Today I had a conversation with two friends about Truth. One by email from a friend, learned in science, living in Texas and one by phone conversation with a friend, who is a Roman Catholic Woman Priest, living in Kentucky.

The thoughts about Truth got regenerated in my mind at a recent conference on Gospel nonviolence that I attended with Father McCarthy of the Center for Creative Nonviolence. He was talking about the principle of Aristotle and Pope John Paul II that if x is true than y is not true. Simply if the Gospel exhortation to “Love your enemies is true” that not loving your enemies cannot be true.

My friend from Texas was talking about the gray area we find in science and often in everyday life. But in major matters of morals I cannot see, without rationalization, how two things can be true and untrue. When the Catholic Church considered ‘slavery’ okay it was moral in their practice. When the Catholic Church considered slavery immoral it became immoral for Church matters. I do not see any grey area where slavery is okay and not okay.
My woman priest friend and I were talking about teachings of Gospel. If teaching violence and killing, according to Gospel is wrong it cannot be rationalized, like it is at certain Catholic Universities, to be right or moral. In some matters something cannot be true and untrue.

Today was Dorothy Day day at our Church. Now Dorothy was a person of strong beliefs. If her conscience told her something, like military killing in wars was wrong, she could not justify it. She was open to changing her mind and thus her conscience through dialog and conversation but when she believed something was just and moral she had low tolerance for people, who tried to have it both ways, preach one thing and practice another.

A derogatory word for persons who believe in conscience there is right and wrong, truth and non-truth is ‘righteousness’. But in bible and other literature being righteous is often a compliment, not a insult. For if was have no sense of right and wrong, values we believe are truth we do not have anything to die for or to live for, no meaning in life. Truth might be our ‘opinion of Truth’ but if we believe it to be true we must live it to the best of our ability. Our life is as Gandhi said is “A Experiment with Truth.”

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