Joan of Arc's Vast Right Wing Conspiracy

A couple of weeks ago I argued for the inclusion of the mind in the task of loving our enemies, tying that necessity to Christian participation in politics. There really is no such thing as being charitable without being reasonable. Nevertheless, the Church wouldn't recommend a purely rational approach to the common good either. Pope Benedict XVI recommends St. Joan of Arc as an example for Christians who engage in public life. As we'll see below, she's a great model of intelligent action driven by heartfelt motives. In times like these, we could use a renewal of her political brand of holiness. A society made up of heartless thinkers and their thoughtlessly “charitable” collaborators can only become a society of equally culpable guides and followers—both headed for ruin. So this week I'd like to point out a contrary but not contradictory truth about love: while thoughtless love is in the end uncharitable, heartless thinking will be equally irrational.

Some of the most outspokenly “charitable” people I've ever met are at the same time some of the cruelest—like those who are duped into donating to a Catholic “charity” organization I've mentioned, which collects money at Mass only to direct people to the cruel, secular welfare system that subjects the poor and needy to a moral re-education in the arts of career-dependency, birth-control, abortion, and divorce. The churchgoers who give to that charity, while they may give themselves a dose of self-satisfying love, are “loving” the poor thoughtlessly and, in effect, cruelly.