George Floyd, RIP

Judge not, that you may not be judged,
For with what judgment you judge, you shall be judged: and with what measure you mete, it shall be measured to you again.
And why seest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye; and seest not the beam that is in thy own eye?
Or how sayest thou to thy brother: Let me cast the mote out of thy eye; and behold a beam is in thy own eye?
Thou hypocrite, cast out first the beam in thy own eye, and then shalt thou see to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye.

(Matt 7:1-5).

In the gospel our Lord speaks to us of the limits of human judgment. Whether George Floyd's homicide was motivated by racism is far from clear, and yet judgment has already been declared infallibly. A man is presumed innocent until proven guilty is a legal standard that only applies to minorities. Who are the racists?

Meanwhile Floyd's supporters, those angered by his bodily death (for they care not about the death of the soul), are telling the rest of us that he is a hero; that his death will not be in vain, for laws will be passed in his honor. Very well then.

But Mr. Floyd was no hero, that much is certain. What we know of the man so far is that he he was an ex-con with multiple felony convictions, a drug addict, a former porn star (sex slave), and the father of five children by two women, none of whom enjoyed the devoted love of a father. Although "free" from prison, Floyd was not wholly free from the slavery of sin, the prison of his own making. Indeed, on the day of his death, George was high on drugs and attempting to steal with counterfeit money. He had pointed a gun at a pregnant woman's belly. Thus it would seem that George was unrepentant: the deep wounds of sin are impossible to overcome without prayer and the sacraments.

Truly George Floyd was a casualty of liberalism long before he was killed. 

In light of all this it occurred to me how radically different are the saints of God from the heroes upheld for veneration by merely secular standards. Instead of promoting virtue and trying to live holy lives pleasing to God, the children of the so-called Enlightenment are constantly building the biggest walls around themselves, legal "reforms" as they are pleased to call their heavy bricks and mortar. But in so doing the moderns are practically admitting their moral and political failures, for they do not trust themselves to care for each other. It is in this spirit of mistrust that modern man is constantly deconstructing himself and the societies in which he lives, abolishing institutions that are considered either unnecessary or too dangerous for the common good, or both.

On the other hand we have the example of the saints, holy men and women who were and always will be the catalysts of true reform, because their actions are always based on objective truth for the love of God and neighbor. The saints educate us with the logic of love. 

The best defenses against vice and corruption and societal evils are not, as the Liberals believe, ever more sophisticated laws and government programs. Rather the best defense is the practice of virtue according to right reason and the moral law, an idea taken for granted by our Founding Fathers. The positive "rule of law" can only supplement the human spirit, as a kind of safety net. If men cannot police themselves, if they cannot restrain even their own passions, then someone else will. In other words, and as Saint Paul observed centuries ago, the law cannot make us good. Merely human laws and secular programs cannot eradicate racism any more than they can compel religious belief or turn the sky green. It is true that human law has a pedagogical value, and this through various means—punishment is the classic example. Nonetheless, law in the absence of a virtuous society, one that is educated in the truth, quickly degenerates into a stifling oppression based on moral relativism, and a tyranny of "little laws" (to borrow St. Thomas More's phrase) that are happily applied by an army of costly lawyers, our modern-day scribes, as Saint Thomas well understood in his Utopia.