Tolerance: The Anti-Charity
Martin Dougherty
Like water, true charity flows from the highest unto the lowest. All humanity receives this charity from God; His laws and His Divine Will. Without God, no true charity is possible. Man knows that which God gives is necessary for survival and for true happiness. When man turns away from God, he seeks substitutes for what God provides.
One of these gifts is charity.
Man has forged an idol to replace this most precious gift. Tolerance is man's notion of charity. This secular notion of charity is rife with shortcomings, some of which seem to be geared to destroy charity, rather than to kindle it.
Faith, hope and charity are the three theological virtues (as recognized by the Catholic Church). According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, the virtues, “have as their final scope to dispose man to acts conducive to his true happiness.” The theological virtues are geared toward the supernatural ends, which is to attain heaven at the end of one's earthly life.
Tolerance, however, has forsaken the attainment for heaven with the vain pursuit of heaven on earth. Tolerance and charity have two entirely different ends, which are diametrically opposed. This opposition is keenly felt in current, secular society.
Catholics are urged by their secular brethren to “tolerate” certain actions and ideas, such as homosexuality, abortion, divorce and others. Many who ascribe to the modernist notion of tolerance consider the Catholic Church's positions to be obsolete, out-of-touch and intolerable. More colorful adjectives have been used to similar effect.
Society has taken action against those who will not become “tolerant,” with legislation, public mockery and ridicule and the indoctrination of the youth. The Church's sphere of influence erodes under the banner of “tolerance”.
Tolerance falls short of charity in a number of other ways. Tolerance is a self-centered ideology. While charity flows from the eternal, tolerance is limited to the finite, and as such, it tends to promote selfish or self-serving ends. In this respect, it shares some common traits with sin. It is not surprising, since tolerance is a tool to promote and encourage a multitude of sins.
Tolerance is the tool of the modernists in their war against God and His Church. Under the banner of “tolerance”, the modernist has eaten away at morality and objective truth. He has promoted the notion of subjectivism to coincide with his earthly notions of charity. He has made the earth his final end, and has cast aside the eternal for the finite.
Charity is geared to the salvation of souls. Since the eternal is the focus of true charity, and with eternity being boundless, true charity is endless. It is selfless. Charity seeks not the promotion of sin and evil, but the good of all, in this world and the next.
This is why tolerance is the anti-charity. Tolerance is man's feeble attempt to replace the charity of God with an ideology of his own devices. It is the new golden calf, from which many souls will fall.
