No Humility without Humiliation (Series on “Minding the Web”)

“Humility, of course, is a tricky virtue. Have you ever known of any­one who successfully tried to be humble? Humility is usually something that happens to us, rather than something we do. I was once having a conversation with a friend in Ireland about sexual misconduct by priests. I asked him if the acknowledgment of this crime as sin might teach the church humility. He thought for a short time and then said, “Possibly, because there is no humility without humiliation.” The tax collector was humiliated, which made him an appropriate witness to the one alone worthy of worship.”1

This is the twenty-second in a series of posts highlighting captivating, provocative, or simply entertaining quotes from the newly published book Minding the Web: Making Theological Connections by Stanley Hauerwas edited by Robert J. Dean (Cascade).

  1.  Stanley Hauerwas, “Celebration,” in Minding the Web: Making Theological Connections, edited by Robert J. Dean (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2018), 259.

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