Why loving your (Catholic) neighbor is difficult

We Christians often fail abysmally regarding the second greatest commandment Our Lord gave us. A few reasons why.

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There are siblings and there are friends. If you have had the good fortune to have had both, you know these are not the same type of relationship.

You choose your friends: the Lord chooses your siblings, just as He chose your parents. You can spend the rest of your life resenting Him—or them—for that fact, but either way you must admit that in the end, it was His mysterious choice.

It is tempting to assume that we do better at picking our friends than God has done in picking our siblings—but how could this possibly be the case? If you believe, as Catholics should believe, that your Father God loves you and arranges the best for you, then you may be forced to admit by sheer logic that the handful of stubborn and irritating humans who are your brothers and sisters are better for your soul than your steadfast, warm, fun, and agreeable friends. Although it may be difficult and painful to see His provision if you don’t currently get along with your siblings, it’s much easier to see it if you do.

But again, your friendship with your siblings—and I am so blessed to be friends with mine, having quarreled with them incessantly throughout our rowdy childhood—has a different quality than the relationships with your friends. God chose your siblings, and it could be because He was calling you to befriend them. Even if they are intractable, voluble, incomprehensible, or just so different—or similar!—to you that you can never agree—if you choose to work to make that sibling relationship into a friendship, you discover something that is even better: someone who knows you and STILL loves you.

But it seems from the sad misery of which I have heard that most people, including Catholics, are unaware of this needed trajectory. At most, they learn to tolerate their siblings, but don’t ever befriend them. And distance, different lifestyle choices, and the poison of money entanglements can chill relations to bare civility.

The reason I bring this up is because the template that the Lord has given us for understanding our relationship with our fellow Catholics in our parish, church community, or other pool of believers we encounter in our walk with Christ is exactly that of brothers and sisters. We are all meant to be siblings in the family of God. As Christ reminds us in the Gospel: He choose us—we did not choose Him. And He just as He chose our biological siblings, so we must believe that He also chose our parish family. He chose you to walk alongside these fellow incomprehensible and annoying and somewhat pretentious human beings as part of His body.

Metal print by Honeycomb Proverbs.

And this means there is always going to be something a little bit more visceral and earthy about our relationship with fellow serious Catholics. There is a bit more at stake. Many of us experience a special frustration in dealing with our erstwhile brethren, and having witnessed this throughout my life, I want to post about it. After all, it does seem to me that this project of seeking Culture Recovery is kind of pointless if you can’t get along with the folks that you are trying to recover culture with.

This attitude isn’t limited to Catholics: when I was part of a Protestant homeschooling co-op, I saw my Protestant friends who seemed to have endless patience with me, an outsider, whereas their fellow churchgoers could drive them crazy with rage. It seems paradoxical: at a time when Christianity is under attack from nearly every direction in society, you would presume that devout Christians who believed nearly the exact same things would be united in tactics, understandings, and strategies. But the truth is, this rarely, if ever happens, and for many of my Catholic friends, this is a constant source of frustration and even fury.

There are various sociological reasons for why people who have much in common would attack each other rather than banding together—Rene Girard offers us the idea that mimetic desires are the cause of most conflicts—but I believe there are some other reasons why many devout Catholics may find themselves having more cordial relations with those who are outside their pocket of faith than with their equally fervent brothers and sisters in the Catholic Church. And because some Catholics are continually astounded and hurt by this friction with those also on “Team Catholic,” I thought this article might help assuage some of that hurt or at least bring about understanding.

So why do devout Catholics often find it easier to get along with the non-devout, or at any rate find that non-Catholics are frequently more reasonable, charitable, easier to do business with, and to get along with in general?

Here might be a few reasons why:

1. It is often easier to love and befriend non-Christians and non-Catholics or other “outsiders” because the expectations of both parties are lower. Many people today don’t know how to handle serious conflicts. It often brings about a complete rupture of relationship, and forgiveness is unheard of or maybe suspicious. When a devout Catholic is forgiving, patient, and keeps their word, outsiders may be happily surprised and respond in kind. This is, of course, wonderful and how we Catholics should indeed behave. And it is always a joy to discover truly decent people in the world among those who don’t share the faith. Again, this might simply be due to lower expectations.

