The Christian principle of equality sanctifies distinctions and differences — between male and female, for example, or between one nation’s culture and another’s — so that all souls might be equal in loving God. The leftist view of “equality” eradicates distinctions and differences, thus destroying the dignity embodied therein. This devilish operation is also performed on — or perhaps through — another of the chief tenets of leftism: tolerance.

Tolerance is not a Christian virtue; it is rather an earthly shadow or social mirroring of the fuller virtue of mercy.

As is made abundantly, almost appallingly evident in the form of Christ crucified — that bloodied and mangled God-man hanging upon the cross — mercy is forgiveness of some evil. It was, after all, sin which so brutalized Christ, but it was love — not merely nails — which pinioned Him to the cross. Mercy is the handmaiden of that other and greater virtue, charity, but mercy’s twin is charity’s manservant, justice. Mercy and justice balance one another out in the service of charity, with those twin virtues finding their fulfillment and completion in charity.

Justice without mercy to encourage it towards charity would be no virtue at all; it would, at best, be cold legalism and, at its worst, approach cruelty. Just so, mercy without justice to guide it towards charity becomes simply indulgence, indifference, and even “tolerance.” While Christ, in His mercy, forgave mankind its sins and evils with His arms outstretched upon the cross, justice demanded that those sins be called evils; if Christ’s mercy were simply forgiving sin by calling it some other name, by declaring that sin was no longer evil, His sacrifice would have been an act of mere and almost superfluous indulgence; it is the twin virtues of both mercy and justice, working hand in hand, which were operative in the crucified Christ, who is Himself the zenith and indeed source of all virtue.

It is this truth, preserved throughout the centuries by Christianity, that leftism so viciously assaults with its proclamation of “tolerance.” Mercy is twisted and warped so that all manner of sin and degeneracy demands to be tolerated.

The Catholic archbishop emeritus of Philadelphia Charles J. Chaput once declared, “Evil preaches tolerance until it is dominant, then it tries to silence good.” This is where “tolerance” moves beyond brutalizing just mercy and proceeds to mangle its twin, justice. For while mercy may call a thing an evil but choose, in obedience to love, to forgive it, justice demands, also in obedience to love, that that thing still be called an evil. “Tolerance” reverses this process: that which is evil is, in a Satanic mockery of mercy, called good, while justice is turned on its head so that the only thing not tolerated by “tolerance” is true justice. 

Even as Christ hung on the cross, weighted down with all the sins of the world, He cried out, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34). Though crushed beneath the weight of untold hundreds of millions of sins, beaten and broken, bloodied and bruised for the sake of forgiveness, Christ still declared sins to be sin; His mercy demanded His suffering, His justice demanded His clarity.