He
often acts unjustly who does not do a certain thing; not only he who does a
certain thing.
—Marcus
Aurelius, Meditations, Book 9.5 (tr
Long)
I would sometimes complain about
having to go to Catholic Mass when I was young, having convinced myself, as
young people will often do, that there were surely far more important things to
do in life than seeking God.
But even back then there were parts
of the Mass that would move me deeply, though I tried stubbornly and
desperately to be bored. One of these was the Confiteor, a confession of sins:
I confess to almighty God
and to you, my brothers and sisters,
that I have greatly sinned,
in my thoughts and in my words,
in what I have done and in what I have
failed to do,
through my fault, through my fault,
through my most grievous fault;
therefore I ask blessed Mary
ever-Virgin,
all the Angels and Saints,
and you, my brothers and sisters,
to pray for me to the Lord our God.
I couldn’t help but see that I had
done wrong, and that this needed to be made right. But I further realized that,
in this version I had grown up with, the prayer specifically pointed out that
my faults were not only in what I had done, but also in what I had left undone.
I later learned of this as the distinction between sins of commission and sins
of omission.
That will still cut me to the bone,
because I am all too aware how my own act of ignoring what is good has done as
much harm as pursuing what is evil. If I turn aside from an injustice, I also
share in responsibility with the one who performed the injustice.
Apparently Edmund Burke never said
it, but that doesn’t make it any less true:
All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is
that good men do nothing.
Apparently Dietrich Bonhoeffer never
said it, but that doesn’t make it any less true:
Silence
in the face of evil is itself evil: God will not hold us guiltless. Not to
speak is to speak. Not to act is to
act.
Looking the other way doesn’t make
it go away.
Written in 7/2008
Written in 7/2008
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