Overview:

Monday of Holy Week

A Reflection for Monday of Holy Week

Then Judas the Iscariot, one of his disciples,
and the one who would betray him, said,
“Why was this oil not sold for three hundred days’ wages
and given to the poor?”
He said this not because he cared about the poor
but because he was a thief and held the money bag
and used to steal the contributions.
So Jesus said, “Leave her alone.
Let her keep this for the day of my burial.
You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.” (Jn 12:4-8)

Find today’s readings here.

Almost every time I write an article covering the Trump administration’s mass deportation campaign, I am greeted by some form of this technically-true comment: “But President Obama deported 3 million people!” (Estimates vary, but the number is roughly around 2.7 million between fiscal years 2009 and 2016.) Whether it be the wrongful killing of an American citizen by federal officers or the separation of children from their families, these comments portend to dismiss any fascistic excess by changing the topic to different abuse by the other side. 

Rather than substantively defend or at least reasonably engage with the subject matter, it is far easier to dismiss any potential cognitive dissonance with a self-satisfied whataboutism. Who cares that we might have killed over a hundred children in a strike on an Iranian school? President Obama did drone strikes in Libya! 

Points like this may be meritorious in a vacuum and warrant further treatment in a different context, but they are rhetorically nefarious in the moment.

To say the least, these comments enrage me. For one, they engage in a logical fallacy: a shallow, vapid and invalid form of argument. But I find them additionally depressing in their nihilism. In neglecting the standards of rational argumentation, whataboutism lazily degrades and relativizes our politics. It is a sort of giving up on discourse.

Jesus of Nazareth, the great first-century political philosopher, was an expert at dispensing with bad-faith arguments. And in today’s Gospel, he comes for the whatabouters, much to my satisfaction. In response to the beautiful, celebratory and reverent gesture of Mary, Lazarus’s sister, anointing Jesus’ feet as he dines with his good friend Lazarus whom he raised from the dead, Judas inquires, “Why was this oil not sold for three hundred days’ wages and given to the poor?”

First off, rude. Second, this guy is the worst. And third, the implication of this argument is a sort of absurd asceticism combined with a parody of a utilitarian calculus that I do not think warrants much further discussion.

John explicitly tells us that Judas is asking this not out of care for the poor but for his own selfish purposes, but I think that even without this helpful note, we can see the thinness of his argument. Jesus’ snappy response implies his frustration and indignation with Judas, something I can very much relate to here.

It is ironic then, that the passage that debunks whataboutism contains one of the fallacy’s favorite lines from Scripture: “You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.” Despite a well-established body of Catholic social teaching defending some level of a social safety net and governmental action to care for the poor, this line gets quoted constantly to justify an apathetic public (and even private) response to human suffering. 

Scripture is rife with one-liners that can be abused out of context, and given Jesus’ actions and words in the rest of the Gospel, I think it is fair to say that apathy towards the plight of the poor is not exactly what he had in mind.

But here in the Gospel, there is also a message for my outrage. Righteous indignation may have a time and place, but anger is not an appropriate emotion as we begin Holy Week, and it is important to recognize that Jesus responds here not in defense of his own argument and pride, but in defense of another person’s actions. Crucially, he begins his response: “Leave her alone.” He is using his mastery of rhetoric to serve others, not prove an abstract point about logical structure in argument.

There are surely healthier uses of my time than getting mad at you, our dear readers, who, even if sometimes misguidedly, take the time to engage with our content and enable us to carry out this ministry of the Word. And I certainly employ fallacies myself, perhaps even unintentionally in this reflection (probably at least a couple strawmans in here).

Lord, as we begin this Holy Week, remind me not to judge, lest I be judged.

Correction: A previous version of this article mistakenly referred to Mary, the mother of Jesus, as anointing Jesus’ feet. It is Mary, the sister of Lazarus, who does so in today’s Gospel.

Edward Desciak is an O'Hare Fellow at America Media.