2. We tend to idealize Christian community. We think it is a place where we are accepted, understood, and thus treated trustingly and lovingly. We compare it mistakenly to our relationships with our friends, who are often as anxious to accommodate themselves to us as we are to them (especially when these friendships are mostly online). When we are comparing our relationships with fellow Catholics, we should use the metaphor of the Scripture: we are brothers and sisters in Christ. And as stated, these are two VERY different relationships. Siblings do know you and understand you and that is often why they don’t trust you. They detect the fake or the half-baked response or the mere show of charity and they are not impressed. If your response to fellow Catholics is anger, it may be at least partially the anger from being found out. I believe we have to seriously ask ourselves this each time a fellow Catholic enrages us.

3. If you are a devoted Catholic, people outside the faith may know you, but because they don’t know Christ, they don’t know you in a FUNDAMENTAL way; they don’t know the perfection to which you—we—are called. It’s easier to hide on the outside.

4. Pride also sneaks into these relationships. It is, I think, seductively easy to compare our generous and enlightened treatment of the non-Catholic and their grateful responses unfavorably with the reaction of our fellow Catholics when we offer them the same. First of all, this entire comparison should be suspect, as opening ourselves up to pride and pique. And if our fellow Catholics see through us and are not impressed with our generous enlightened treatment of them, who can blame them?

5. Remember the Devil has a much higher interest in destroying your relationships with fellow Catholics than he does in destroying your relationships with outsiders. He may even plan on using those relationships to lead you away from the Faith eventually. We are never as strong as we think we are. This alone is a reason for devoting more time and energy to maintaining and restoring relationships with our fellow Catholics by intentionally doing what we can to improve them.

   

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6. Your fellow Catholics are your seminary, your sanctification, your way of loving Christ. As Josemaria Escriva pointed out, the way we thank God for His undeserved love is by loving those who don’t deserve it and that includes our fellow Catholics. It’s dangerously easy to switch friend groups and faith groups when our fellow Catholics fail us, betray us, or harm us. Our call is to forgive, and attempt to reconcile (so far as it depends on us). St. Paul urges: “If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone.” (Romans 12:18)

7. Again, you are not as strong as you think you are. If your friendships are mainly with non-Catholics who find your faith impressive, this can nurture a flattering feeling of being strong, or at least being a better Catholic than you actually are. Hopefully you can spot the hubris in this. We must never forget how dependent we are on His grace. Christ warns us, “Apart from Me you can do nothing.” (John 15:5)

8. “Bear with one another. Forgive whatever grievances you have against one another. Forgive as the Lord has forgiven you.” St. Paul exhorts us in Colossians 3:13. These are the lessons which should be learned in family and can be learned within Catholic community, if only we will allow ourselves to be schooled. Growth comes from friction, including sometimes painful friction, not from warm baths of praise and good feels. Most of us need that painful friction in order to truly change.

   

   How many times must we forgive? Answer in print by Marlene Kennedy Studio.

9. If you are getting angry with a fellow Catholic, remember the common sense you should have learned in high school: phones and letters and emails and texts can exacerbate misunderstandings. Face to face conversation is best. If you are angered at a fellow Catholic because of what they wrote online (mea culpa, this is often me) please remember this lesson from high school. If you have an offline relationship with that person, have the courage to resolve it face to face. And if you don’t, it might be wiser to assume that you don’t have the full picture.

10. If you have managed to befriend your own siblings, why not use that wisdom to deal with your fellow Catholics? It might be good to treasure these parish relationships a little more. Why not thank them, point out what you like about them to others, let them know that you are grateful for them in some way? If a fellow Catholic is forgiving, keeps their promises to you, is pleasant to work with or do business with, please affirm them.

11. “See how they love one another.” That praise of the early Christians from their pagan neighbors is an indictment upon us. If non-Catholics see or hear you berating your fellow Catholics, they are probably not going to be impressed by you—or your religion. (Please note the list of those not impressed might include your own children and teens.) It’s fine to let them know our difficulties—how tough it is to love each other and how often we fail. If you do lose your temper with fellow Catholics in front of others, apologize for your poor example. Forgiveness and humility changes everything.

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“Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.” (Romans 12:21) As we struggle to follow Christ’s second greatest commandment to love one another, let us ask for His help. He does—and should—and can—make all the differences in our relationships. So don’t be discouraged by your relationships with your fellow Catholics. Cut them a break, see if you can find some way to reconcile, and if someone really irritates you, pray for them. And see if you can accept the opportunity for grace they are offering you.

And if you manage to befriend them in the same way you made friends out of your earthly siblings, you will have achieved one of the greatest blessings in this world, as well as a foretaste of the next.

Let us continue to pray for one another.