Moral Relativity

Moral relativity….the priest announced the title of his sermon on a wet Sunday in July, and my high spirits ebbed. “Another boring day,” I thought. Just as soon, the priest said, “I will not bore you with any excerpts, prepared texts or biblical literature.” My heart silently reopened fixing a smile on my face. Rather disappointingly he continued, “Instead I will tell you a story from one of my trips to America.”  This priest is toying with my mind this morning, I concluded. Another brag-ga-do Americanah, trying to form whitey, with one thousand stories from two trips to God’s own country. Well, it’s raining, so I have nothing to lose. I consoled myself, reclining back into my chair.

“……after the story, you would make deductions yourselves,” I heard him saying. Below is a dogged attempt to retell his story.

I was in the US last month as guest of my very good friend Father Patrick Tonucci, an Italian priest who manages an orphanage of gifted kids. One day he asked to accompany him to the supermarket to replenish the homes’ supplies. We have finished picking various items we needed and hauled the large trolley to the checkout counter, standing in line behind a lady. As we waited our turn we started discussing the kids in the home. At the time the home was housing eleven kids, and I had mistakenly mentioned aloud how he was coping with his “eleven” kids and parish duties. No sooner that I had said that the woman in front, probably in her late forties, spun around and snarled, “You’ve how many kids?!” She was glaring at Fr. Patrick like he’d just disclose her bank details, including debit card pin.

As a typical Nigerian, I had wanted to ask her, “Wetin concern you?” But Patrick beat me to it, with a rather polite answer. “You heard right, I have eleven kids,” he replied, unfazed by her vehemence. “Do you have a problem with that?”

“As a matter of fact I do,” she retorted back through clench teeth. “All those kids? That’s the most selfish thing I’ve heard of!” she added.

“Shoo, help me see this white people,” I said in my head, but reasoned that she didn’t know we were Roman Catholic priests, since both of us were dressed in plain casual clothes. I gestured to weigh in, in order to clarify that the kids we were referring to are in a home he manages, however, Fr. Patrick gestured to me to let him handle this, like he was used to such overtures by intrusive eavesdroppers. Then he countered the woman with another vexatious question. “And why is that?”

“It’s selfish,” she scowled, “because while others are preserving limited resources to control global warming, you’re overcrowding the planet. To have that many kids is irresponsible, immoral and wrong,” she fired on all pistons. “And I can bet you’re anti-abortion.”

At this point Fr. Patrick and I burst out in laughter, which was clearly not the reaction she expected.

“Yes, of course I’m anti-abortion,” Fr. Patrick said through butts of laughter. “What was your first clue?”

“Well, you should get over it, abortion is legal,” she said staring at us both acidly.

“So what?” Fr. Patrick retorted. “Just because some dumbos made it legal, doesn’t mean it’s moral. Abortion is…..,” he intended to buttress his argument, but she cut him off, saying…

“It wouldn’t be legal if it wasn’t moral.” She snapped.

“Is that so?” he retorted, lightning works engulfing his grey eyes. I could also see an ice-cold smirk lurking on the corner of his white lips, for I know, like he does, the woman has just boxed herself into an untenable position from which to argue. “You realise that slavery used to be legal here in the US, with the Supreme Court having legalized it in 1857, right?” he queried. Back then I could own this my friend here,” pointing at me, “I could beat him or even kill him if I wanted to. Or I could even sell off his wife or kids if I wanted to. Did the fact that slavery was legal make it moral?”

Realizing her foolery, she simply glared in silence, but Fr. Patrick wasn’t done.

“You also know that apart from the Supreme Court stupidly legalizing abortion and slavery here in the US, how about Germany during the Nazi era. It was completely legal to round up Jews, force them into concentration camps and exterminate them in gas chambers. It was legal, was it morally right?”

The woman was now visible growing red with anger, which made me remember a poem on the variety of colours white people change to, to reflect alterations to either external or internal factors. However, Fr. Patrick finally fired the killer shot with history I never knew.

“And what about the fact that,” he was saying, “If you had been born before 1920, you would have been legally” motioning inverted commas in the air for emphasis on legally, “prevented to vote,” pointing directly at her. “Does that make it okay, because it was……..”

She didn’t wait to hear the final words, as she stormed off angrily, which made me wonder if she’d pay for her stuff. What I know is that, she would have to come down that high moral ladder about abortion, large families and whatever else she’s up in arms against, with her defective logic of “if it’s legal, its moral.”

“God bless His words in our hearts,” Fr. Lawrence Jatau concluded as the choir took the cue.

It’s now left to us to practice and refine this moral relativist position, a fallacy which can easily be disproved off, by simply turning the tables by relativizing anything logic a moral relativist holds dear. Many examples abound in the world today, same-sex marriages, Euthanasia, divorce, forced marriages, girl-child marriages, one-child policy, to name just a few. Some are legally practiced in most countries across the globe but that doesn’t make it moral, because the way of man is not (and can never be) the way of God (Is. 55:8).