Fidelity to error is not a virtue

There are few things more obstructive to that state of fluidity than a certain misconstrued ideal of fidelity often to be met with. Some people attribute value to the attitude of stubborn adherence as such (adherence to an idea, or to an intellectual milieu, in particular). Yet in reality it is adherence to truth and to genuine values only which is good; adherence to errors is a bad thing. What claims our faithfulness is the presence of genuine values. Fidelity is but a manifestation of that continuity by virtue of which we pay consideration to the immutability and the eternal significance of truth and of the world of values.

To abide by a thing inflexibly, merely because we have once believed in it and have come to love it, is not in itself a praiseworthy attitude. It is only in reference to truth and to genuine value that unswerving loyalty is an obligation, and a virtue. In regard to all errors and negative values (that is, evils in the widest sense of the term, but particularly in a morally relevant sense) we have, on the contrary, the duty to break with what we formerly cherished and to withdraw our allegiance from them, once we know them to be false and negative in value. Indeed, the obligation of fidelity in a formal and automatic sense must not hamper our readiness to separate ourselves from such ideals or convictions, once we have serious reasons to doubt their validity. There is only one fidelity to which we are absolutely committed: that is, fidelity towards God, the epitome of all values, and towards everything that represents God and is instrumental to us in approaching Him.

Fidelity to persons vs. fidelity to ideas

This truth is frequently obscured by considerations of this order: “I should, after all, remain faithful to a person whom I have loved, even though I cannot help discovering many negative values in him.” By analogy, it is inferred that an obligation of fidelity exists also in regard to ideas, intellectual milieus, and cultural atmospheres which have formerly meant a great deal to us and have become traditional with us. In reality, however, the situation is quite different in regard to ideological entities than it is in regard to persons. A person, in statu viae, is never something as definitively and univocally fixed (concerning his significance and value) as is an idea or an ideal. A person may grow and unfold, he may reform and perfect himself along lines essentially unlimited in their design. Every human being incarnates a divine thought, and it is to this that my love for him in its decisive spiritual aspect is directed. Hence, I may keep in communion with him even though there be revealed to me an entirely new and higher world: for the latter may make a more basic objective appeal to him also, and that appeal may yet be carried to him actually.

Moreover, all relationships between persons involve a kind of immanent promise which, however tacit, generates a binding mutual claim; whereas in our relationships with nonpersonal entities that specific note is naturally absent. All interpersonal relations are fraught with a kind of immanent obligation; the specific character of obligation differs according to the essential quality and the objective meaning of the relationship in question; but in any such relationship a claim to fidelity remains. It is not so with our relations to ideal entities and other nonpersonal things.