Common Errors Concerning Charity

A word worn threadbare

Few Christian words have been so weakened by usage. In ordinary speech, “charity” often means material almsgiving — sometimes even humiliating almsgiving: “living on charity,” “I am not asking for charity,” sound like admissions of misery. The word has slipped from the summit of the virtues to the level of a tossed coin. This erosion is not only a matter of vocabulary: it reflects a loss of doctrinal memory. The Latin word caritas renders the Greek agape, the love of benevolence that wills the good of the other — a love which, in Scripture, has God himself as its first origin and final end^[2].

The modern separation between love and truth

The deepest misunderstanding of our time is not contempt for charity, but the decision to isolate it from truth. People readily oppose “the one who loves” to “the one who judges,” as though loving dispensed us from every discernment about truth and goodness. Benedict XVI made this question the heart of his social encyclical, whose very title is a program: Caritas in Veritate, “charity in truth.”

“Without truth, charity degenerates into sentimentality. Love becomes an empty shell, to be filled in an arbitrary way.” — Benedict XVI, Caritas in Veritate, June 29, 2009, § 3^[3]

The pope recalls that charity must be joined to truth in both directions: Saint Paul's “truth in charity” (Eph 4:15), and “the inverse and complementary” formula, caritas in veritate^[4]. Charity without truth can be “filled in an arbitrary way”: it will be made to say anything and its opposite. Most of the errors examined below arise precisely from this rupture.

Reminder: what charity really is

Before correcting the errors, we need a compass. Charity is a theological virtue — that is, a gift of God which has God as its origin, motive, and object — by which, according to the Catechism, “we love God above all things for his own sake, and our neighbor as ourselves for the love of God”^[5]. Two decisive traits follow from this, and they are enough to dispel most misunderstandings.

First, charity is primarily an act of the will, not a movement of the feelings. Saint Thomas Aquinas takes up Aristotle's definition: to love is to will the good of someone^[6]. One can therefore truly will the good of an enemy without feeling the slightest affection for him. Second, charity has God as its measure: the neighbor is loved “for the love of God,” not merely as a human impulse. Remove either of these traits and what remains is a counterfeit. The nature, degrees, and means of this virtue are developed in How to grow in charity; they are not repeated here.

Error — “Charity is a feeling”

This is the mother error from which many others derive. Spontaneously, charity is imagined as warmth of heart, an emotion of compassion, tenderness before distress. This confusion is attractive because love is often accompanied by warm affections, and because a culture of feeling tends to reduce every reality to what one experiences of it.

Why it is false. If charity were a feeling, Christ's commandment would be absurd: one cannot command an emotion. Yet Jesus commands us to love, even to love our enemies (Mt 5:44). It must therefore be an act of the will, within our reach even when affectivity is lacking. Charity resides in the will to seek the other's good^[7]; feelings may accompany it and beautify it, but they do not constitute it. A mother who watches over a sick child through a sleepless night, without the slightest felt sweetness, exercises a higher charity than the easy emotion of gentler evenings.

What the Church says. The Catechism places charity among the theological virtues, stable dispositions of the soul “infused” by God — not among the passions^[8]. Benedict XVI says the same: cut off from truth and reduced to feeling, “charity degenerates into sentimentality” and becomes an empty shell^[9]. To love is not to be moved: it is to will, effectively and durably, the true good of the other.

Error — “To be charitable is to be nice and make people happy”

A very widespread variant is to confuse charity with niceness, pleasantness, the art of offending no one and making people happy. The error is attractive because charity is indeed gentle and benevolent, and because it is more comfortable to be agreeable than to be loving.

Why it is false. Niceness seeks to please; charity seeks the good, which does not always coincide with what is pleasant. A doctor who announces a difficult diagnosis, a parent who sets a limit, a friend who dares to warn someone do not “make people happy,” and yet they love. Conversely, complacency that leaves the other person running toward ruin is not charity: it is cowardice in disguise. Charity wills the neighbor's true good, ultimately his eternal salvation — and this may require costly words and actions.

What the Church says. Charity is “the form of the virtues”: it animates justice, courage, prudence, truth^[10]. It is therefore never softness. It can be demanding, like the love of Christ who weeps over Jerusalem and overturns the tables of the Temple. To confuse loving with pleasing is to cut charity off from its backbone: truth.

Error — “You have to feel love in order to love”

Many people think themselves incapable of loving a particular person “because they feel nothing,” or even because they feel antipathy. The error consists in making feeling the condition of love. It is attractive because it seems honest: why pretend to a tenderness that is absent?

