When I was reflecting on the upcoming presidential election, and the pleading of many Republicans that conservatives and Christians be “reasonable,” I was reminded of something that Henri De Lubac, S.J., one of twentieth century’s greatest theologians, wrote:

"…He is not an extremist, nor a biased man. He is a wise man, fair. He is wary of all passion. Moreover, he has experience, he knows that in all matters there is wrong on both sides and that nothing is to be gained by looking too closely. He knows too that you have to live and that life is impossible without mutual concessions and a certain ‘happy medium.’ In all controversies he suffers at seeing two men ‘attacking one another.’ It is also one of his maxims that there is always a risk in running foul of any accepted opinion whatever. Therefore people often have recourse to his arbitration. Of two adversaries who take him to witness, if one says that two and two make five, and the other that they make four, he prudently inclines toward the middle solution: two and two, he suggests, more or less make four and a half." Henri De Lubac, S.J.