God loves each person infinitely, without ever limiting His love for every other person. We are given the grace to love with His love, but we can never love infinitely as He does. This means that we always need to balance all our relationships of love with the best wisdom of which we are capable.
This continually arises in families. Husband and wife are called to love each other, and to love their children. The wife cannot sacrifice her relationship with her husband in favor of her children, nor can she sacrifice her relationship with her children to her union with her husband. Nor can a family sacrifice their love and care of an elderly parent to their own well-being. These and similar challenges are continually arising and they must be faced with the graces we are given. As Christians, we need the wisdom and strength to respond as best we can, and to trust in God’s providence for what we cannot manage with His ordinary grace.
A further consideration is the balance between family relationships and professional responsibilities. A doctor with a family is responsible for loving and caring for both his family and his patients. He must work out the wisest balance he can for responding to both his family and his patients.
Nor can he, as a believing Catholic, prioritize some patients over others. Some may need more care, but in this case, he must make arrangements for the care of the others. If he cannot care for all his patients adequately, he must relinquish their care to others. To act otherwise, to care inadequately for any of his patients, would be neither Christian nor ethical.
Professional responsibilities do not always involve direct, physical contact, yet the responsibilities are not diminished in such situations. The president of a university is responsible for all the students in the university, and he must do his best for all of them, even if he only comes in direct contact with a limited number of them.
This is even clearer in the matter of governmental responsibilities. The mayor of a town or city is responsible for dealing with everyone who has any impact on his area of jurisdiction simply because what happens within that jurisdiction affects the community in whole or in part. As mayor, he cannot prioritize the people living near his home over people living farther away. He cannot prioritize those who pay property taxes over the homeless. They all affect one another and he must face this reality. He will need to respond to different situations in different ways, but he cannot establish a greater or lesser importance to one group over another. Not if he is trying to live his professional life according to Catholic teaching.
This is where the ordo amoris proves to be an inadequate framework. HOW to deal with different situations comes under the guidance of prudence, not of love. The love is total for every person. The way of responding is different, not by any greater or lesser degree of importance, but by how best to put love into practice.
Political prudence rarely takes love into consideration. It is purely practical. Infused supernatural prudence is less than faith, hope and charity, yet it guides the practice of these most important virtues.
A Catholic politician must choose which prudence will direct his professional conduct. This is not an easy choice. Politicians need our prayers and our understanding.
Image by Janine Bolon from Pixabay
Sr. Gabriela of the Incarnation, O.C.D. (Sr. Gabriela Hicks) was born in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, in the Gold Rush country of California, which she remembers as heaven on earth for a child! She lived a number of years in Europe, and then entered the Discalced Carmelite Monastery in Flemington, New Jersey, where she has been a member for forty years. www.flemingtoncarmel.org.
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