Why it is false. Charity does not reside in the feelings but in the will; one can therefore love without feeling anything, and even against what one feels. This is precisely the case with love of enemies, the summit of Christian charity: it does not require us to feel sympathy for someone who harms us, but to will his good and effectively do him good (Mt 5:44-45). Saint Therese of Lisieux, irritated by a sister who had the gift of displeasing her in everything, did not force herself to feel affection: she chose to pray for her, to smile at her and to serve her, to the point that this sister one day asked her what attracted her so much to her^[11].

What the Church says. The Catechism teaches that charity makes us love even “our enemies,” after the example of Christ who “died out of love for us, when we were still ‘enemies’”^[12]. Such love cannot rest on affect: it is an act of the will, sustained by grace. Waiting to “feel” before loving is to confuse the fuel with the flame.

Error — “Charity is love for human beings: no need for God”

This is the most typically modern error: turning charity into pure humanitarianism, a solidarity among human beings in which God is absent or optional. It is attractive because of its apparent generosity and because it seems to gather believers and unbelievers on common ground.

Why it is false. Philanthropy is a beautiful thing, but it is not the theological virtue of charity. Christian charity loves the neighbor “for the love of God”^[13]; it takes its source in the very love of God “poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit” (Rom 5:5). Remove God, and what remains is a human benevolence, worthy of esteem but fragile, without the root or measure that makes it supernatural. Saint Paul is radical: one may distribute all one's goods to the poor and hand one's body over to the flames — “if I have not love, it profits me nothing” (1 Cor 13:3; AELF). The outward work, without the charity that unites to God, does not save the one who performs it.

“Christian charitable activity must be independent of parties and ideologies. It is not a means of changing the world ideologically.” — Benedict XVI, Deus Caritas Est, December 25, 2005, § 31b^[14]

What the Church says. Benedict XVI devoted his encyclical Deus Caritas Est to showing that Christian charity is neither humanitarianism nor social strategy, but the overflow of an encounter with Christ. It is not even a means at the service of something else: “Charity cannot be used as a means of engaging in what is nowadays considered proselytism. Love is free”^[15]. Philanthropy without God can do much good for bodies; only theological charity unites to the source of every good.

Error — “One can love God without caring for one's neighbor” (and the reverse)

Two symmetrical misunderstandings. The first, “devout” one, thinks it can love God while neglecting the brother it sees. The second, “horizontalist” one, claims to love human beings while treating God as secondary. The first attracts pious souls tempted by withdrawal; the second, generous souls tempted by activism.

Why it is false. The two loves cannot be separated: they are the two faces of one love. Saint John closes the first door without appeal:

“If anyone says, ‘I love God,’ but hates his brother, he is a liar. For whoever does not love a brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen.” — First Letter of Saint John 4:20^[16]

And the other door closes just as firmly: a love of neighbor that dismisses God would deprive itself of its source and its measure, and would end by reducing man to his material needs alone. The neighbor is loved in God; God is loved in the neighbor. To break the unity is to lose both.

What the Church says. The Catechism presents love of God and love of neighbor as inseparable, united under the same commandment of love^[17]; and Deus Caritas Est is built entirely on this unity. True devotion leads to the brother; true service of the brother leads to God.

Error — “Loving humanity dispenses me from loving those close to me”

It is easier to love “humanity” in general than this annoying person here, this difficult family member, this tiresome colleague. The error consists in believing oneself charitable because one has great feelings for distant abstractions, while neglecting concrete neighbors. It is attractive because abstract love costs nothing and flatters the conscience.

Why it is false. Charity has an order (ordo caritatis). Saint Thomas teaches that after God, then oneself in relation to God, we must first love those most united to us — those close to us, those whom Providence has placed on our path^[18]. Not out of selfish preference, but because they are the ones to whom we can effectively do good. Love for all humanity that dispenses itself from loving one's neighbor is love in words. Charity begins where one is, with those one has.

What the Church says. The order of charity (ordo caritatis) requires that love, offered to all, be exercised first toward those nearest^[19]. True love is concrete, situated, costly; merely declared love is, as moralists say, more dreamed than enacted.

Error — “Charity means tolerating everything and judging no one”

This is the dominant misunderstanding of the age: to be charitable would mean approving everyone, never criticizing behavior, silencing every moral judgment in the name of respect. The error is attractive because it clothes itself in the virtues of respect and humility, and because it avoids conflict.

Why it is false. Charity wills the true good of the other; approving what harms him is not loving him, but abandoning him. Here the classical distinction is necessary: one never judges the inner forum of a person — his guilt before God escapes us (Mt 7:1) — but one can and must discern whether an act is good or evil. Confusing the two leads to a relativism which, under cover of charity, dissolves truth. Yet “without truth, charity degenerates into sentimentality”^[20]: a tolerance that renounces every judgment of value is no longer charity, but polite indifference.

