Saint Albert of Cologne quoted an authority to the young Thomas Aquinas who replied; "It is not who said it? The question should be - what did they say?". Thomas noted that there was a need to go beyond the question of who the speaker was to what the speaker had to say. It would seem wise to go beyond Saint Thomas and to ask two further questions: How true is what they say? And, do they follow their own counsel?
If we were to ask these questions then we would find teachings that had a truth-value for us and also admire the speaker who told us that truth. It would seem that the standards we expect at all levels of public life presuppose that we do ask these questions of all the actions and utterances of personalities.
Recent years have seen a widening abyss grow between the standards demanded of public figures and the lives of the ordinary citizen. This is particularly so in areas dealing with social and sexual morality. It is sad that on the one hand we deplore the dysfunction of any public figure's actions and on the other we glory in the squalor of the soap-opera's depravities. The power of the soap pervades our lives far too much.
Our interest in the Simpson and Clinton cases in the United States and the royal family in Britain betrays a sinister taste for snooping into the suffering in public people's lives. Most of us would recoil with horror if the television cameras arrived to tell the story of a friend's family breakdown, yet we watch with rapt attention when it is somebody else's life under the lens. This clearly demonstrates that we have come to a stage where there is a huge difference between the care we extend to a friend or family member in difficulties and the sympathy we cannot muster for a public figure in a similar boat. Maybe it is as simple as the fact that we demand that public personalities live like super-heroes and feel betrayed by their human weaknesses, and the price of their failure is our contempt.
It is as if public personalities have been deemed to be the equivalent of the Pharisees of Jesus's time. Christ in the Gospel of Saint Matthew decries the behaviour of the scribes and the Pharisees who occupy the chair of Moses. He tells his listeners; "You must therefore do what they tell you and listen to what they say; but do not be guided by what they do: since they do not practise what they preach" (Mt. 23: 1-3).
Is it fair to land every single figure in public life with the same burden of paragon behaviour? Every society is structured with different people in different roles. Some are minor players, others are major; some lead and others follow. Within each society there are laws, rules and customs. Each member must live up to the expectations of the society and it is only correct that the one who fails should be called to account. However, that is not the same as saying that there should be public ridicule of that same person. At weak moments in our lives we all crave to be left with some small amount of privacy in our indignity.
However, every minister of a religious communion, any politician, teacher, athlete or singer, who makes public pronouncements on what is right and wrong, occupies the chair of Moses today.
So, what is the appropriate way of dealing with their failure to practise what they preach when that occasion arises? Should they be held to public ridicule in the tabloid newspapers? Should we begin a campaign of hatred against them? In Thomas Moore's Utopia, criminals were paraded in glory through the streets. It was an effort stop people seeking public glory - has notoriety become the glory we celebrate today?
Hear again what Christ said: "You must therefore do what they tell you and listen to what they say; but do not be guided by what they do: since they do not practise what they preach." Does it suit us to kill the faulty messenger because we did not like the message? Have we allowed our desire to punish the one who did not practise what they preached to obliterate the value of what they said? It is not who said it, it is what they did say. Maybe what Saint Thomas advised was enough: "Then . . . if all our crimes were written in broader phylacteries on our foreheads . . . well, let the one without sin cast the first stone"
F. MacE.