How to order our loves among varying “neighbors.”
“In the ordering of our Love … we are to respect the conjunction by nature or grace in the duties of Love which we freely preform… We owe not so much to those persons with whom we have no Conjunction. Thus, we should prefer a faithful man before an infidel, because in the one there is only the image of God by nature, in the other it is both by creation and by regeneration … And among the faithful, we should rather do good to those of our own country, than to Strangers, because besides the bond of Religion, there is also a second bond of proximity and among them to our acquaintances before those who are unknown to us, because we have an easier entrance unto them and do them good by persuasion, etc. And among such, to our kindred and alliance before others… because we are joined and bound together as soon as we are born, and this bond cannot be dissolved as long as we live.”
Lancelot Andrews
1555 – 25 September 1626
English bishop & scholar, holding high positions in the Church of England during the reigns of Elizabeth I and James I.
1555 – 25 September 1626
English bishop & scholar, holding high positions in the Church of England during the reigns of Elizabeth I and James I.
The Pattern of Cathechistical Doctrine at Large – pgs. 320-321
Recently there was a kerfuffle on the issue of whether or not we are required to teach every man (including illegal immigrants) as our neighbors. The idea that was being championed by a few clergy was that as Christians we owe the same amount of charity to all people equally. Andrews makes it clear here that idea is just not true. Andrews (like so many throughout Church history) understood that there is a need to prioritize our love (Ordo Amoris). This means, by necessity, that we rank some people lower than other people when it comes to the responsibility, we have towards them and that translates into the truth that we treat some people with a less degree of neighborliness than we treat other people. This, in turn means, that we don’t treat all people the same and were we to embrace the egalitarianism that is required to try and treat all people the same that would mean that we would be disobeying God and His Word. It would be sin to treat an illegal immigrant the same way I treat my children or my kinsmen or my countrymen given what Andrews says above.
Now this is no argument to treat people who are further removed from our immediate concentric circles of obligation badly. It is merely to argue, as Andrews does and as all Christians did before they were bitten by the neo-Marxist egalitarian bug, that there are limits on each person’s time, wealth, and affection and because that is so not everyone is treated with the same degree of neighborliness.
