I live in a close-knit small town. We volunteer with local organizations, talk to our neighbors, and offer support when a struggle or celebration calls for it. We don’t ask each other about our political affiliations but simply engage in the shared project of building a community together.
But I’ll admit: When I happen to discover a neighbor’s political ideology runs counter to my own, my blood pressure rises. Being in proximity to people who willfully support what I take to be egregious harms to vulnerable people and other creatures makes me wary—and angry.
I know we are called to love our neighbors as ourselves and even to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us. But is it morally appropriate to continue engaging with smiles and small talk, papering over someone’s participation in injustice—or should those harmful choices have some social consequence? Am I implicitly condoning injustice if I continue a friendly relationship without challenging a person’s contribution to political oppression? I struggle with these questions.
To help me think through this, a therapist asked me recently if I could imagine giving a bandage to a person I opposed politically: Could I recognize our shared humanity at that level, with something so basic? Easy, I answered. Of course I could. The more difficult implication that follows, however, is this: Belonging in community is also a shared human need, regardless of political disagreements.
When studying just war theory in the early years of my academic career, I was most drawn to Augustine’s insightful articulation, which insists on recognizing the humanity of our opponents: loving our enemies in an emotionally responsive way. Augustine goes so far as to say that war is not just if soldiers do not grieve both the loss of their enemies and the fact that they must engage in battle in the first place.
Perhaps this is why I keep coming back to a story my husband’s grandfather once told me about his time overseas during World War II: During Christmastime, soldiers observed an impromptu ceasefire to allow each other the chance to rest and celebrate. Similar documented instances indicate this likely happened in small ways during the Second World War, and of course, the Christmas Truce in the First World War is well-known. Despite vast ideological differences, soldiers on both sides acknowledged, albeit briefly, the humanity of the other.
The parable of the Good Samaritan reminds us to keep the humanity of our enemies front and center. As Pope Francis told us in Fratelli Tutti (On Fraternity and Social Friendship), the point of Jesus’ parable is that “love does not care if a brother or sister in need comes from one place or another. For ‘love shatters the chains that keep us isolated and separate; in their place, it builds bridges. Love enables us to create one great family, where all of us can feel at home. . . . Love exudes compassion and dignity.’ ”
This gospel story reminds us, too, that our enemies can quickly become our neighbors, people to whom we show care. Neighbors are not necessarily those most proximate to us, nor must they be our friends. Rather, by ensuring that people in our sphere of influence have what they need to flourish—including a sense of belonging—we respect their dignity and demonstrate our own.
At the same time, we can continue to oppose harmful policies and ideologies, even at the risk of uncomfortable social interactions with our neighbors. In his 1967 speech, “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence,” Martin Luther King reminds us that “On the one hand we are called to play the good Samaritan on life’s roadside; but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life’s highway.”
We must meet the needs of our neighbors, offering care and belonging, especially to those who are marginalized and vulnerable but also to those whose moral frameworks violate our principles—and we are simultaneously called to challenge unjust ideologies. The two imperatives are not opposed. We can seek to build bridges, while at the same time, we speak truth and work to bring about justice with compassion.
When I look at Jesus, I see example after example of these dual responsibilities in practice. Jesus visited with tax collectors, who often exploited the poor. He shared his vision with them, inviting them into new relationships, rather than lecturing or rejecting them. Likewise, he did not shun Peter after he cut off the soldier’s ear (though he did tell Peter to put away his sword and then stepped forward to heal the soldier). When Jesus flipped tables, he was dismantling exploitative and unjust public practices, not targeting individuals. And when confronted with a woman caught in adultery, he refused to succumb to the patriarchal violence of the mob but instead deflated their aggression.
Candidly, even as I write this, part of me resists my own counsel. I don’t want to “keep company with evil.” And yet—isn’t the binary between good and evil precisely the faulty thinking Christ’s incarnation refutes? God is with us, in every speck of dust and every human person. Living into this reality cultivates sympathy and humility, helping us counter harmful actions while loving and engaging with the best in others. We recognize our shared capacity for virtue as well as sin.
This approach is challenging. Avoiding complicity with injustice requires continuous discernment and self-evaluation to determine what level of relationship is safe, and whether a lack of courage prevents us from using opportunities to voice our values. As Betsy Sinclair writes in an article for The Conversation, “Cutting off those in-person relationships isn’t just a problem for safety and friendliness around the block. It’s a problem for democracy because Americans need relationships with people whose politics are different than their own.”
The slogan, “We don’t have a difference in political opinion, we have a difference in morality” captures something important about this moment—and yet we are still asked to build a life together, even with people whose actions and beliefs we disagree with. Being a neighbor to folks across political lines is an antidote to the division and polarization that perpetuate democratic destabilization and feed into political violence. It is an antidote Catholics are particularly called to administer.
This article also appears in the October 2025 issue of U.S. Catholic (Vol. 90, No. 10, pages 40-41). Click here to subscribe to the magazine.
Image: Unsplash.com/Yiquan Zhang
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