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On Right, Left and the Principle of No Contradiction

            Aristotle teaches, “it is impossible for anything at the same time to be and not to be.”[1] This is called the “principle of no contradiction.” Just keep that one tucked away in the back of your mind for the moment.

            For today I wish to address not philosophy, but rather the question of “right” and “left,” in the Catholic Church … oh yes, and there’s that oh-so-clever “centrist” whom we should not forget, too.

            My thesis is the following: Catholics who describe the ecclesial topography in terms of right and left (and center) violate the principle of no contradiction. This might not be instantaneously obvious, and so this article will try to cram a decent demonstration into a very small space as is this web page.

            A tiny digression: I always say that the great problems that rock the Church today aren’t theological, they are philosophical; and often those who put on the most airs of “enlightenment” most grievously fail on those basic things accessible to human reason.

Positions for the gutless

            When people describe the Church in terms of “left” and “right,” there can be varying versions of their scenario. On the left you have liturgical dancing, they say, and on the right you have Latin Mass ad orientem.  And, ever so clever, they will never fail to insist that the best road is the middle, the “center.” They won’t tell you that the center is whatever their opinion insists it is, but there you have it, “we want to be in the center.” Speak for yourself, I say.

            Another version is, “left” stands for everyone going to heaven, “right” stands for everyone going to hell. “Left” is social service, “right” is devotion. “Left” is guitar music in Mass, “right” is Gregorian Chant. “Left” is that the bible is stories of men, “right” is that God dictated it to the prophets as a boss to his secretary. “Left” is reason, “right” is faith. “Left” is progressive, “right” is traditional. And so the crafters of deceit paint it all for us. Yet by this plethora of definitions, we all see that left and right and center can mean an infinite number of things, and yet we fail to see that any position which can mean an infinity of things is just another name for relativism.

             As no one wants the label of right or left, everyone likes to declare himself in the center, delightfully hiding behind the ambiguities of all three terms. Is this ambiguity honest? Is this lack of precision the characteristic of a responsible thinker? The center becomes the place of mediocrity, where there is no courage to take a position on anything. Being in the center is the most gutless and dishonest position a Catholic, much less a priest, in the Catholic Church could take: given the preceding arguments, no other conclusion is possible.

            Furthermore, the “centrists” are most persuasive for the normal guy on the street. Who likes extremists, right? And we all somehow know that “virtue is in the middle.” But the “center” only makes a mockery of the “happy mean.” This is so because the happy mean is between excess and defect of right reason; and center is an arbitrary position among arbitrary positions.

It's not between right and left

            It’s not between right and left, guys. It’s between the truth and falsehood, and between good and evil. If it were between right and left, one could admit degrees. But there are no degrees between truth and falsehood, since falsehood is the privation of truth. There are no degrees between good and evil, since evil is the privation of good. There can be degrees of good, degrees of evil, levels of truth and levels of falsehood, but there cannot be something that is at once good and at once evil, nor anything true which can be false. Remember what Aristotle said about the principle of no contradiction? Well, it applies here.

            In the Catholic Church we’re not trying to find a consensus among ourselves, right, left and center. We’re trying to find a consensus with God, who is the Truth in person, and whose essence is love. This is why in Catholicism, we’re not about each doing whatever we feel like and whenever, but about living as the Church tells us – the obedience of faith.

            The great battle in our church today is evident to all. It started with the Reformation (or Protestant Revolt), it festered in Philosophism and the Enlightenment (which represented the supreme darkening of man’s reason), was spread through many vehicles such as Freemasonry, it poisoned theology during Modernism, and the battle still goes on. Ignoring it will not make it go away. The battle is here, and it has nothing to do with right and left.

            It’s not between right and left. It’s between grace and sin, and who would want to be “center” in such a battle? To be “center” would be with sin. It’s between truth and error, and who would want to be “center” in such a debate? To be in the “center” would be the same as being in error. It is true that many things enjoy such a nature to fill a whole spectrum, as refracted light, forms of literature, and the sizes of living things. But the truth, the good, God himself, and his mystical body the Church, are of a nature such that difference does not create variety, difference can only mean privation.

Aut aut...

            The conclusion is evident. You are either with Rome or against Rome. You are either with the Pope or against the Pope. You either disobey liturgical law or you observe it. You either disobey canon law or observe it. You either assent to Church teaching or you don’t. You either love or you don’t, and this stands true even if, yes, there are degrees of love. You either adhere to Sacred Tradition or you don’t. You either believe in transubstantiation or you don’t. You’re either in a state of grace or a state of sin. When you die, you will go either to heaven or hell.

            Aristotle understood the principle of no contradiction. The men of our day have difficulty understanding it. But let me dispel the difficulty for you: the principle of no contradiction is either true or it’s not. Get it?