Section 1: Respect

I. DEFINITION.—The respect which a Christian owes to his fellowman may be defined as a due acknowledgment of that fellowman’s dignity as a human being and a Christian, and a just regard for the good qualities he possesses, especially those of the moral order.

True respect for one’s fellowmen, like true self-knowledge and self-love, is based on supernatural Revelation.¹

¹ Matth. VI, 26, 30; VIII, 5 sqq.; X, 29 sqq.; XII, 12; XVI, 26; Mark II, 17; VII, 24 sqq.; Luke XIII, 16; XV, 4 sqq.; XIX, 1 sqq.; Gal. III, 27 sqq.; Col. III, 11.

The precept commanding us to respect our fellowmen is frequently inculcated by the New Testament. Thus we are commanded to “love one another with the charity of brotherhood”² and to treat one another “with honor.”³ We are assured that whatever we do to any one of our brethren, even the least, we do to the Lord Himself.⁴ The “new commandment” which Christ gave is that we should love one another as He loves us.⁵ This commandment He repeated over and over.⁶ We are to make no distinction between the strong and the weak, the rich and the poor.⁷ “If you have respect to persons, you commit sin, being reproved by the law as transgressors,”⁸ says St. James.

² Caritas fraterna, φιλαδελφία.

³ Rom. XII, 10.

⁴ Matth. XXV, 40.

⁵ John XIII, 34; 1 Pet. II, 17.

⁶ John XV, 12, 17.

⁷ Jas. II, 1–9.

⁸ Jas. II, 9.

Mutual respect between men, and especially between Christians, is a necessary foundation of true charity. To a considerable extent, of course, the respect we pay to our neighbor is gauged by his personal ability and his virtues, particularly by his honesty and fidelity. The external manifestation of this respect forms an important element of what is known as public opinion.

Nature demands that we honor our fellowmen in proportion to their worth and dignity. This precept is enforced by Divine Revelation. We will quote but two passages. “Render therefore to all men their dues: tribute to whom tribute is due; custom to whom custom; fear to whom fear; honor to whom honor.”⁹ “Let the priests that rule well be esteemed worthy of double honor: especially they who labor in the word and doctrine.”¹⁰

⁹ Rom. XIII, 7.

¹⁰ 1 Tim. V, 17.—Cfr. F. von Holtzendorff, Wesen und Wert der öffentlichen Meinung, Munich 1879; A. Stöckl, Das Christentum, Vol. II, pp. 327 sqq.

The respect we owe our fellowmen need not and should not blind us to their faults, much less to their moral unworthiness if they are wicked. Christ publicly condemned the scribes and Pharisees because of their hypocrisy and want of charity.¹¹ St. Paul says: “If any man love not our Lord Jesus Christ, let him be anathema, maranatha,”¹² i.e., let him be cut off from Christian fellowship,¹³ and the same Apostle admonishes the Thessalonians: “If any one obeyeth not what we say by this letter, take note of him, and hold no intercourse with him, in order that he may be ashamed.”¹⁴ He adds, however: “Do not regard him as an enemy, but admonish him as a brother,”¹⁵ meaning that the social and religious ostracism inflicted upon a contumacious Christian should be tempered by zeal for his eternal salvation.¹⁶

¹¹ Matth. XXIII, 13 sqq.

¹² 1 Cor. XVI, 22.

¹³ Cfr. C. Lattey, S.J., in the Westminster Version, III, 2, p. 33, note 3: “In the New Testament he is ‘anathema’ who is cut off from the Christian community (1 Cor. XVI, 22; Gal. I, 8–9), from Christ (Rom. IX, 3), or, as here [1 Cor. XII, 3], from God, and so under His curse. No one speaking thus of Christ can be moved by the Holy Ghost.”

¹⁴ 2 Thess. III, 14 sqq.

¹⁵ 2 Thess. III, 15.

¹⁶ C. Lattey, Thess., Westm. Version, p. 15.—Cfr. St. Augustine, Epist., 153 (al. 54), n. 5: “I do not think that the heavenly Teacher commands us to love impiety when He commands us to love our enemies, . . . since without doubt, if we piously worship God, we can have no enemies roused against us with the bitterest hatred and no persecutors except the impious. Are the impious therefore to be loved? Are good deeds to be done to the impious? Are prayers also to be offered for the impious? Certainly. For it is God who commands this; yet by this means He does not join us to the society of the impious, with whom He Himself is surely not associated when He spares them and grants them life and salvation.” (Migne, P. L., XXXIII, 655).

