing the Christian community. The Church is the ark of salvation, the Body of Christ in which its members are saved from sin and evil. The “supreme good” is the Body of Christ, which is a community of redeemed persons rightly ordered to God.
For Robert Doran, the fourfold way in which The Law of the Cross transforms human evil into the supreme good is by identifying sacralizations to be dropped, sacralizations to be fostered, secularizations to be resisted, and secularizations to be fostered. This is a statement pregnant with meaning that needs to be unpacked. Sacralizations to be dropped are “all attempts to employ the name or word of God or any other sacral trappings to justify not only natural evils but also persecution.” (4) The Law of the Cross prohibits doing evil to others in the name of God. Sacralizations to be fostered are “adherence[s] to what Lonergan calls the just and mysterious Law of the Cross.” (5) That is, religion should consist in embodying the threefold order of the Law of the Cross in imitation of Christ. Secularizations to be resisted are “any consequent efforts to locate human ‘coming of age’ as a perfection to be attained exclusively in this life and exclusively on the basis of human resources.” (6) That is, the idea of the secular as a space for human flourishing bereft of the presence of God and all that it entails is to be resisted. One can only embody the Law of the Cross by the supernatural act of God’s grace. Secularizations to be fostered are notions and human behaviors that reveal the intelligibility of the natural order. (7) Inasmuch as God permits a real distinction between his being and goodness and the being and goodness of finite creation that creation has an intelligibility. However, this is not to imagine, as in the case of secularizations to be resisted, that the intelligibility of finite creation is not sourced and grounded in infinite God. For God is the cause and ground of all being.
In this fourfold manner, The Law of the Cross transforms the evils committed by humans into the supreme good, which is the body of Christ. The evil of racism is partial withdrawal from the divine order. Evil, even the horrific evil of racism, is the illusion that one can establish an order in the image of the finite creature over and against the order of God. Common sense understanding might mistake racism as viable though repellant point of view, or more often common sense understanding of racism imagines racism was a viable way of life in the past, one that made the modern world possible, but should politely be disavowed or relegated to a historical position. However, the Law of the Cross causes us to understand that racism never rises above the absurd. Racism is the product of heavily biased minds that love ignorance and falsehood rather than truth, beauty, or goodness. In contrast, the intelligent person attuned to theoretical understanding is able to grasp that no end can hope to vindicate evil means. Anne M. Carpenter has recently exhorted us to take heed of Lonergan's directive that we be attentive, intelligent, reasonable, and responsible, because in a time such as this we must endeavor towards authentic love and understanding of ourselves and each other. (8) By loving and understanding each other and the world we inhabit, we participate in the beloved community of the people of God that will surely overcome and transform all manner of evils into the supreme good of God's justice and mercy.
Lonergan, Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan, 3: Insight, 201.
M. Shawn Copeland, Enfleshing Freedom, 13.
Doran relies on the work of René Girard, especially that Jesus’ death broke “the single victim scapegoating mechanism” (cf. René Girard, I See Satan Fall Like Lightning (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2007)).
Doran, The Trinity in History, 228.
Ibid.
Ibid, 230.
Ibid, 229.
https://churchlifejournal.nd.edu/articles/lonergan-on-a-world-on-fire/?fbclid=IwAR05QzZZmF5-0mJCk7OkIh0Gz5PAT66H4OWdQge9mPU3sUIeV34Tntq7uGM#_ftn6
