Merciful Myth Busting

In his penetrating treatment of mercy (misericordia), Thomas Aquinas specifies fourteen acts of mercy: seven “bodily” and seven “spiritual” (ST 2.2.32.2). The seven bodily acts are “to feed the hungry, to give drink to the thirsty, to clothe the naked, to offer hospitality, to visit the sick, to ransom the captive, to bury the dead.” Aquinas cites a rhyme to help his readers remember this list. “Visito, poto, cibo, redimo, tego, colligo, condo (‘Visit, quench, feed, ransom, clothe, gather, bury’).” Then Aquinas lists the seven spiritual acts: “to teach the ignorant, to counsel the doubtful, to console the grieving, to correct the sinner, to forgive injuries, to bear with those who trouble and annoy us, and to pray for all.” Rather than a rhyme, Aquinas offers readers a verse from Augustine’s Sermons to help them memorize this list: “Consule, castiga, solare, remitte, fer, ora (‘Counsel, reprove, console, forgive, bear, and pray’)” [See Augustine, Sermones ad populum, serm.82 chap.4 sect.7 (PL 38:508).].

Aquinas’s list is instructive and worthy of sustained reflection—even if the memory devices are ill suited to help most modern readers—for it details a taxonomy of merciful actions Christians have championed for millennia. That most contemporary Christians are unfamiliar with this list and struggle to name but a few acts of mercy says more about their discipleship than it does the list’s merits.

Rather than unpack each merciful deed, I wish to focus on Aquinas’s contention that teaching is an act of mercy. I have sat through hundreds of hours of seminars and lectures on Christian conceptions of teaching, and not once have I heard anyone else make this claim. I suspect the same is true for you.

To understand Aquinas’s position, we must start by seeing that he holds mercy involves the remedying of a defect (defectus). Because ignorance is an intellectual defect and teaching removes ignorance, Thomas argues, teaching is an act of mercy (2.2.32.corp).

Grant Aquinas’s reasoning and conclusion. What does it entail for acts of mercy aimed at alleviating oppression? Thomas never explicitly says. But if we relate Aquinas’s views to Paulo Freire’s conception of teaching to resist and remediate oppression, something powerful emerges.

According to Freire, oppressors frequently employ myths to keep the oppressed blind to the true nature of their oppression. Freire writes:

In order to present for the consideration of the oppressed and subjugated a world of deceit designed to increase their alienation and passivity, the oppressors develop a series of methods precluding any presentation of the world as a problem and showing it rather as a fixed entity, as something given—something to which people, as mere spectators, must adapt.

One of these methods is false communication in the form of making “myths indispensable to the perseveration of the status quo.”

If Freire and Aquinas are right, teaching against oppression-sustaining myths that render people socially blind is an act of mercy.

Now let us accompany Aquinas’s list of merciful actions with Freire’s extended, detailed lists of the myths oppressors use to maintain an evil social order.

[these myths include] the myth that the oppressive order is a “free society”; the myth that all persons are free to work where they wish, that if they don’t like their boss they can leave him (sic) and look for another job; the myth that this order respects human rights and is therefore worthy of esteem; the myth that anyone who is industrious can become an entrepreneur—worse yet, the myth that the street vendor is as much an entrepreneur as the owner of a large factory; the myth of the universal right of education, when of all the Brazilian children who enter primary schools only a tiny fraction ever reach the university; the myth of equality of all individuals, when the question: “Do you know who you’re talking to?” is still current among us; the myth of the heroism of the oppressor classes as defenders of “Western Christian civilization” against “materialist barbarism”; the myth of the charity and generosity of the elites, when what they really do as a class is foster selective “good deeds” (subsequently elaborated into the myth of “disinterested aid,” which on the international level was severely criticized by Pope John XXII); the myth that the dominant elites, “recognizing their duties,” promote the advancement of the people, so that the people, in a gesture of gratitude, should accept the words of the elites and be conformed to them; the myth that rebellion is a sin against God; the myth of private property as fundamental to personal human development (so long as oppressors are the only true human beings); the myth of the industriousness of the oppressors and the laziness and dishonesty of the oppressed, as well as the myth of the natural inferiority of the latter and the superiority of the former.

All these myths (and others the reader could list), the internalizing of which is essential to the subjugation of the oppressed, are presented to them by well-organized propaganda and slogans, via the mass “communications” media—as if such alienation constituted real communication!

This list of myths, like Aquinas’s list of merciful acts, is instructive and worthy of sustained reflection. Why does Freire list these myths? Why not others? Why does he grant that there are others without listing them? What would the view that any—or all—of these myths are truly myths entail? Where do we hear or read these myths? Are any of them racist? Sexist? Misogynist? Etc.

May reflecting on this meditation through such questions prove a wellspring for merciful pedagogy that removes the ignorance arising from oppression-sustaining myths.