If a person whose conduct we are in duty bound to condemn holds an office in Church or State, we must distinguish between the office and its unworthy occupant;—no matter how deeply we may be disgusted with the latter, we must never lose respect for the former. This applies particularly to ecclesiastics. “Petri dignitas etiam in indigno herede non deficit,” says a medieval adage.

We violate the respect due to our fellowman if we despise him, or employ him as a means to a wicked end, or withhold from him the personal rights or prerogatives to which he is in justice entitled. The grievousness of the sin thus committed is gauged by the character of the right or prerogative involved, e.g., liberty of conscience.

A particularly offensive sin against the precept here under consideration is involved in the grosser forms of slavery. It is true that the treatment of slaves is usually softened by natural compassion and kindliness on the part either of the master or of public opinion, or by the precepts of religion; that the law has in some instances granted the wretched slaves a certain measure of protection, and that it is not necessary to assume that every slaveholder is a cruel tyrant. Yet the status of a slave is by its very definition not that of a person, but rather that of a brute beast or an inanimate object that is bought and sold according to the whims of its owner. Dr. Devas is undoubtedly right when he says that “slavery by its very nature encourages immorality, hinders proper family life among the slaves, gives the master an arbitrary power with which no man can be trusted, fosters the scorn of manual labor, as a degradation for the freeman, and thus is always a social evil, any incidental advantages which it may give being attainable by serfdom.”¹⁷

¹⁷ Political Economy, 3rd ed., pp. 529 sq.—Cfr. Leo XIII, Epist. ad Episc. Brasil., 5 Maii 1888; P. Allard, Art. “Slavery,” in the Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. XIV, pp. 36 sqq.; J. J. Fox, ibid., pp. 39 sqq.; A. Ebeling, Die Sklaverei von der ältesten Zeit bis auf die Gegenwart, Paderborn 1899; J. E. Ross, C.S.P., Christian Ethics, N.Y. 1919, p. 328.

Though slavery, at least in its cruder forms, has for the most part been abolished, it unfortunately still persists in an applied sense as an attribute of twentieth-century industrialism.

"In modern times," writes Archbishop Simar, "the working classes live under conditions similar to those of pagan antiquity. All too frequently the laborer is degraded to the level of a mere tool for money-making, and no regard is paid to his bodily health, his social and economic welfare, and his spiritual, religious, and moral development. The evils and dangers which threaten humanity in consequence of this social injustice have their fountain-head in un-Christian views and principles, and therefore cannot be successfully and permanently abolished unless Christianity is again allowed to govern all social relations. The fundamental postulate of reform is respect for the personal dignity of every man as a man and as a Christian, for in no other soil can true charity and its concomitant spirit of self-sacrifice thrive." ¹⁸ The keynote of the famous Labor Encyclical of Leo XIII, "Rerum Novarum," is the principle that conditions of labor shall be made more human and less servile, and that the worker be placed in a condition of greater economic freedom both as regards his security against want and the conditions of his labor. The worker is to be regarded as a human agent, not as a mere tool; and as one who has the right by means of his labor to achieve a wholesome human existence, since, as the Pope says, it is only by his labor that he can preserve and develop himself. His necessity gives him the right to such conditions of labor as will enable him to achieve a thoroughly human existence. Moreover, the same necessity demands that he should claim this right; since, as Leo XIII declares, "a man cannot give up his soul to servitude." Yet that is just what he is required to do under the system now largely prevalent in modern industry.

¹⁸ Simar, Moraltheologie, 3rd ed., p. 372.—Cfr. Th. Meyer, S. J., Die christlich-ethischen Sozialprinzipien und die Arbeiterfrage, 4th ed., Freiburg i. B. 1906; Reuter-Lehmkuhl, S. J., Neoconfessarius, pp. 214 sqq.; J. Biederlack, S. J., Die soziale Frage, 7th ed., pp. 206 sqq.

