CHRISTIAN CHARITY VS SUICIDAL EMPATHY
- 21 hours ago
- 1 min read
Word on Fire
The evolutionary behavioural scientist and public intellectual Gad Saad recently published an influential book entitled Suicidal Empathy: Dying to Be Kind. In it, Saad argues that much of the West has, unfortunately, come to embrace a perversely deficient understanding of empathy, twisting the natural and otherwise noble human capacity to feel and respond to other peoples’ sufferings into a moral license to upend the moral, economic, and political order.
According to the dictates of suicidal empathy, for example, society should prioritize criminals over victims, illegal immigrants over citizens, lawbreakers over law abiders, racial identity over competence, adult sexual expression over childhood innocence, and trans women––that is, men pretending to be women––over real women. Suicidal empathy’s endgame, Saad warns, is nothing less than societal ruin and the eventual totalitarian eclipse of the individual.
How, from a Catholic perspective, should we assess these claims? Is Saad’s characterization of suicidal empathy and its dangers accurate? If so, how should we, as Christians, constructively respond? What role, in particular, should the biblical conception of love play in defining what it means to show true compassion and care for those in need? Here to discuss Saad’s book and to explain how authentic Christian charity is—and is not—related to empathy, is Bishop Robert Barron.
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