Opinions

Opinions are important, important to personal and social life.  We need to find place for them as early in our lives as our maturity can manage them well – both for our own and the opinions of others.  We need to sense in our understanding the variant values we offer to so much of human concern: What is bad, fair, average, excellent (cum laude), superior (magna cum laude)?  In the course of a life to elderly status there will appear in both self-generation and that visited upon us from others, all the categories.  Those persons insightful so to extend upwards from failure to superior will likely register the most fulfillment in their lives, and impact their families and society to greatest advantage.  The better members of this unofficial club will likely have faith in something beyond mankind that offers humility to them: -have some understanding about the vagaries of humankind; -an adequate acceptance of morality; -hold a sense of humor; -have adequate vocabulary; -make mistakes and learn from them; and, -seem a bit above the frenzy that is going on in the common casual context.  In short, they appear mature, objective, educated, approachable, non-judgmental and inspired.  That is to say they have sufficient percentages of these factors to offer considerable consideration of their opinions. The Christian would like to know if the opinion has been sifted through the concepts of a faith in God, and the naturalist is warmed that the opinion has come from a winner of some prize (like Nobel).  All this fits in with the rule of rhetoric that the person cited ought to have some authority, perhaps indicating action. Citations may serve prejudice, not principle.

Michael Novak was born in 1933, ten years after my birth year, and he died in 2017 just days before I edited this Page.  He had a long career in gaining both the full preparation for life and profession that one seeks for fulfillment.  His first projection for career was to prepare to be a Catholic Priest.  Not feeling entirely fitted during his education, he dropped out, not from his faith, but from the seminary.  He felt he would be a writer, and he did write scores of books and articles in the course of his career. He married and began a family that included children and grandchildren.  There was something of a generalist in him: as ambassador for human rights on the United Nations; as student and professor in a number of excellent educational institutions, including Notre Dame, Harvard, Stanford (where I did some research while he was there).  He related to several presidential candidates, Democrats, from McCarthy to Kennedy, and Republicans from Reagan in 1976 and thereafter.  He was invited to a think tank, and wrote opinion articles for the Wall Street Journal and other papers.  Retiring he took a position on the faculty at the Ave Maria University in Florida.  Knowing his study regimen, excellent knowledge of himself, and life experience I would want to talk to him or someone like him about philosophy, faith or government if I needed a professional opinion to match personal opinion about my own interest and that of others.

Many thousands of relatively unheralded persons are quite competent to offer opinions that ought to be considered.  They have done their work, even though many have been lured into political contexts and conclusions that may require more theory and time to be tested.  Our increasingly volatile politics and ingrained differences rob us of much of the wisdom growing out of the experience of history, and the electorate is not conditioned to serious review of proposals.  (The tension created by the undocumented statements of our newly elected president in 2017 is a case in point.  While the nation needs to be attended to with amendments of laws, the news is preoccupied with the tweets and style of the president.  Over a major network, one analyst noted that truth for the nation has been lost in a hatred between parties that has replaced objective commitment to improving the nation and society.)  How could Judas have missed it?  He had observed Jesus talking sensibly, patiently, authoritatively (even humbly) for a thousand days.  Judas may have had a humane argument for the way he felt.  He cornered himself with untested opinions.  Perhaps Jesus would rescue himself with a miracle, and he, Judas would have 30 pieces of silver for ministry.  Perhaps he felt Jesus was becoming a bit distracted, and restoration of Israel was not in Jesus’ program.  All he needed to do would be to find relief in prayer.  Prayer would have served to solution.