Furthermore, as Fr. Cuthbert points out in a recent brochure, the laborer is not "relieved of that servitude merely by receiving a higher wage; he simply sells his soul at a higher rate, unless the essential conditions of servitude are abolished. To continue to blunt his mind and soul by excessive bodily labor, to go through the continuous monotony of a machine-existence, to be perpetually harassed by the insecurity of labor dependent on the arbitrary will of an employer; to have to work in circumstances degrading to body and soul-under such conditions labor cannot but be demoralizing, however high the rate of wage might be. The new conscious aim in labor organization, which puts human personality in the foreground and explicitly regards wages and material advantages as mere means to an end, has undoubtedly a higher human and ethical quality than was found in the purely materialistic schools of economics: and for that reason deserves the sympathetic attention of all Catholics. The fact that this new purpose on the part of the labor organizations is associated among certain sections with a policy of expropriation, hardly distinguished, if at all, from confiscation of the capitalist's property, must not blind us to the justice of the main purpose itself: nor is it helpful to the cause of the Catholic Church to regard merely the extravagances and more violently revolutionary forms of the movement and to ignore the saner teaching of those who regard an economic revolution as inevitable, but believe that, with reasonableness on all sides, a just and peaceful solution of the problem is possible. That the economic system must be radically changed in many ways, few will be found to doubt, who have given any serious attention to the subject. Capitalism in the forms in which it has hitherto dominated the industrial world, is bound sooner or later to give way before the growing unity and consciousness of power among the workers; just as in the latter Middle Ages, feudalism had to give way before the growing power of the commercial class. The only question to-day is whether this radical economic change can be brought about peacefully by a mutual recognition of reasonable claims on the part of the employer and the worker, or whether a violent solution is inevitable. If either party refuses to treat with the other in a spirit of reasonableness and with intent to recognize the fundamental principles of justice underlying the situation, then violent revolution, in the opinion of sane and impartial observers, will surely come: and unfortunately on both sides there are those who are prepared to stake their all upon a violent issue. If that issue is to be avoided, it is needful that all who wish for a peaceful solution should unite in a careful and sympathetic consideration of the ethical questions involved. For, after all, the problem as it presents itself to-day, is primarily and ultimately an ethical problem. 'It is not merely discontent as to wages,' says H. S. Furniss, ¹⁹ 'but dissatisfaction with their lives as wage-earners, that lies at the heart of the trouble'" ²⁰ READINGS.—H. Th. Simar, Lehrbuch der Moraltheologie, PP. 371 sqq.—Grimm, Die Ethik Jesu, Pp. 74 sqq.—I. Döllinger, Heidentum und Judentum, pp. 665 sqq.—A. Stöckl, Das Christentum, Vol. II, pp. 327 sqq.—P. Allard, Les Esclaves Chrétiens depuis les Premiers Temps de l’Église, 3rd ed., Paris 1900.—F. X. Linsenmann, Lehrbuch der Moraltheologie, pp. 658 sqq-- A. Ebeling, Die Sklaverei von der ältesten Zeit bis auf die Gegenwart, Paderborn 1899.-V. Cathrein, S. J., Moralphilosophie, 5th ed., Vol. II, pp. 444 sqq.—P. Schanz, Apologie des Christentums, Vol. III, 3rd ed., Pp. 618 sqq., 635 sqq.—A. Harnack, Die Mission und Ausbreitung des Christentums, Vol. I, 2nd ed., Pp. 145 sqq.-Th. Meyer, Institutiones Iuris Naturalis, Vol. II, Freiburg i. B. 1900, pp. 71 sqq.—IDEM, Die christlich-ethischen Sozialprinzipien und die Arbeiterfrage, 4th ed., Freiburg 1906.- Reuter-Lehmkuhl, Neo-Confessarius, Pp. 214 sqq.—H. Biederlack, S. J., Die soziale Frage, 7th ed., Pp. 206 sqq.-Fr. Cuthbert, O.S.F.C., The Ethics of Labor, N. Y. 1922.

¹⁹ The Industrial Outlook, Intr., p. 16.

²⁰ Fr. Cuthbert, O.S.F.C., The Ethics of Labor, N. Y. 1922, Pp. 5 sqq.