What Is Truth?

Each year as we gather for the Readings for Holy Week services, I find that one or two verses stay with me for days and weeks after Easter.  This year it has been Pilate’s probing question during his interrogation of Jesus, “What is truth?” (John 18:38a)

Indeed, what is truth?  It is a question which is as relevant and urgent today as it was two thousand years ago.  When called to testify at a trial, one is required to swear or affirm to “tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.”  Is truth limited, then, to statements that are admissible in a court of law?  Hardly.  There are many things we know in our lives which cannot be proven true or false by the standards of our justice system.

Neither is truth simply the recitation of facts.  To be truthful facts must be accurate; but without context, plain facts can be deeply misleading.  As an example, consider the old Cold-War-era joke regarding a foot race between the top U.S. runner and his counterpart from the U.S.S.R.  The American won the race.  The next day the Soviet newspapers reported that their runner had come in second, and the U.S. runner had finished next to last.  The facts are accurate.  The manner of stating them is contrived to convey a false understanding of the results of the contest.

Religion in the Presidential Campaign

To one extent or another religion is a topic of discussion in the campaigns of most of the contenders for the U.S. presidency.  This column provides a brief run-down of the religious views, insofar as they can be determined from public statements and analyses, of the remaining candidates for the two major parties’ nominations.  I list them in alphabetical order by last name.

Having attended mass with his Catholic wife for many years, Jeb Bush formally converted to Catholicism in 1995.  From all reports he is sincere and devout in his faith, which clearly influenced many of his actions as governor of Florida.  In his presentation to a 2009 conference, he stated, “As a public leader, one’s faith should guide you,” and that attitude was in evidence when, for example, as governor he established the nation’s first faith-based prison and attempted unsuccessfully to compel a hospital to keep Terri Schaivo on life-support.  He differs from Catholic doctrine on the matter of capital punishment, however, having presided over 21 executions during his time as governor.  Since the publication of Pope Francis’ encyclical on climate change, Bush has acknowledged that earth’s climate is changing due, at least in part, to human activity, but he has not articulated any clear program to address the problem.