What the Church says. Saint Paul gives the formula of balance: “living the truth in love,” veritatem facientes in caritate (Eph 4:15)^[21]. Charity is not opposed to truth: it carries it with gentleness. To love is not to approve everything; it is to will for the other the good that will make him grow, even against the current of his desires.

Error — “For charity's sake, one must keep silent about the truth”

A serious variant of the previous error. One keeps silent about a fault, an error, a danger, “so as not to wound,” and calls that silence “charity.” The error is attractive because it confuses delicacy — a real virtue — with abdication.

Why it is false. There is a false charity of silence that leaves the other person in his evil for the sake of one's own comfort. Christian tradition, on the contrary, holds fraternal correction to be a work of love. Saint Thomas teaches it explicitly: charitably warning someone who is going astray is an act of charity, because it wills his spiritual good^[22]. Christ himself gave the rule: “If your brother has sinned against you, go and reproach him when the two of you are alone” (Mt 18:15; AELF). To keep silent through cowardice is not to love: it is to prefer one's peace to the brother's salvation.

What the Church says. The traditional list of the seven spiritual works of mercy counts “correcting the one at fault” among the acts of charity, as Saint Thomas teaches^[23]. Truth spoken with love can wound for a moment; complicit silence harms for a long time. Charity speaks, but it speaks “the truth in love” (Eph 4:15).

Error — “Charity dispenses with justice”

One thinks oneself quits with the poor because one gives alms, when one first owes them justice: a fair wage, respect for their rights, what is due to them. The error is attractive because almsgiving is gratifying and visible, whereas justice is austere and binding.

Why it is false. One does not give as alms what one owes in justice. To give as charity what one has first withheld by injustice is a counterfeit. The Fathers of the Church are strikingly severe on this point:

“Not to enable the poor to share in our goods is to steal from them and deprive them of life. The goods we possess are not ours, but theirs.” — Saint John Chrysostom, cited by the Catechism of the Catholic Church, § 2446^[24]

What the Church says. Charity does not abolish justice: it presupposes and surpasses it. Benedict XVI states the principle: “Love — caritas — will always prove necessary, even in the most just society”^[25], but it never dispenses anyone from building just structures. Authentic charity begins by rendering to each what is due; only then does it give from what is one's own. On the link between these two virtues, see What do the saints say about justice?.

Error — “Charity is reduced to giving money”

For many people, “doing charity” means giving a coin, a check, clothes. Material almsgiving is good and necessary, but the error consists in reducing all charity to it. It is attractive because money is easy to give and buys peace of conscience cheaply.

Why it is false. Charity is not measured by the sum given but by the love that carries it (1 Cor 13:3). And its field extends far beyond material almsgiving: there are the spiritual works of mercy — counseling, teaching, consoling, forgiving, bearing wrongs patiently, praying for the living and the dead — often more demanding than a gift of money. Giving oneself (one's time, listening, patience) costs more than giving from one's surplus. A charity settled by a bank transfer, without ever engaging the heart or the person, would remain on the surface.

What the Church says. The Catechism explicitly distinguishes the corporal works of mercy (feeding, clothing, visiting, welcoming) and the spiritual works (instructing, advising, consoling, forgiving, bearing patiently, praying)^[26]. Material charity that ignores the spiritual dimension, and “spiritual” charity that loses interest in the brother's body, are both incomplete. For concrete works toward the poor, see How to grow in almsgiving.

Error — “What matters is action; interior life is a luxury”

Charitable activism means spending oneself without counting in the service of others, but without a life of prayer, until one dries up. The error is attractive because action is valued and measurable, whereas prayer seems unproductive.

Why it is false. Charity cut off from its source dries up. One cannot give for long what one does not receive; the agitation of service ends in bitter overwork if it is not nourished by God. Saint Bernard already warned Pope Eugene III against the devouring absorption of affairs, which hardens the heart and draws it away from itself and from God — he urged the pope to reserve himself for himself, lest he lose himself in his own works^[27]. This is the image of the two sisters of Bethany: Martha busies herself and worries, Mary listens — and the Lord judges that “Mary has chosen the better part” (Lk 10:42), not because service is contemptible, but because it must spring from listening.

What the Church says. Benedict XVI insists on the need, for agents of charity, for a “formation of the heart”: their commitment must be born of the encounter with Christ, otherwise it becomes mere activism^[28]. True charity does not oppose action and contemplation: it is action overflowing from an inhabited interior life.

