Dear Fred,
Separated at birth? http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2013/03/pope-francis-mercy-makes-world-more-just.html
A question on the
Myers-Briggs test asks: Which do you value more - mercy or justice?
It is a splendid question and
cuts close.
Conservatives, I imagine,
answer justice - and liberals mercy. Not always... but typically.
The heart leans to the left.
Cold-hearted justice is not
justice at all, for the fullness of Love - which is to say the fullness of
Incarnation - is justice not only tempered by mercy but made warm and convivial
by it.
Without infusion of mercy,
justice is a bloodless corpse.
Useful perhaps but not
vibrant.
In the end, it is not
necessary that justice partake of charity.
Justice is what we deserve,
what we earn; in effect what we have vouchsafed unto ourselves -- with no need
to beg The Court's mercy.
Without mercy, justice is a
settled, self-sufficient account - rugged individualism at its most perfect.
And in that perfection, at
its most diabolic.
There is no gift, no gracia,
no grazie in the rudiments of justice.
No for giveness.
In Spanish, gracia means
"fun" and "good cheer" as much as it means
"grace" and "gift."
In general, Anglo-Saxons are
too literal to get past "the letter of the law."
Justice.
Just ice.
A cheap pun but telling.
I find myself wondering if
merciless justice is a form of injustice.
Pax
Alan
PS Although Shylock is
a caricature, there is truth in his epitomization of justice. It is as if he
has no blood of his own and must bleed others to get it, to remember its heat,
its passion. He knows what "the scales" say. But he knows nothing of
"hundredfold returns," much less how to give them. For gracia. For
graciousness. For fun.
My sister Janet was delighted to find
her new neighbors called their cat Portia, only to discover they spelled it
Porsche. Ah, the ravages of cowboy capitalism, conservatism's completely
unacknowledged sin. Pope Francis is about to have at it.
The piggishness of America's ruling class -- and the lickspittle adulation of debased populists -- arises from the desperation of conservatives who have lost faith in everything but the salvific power of miserliness. They will learn -- and Francis will help teach them -- that misery and miserliness arise from the same uncharitable impulse. Despite all the Christian pretense, American conservatives have lost Faith, Hope and Charity. http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2013/03/viral-video-shows-huge-gap-between.html
At bedrock, American Christians believe in violence.
"Gun Cartoons and Gun Violence Bibliography"
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