Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 9.5

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