Error — “Charity is optional, reserved for generous souls”

The final misunderstanding is the most reassuring: charity would be a heroic option, a spiritual extra for saints and generous people, from which ordinary Christians could dispense themselves. The error is attractive because it excuses mediocrity.

Why it is false. Charity is not an ornament: it is necessary for salvation. Without it, says Saint Paul, “I am nothing,” even if I have faith to move mountains and the gift of tongues (1 Cor 13:1-2). It is the condition of all life in God, because “whoever does not love remains in death” (1 Jn 3:14). It is also the measure on which the Last Judgment will turn — not our exploits, but love:

“In the evening of our life, we shall be examined on love.” — Saint John of the Cross, Sayings of Light and Love^[29]

What the Church says. The Catechism teaches that charity is “the greatest of the virtues” and that it is required of all: “the fruits of charity are joy, peace, and mercy”^[30], a promise offered not only to heroes, but to every baptized person. Far from being optional, charity is what decides our eternity.

The table below summarizes the main misunderstandings and the Catholic truth that answers them. The left column gives the error in its common wording; the middle column, why it is false; the right column, the doctrinal landmark that corrects it.

Error — “All love of self is contrary to charity”

Some scrupulous souls believe that loving oneself would be selfish, and that perfection would consist in hating oneself. The error is attractive because it looks like humility and evangelical renunciation.

Why it is false. The commandment itself grounds a right love of self: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Mt 22:39). Love of self is the measure of love of neighbor — so one must indeed love oneself, and with a true love. Saint Thomas teaches this without hesitation: man must, by charity, love himself — not with the disordered love of self-love, but with the love that wills for oneself the sovereign good, God^[31]. Self-contempt is not a virtue: it is often wounded pride. What must be fought is disordered self-love, not the ordered love of the soul created for God.

What the Church says. Well-ordered charity includes love of self: to love one's soul is to will for it happiness in God. Saint Bernard describes an ascent by which man passes from love of self for self to love of self for God^[32]. Evangelical self-forgetfulness is not self-hatred: it is love that is decentered because it has found something greater than itself to love.

Error — “Possessive attachments are charity”

Sometimes what is in reality an attachment that seizes the other, wants him for oneself, and feeds on the pleasure one draws from him — jealousy, exclusivity, emotional dependence disguised as devotion — is called “love.” The error is attractive because the intensity of feeling passes itself off as generosity.

Why it is false. Charity wills the good of the other; possessive love wants the other for one's own good. One liberates; the other captures. Saint Francis de Sales, in his treatment of “friendships,” finely distinguishes true spiritual friendship, which raises the soul toward God, from “evil, foolish, and vain” attachments (III, 18) that hold the soul back and trouble it^[33]. An affection that makes one possessive, jealous, or dependent is not charity, even if it calls itself charity: it seeks itself.

What the Church says. The love of charity is, according to Saint Paul, “patient,” “kind,” “does not seek its own interest,” and “is not irritable” (1 Cor 13:4-5). Everything in an attachment that seeks its own interest and captures the other moves away from this measure. The test is simple: does this love want the other to grow, even far from me — or does it want the other for me?

All these misunderstandings have a common root: charity has been detached from what grounds it — sometimes from truth, sometimes from God, sometimes from the will, sometimes from justice. Restored to itself, charity is neither a feeling, nor a tolerant opinion, nor humanitarianism, nor almsgiving: it is the love of God received and returned, which wills the true good of all because it loves them in God.

Benedict XVI's formula summarizes the whole remedy: caritas in veritate, charity in truth. Without truth, love becomes an empty shell filled at will; without love, truth becomes harshness. The two walk only together. This is why Saint Augustine could risk his boldest maxim — not as a permission to do anything whatsoever, but as the consequence of charity rooted in truth:

“Love, and do what you will.” — Saint Augustine, Commentary on the First Epistle of Saint John, VII, 8^[34]

It still has to be true charity loving in us — and not one of its counterfeits. Learning to recognize false coins already disposes us to receive true gold: for the saints' voice on this love, see What do the saints say about charity?; for the path of its growth, How to grow in charity.

• How to grow in charity — the nature of charity, its degrees according to Saint Thomas, and concrete means for making it grow.
• What do the saints say about charity? — a commented anthology of the great sayings of saints and mystics on love of God and neighbor.
• How to grow in almsgiving — concrete works toward the poor, an extension of charity.
• What do the saints say about justice? — the virtue that charity presupposes and surpasses.
• The charity of the Catholic Church — the immense charitable action of the Church in history.