Before travelling to Iraq Pope Francis was criticised. Some criticism was ideological: by meeting Muslim leaders he was supposedly compromising Catholic faith. Other more measured critics found fault with the risk that he, the large team that accompanied him, and the crowds that would gather to meet him, would bring to the people of Iraq, already seriously threatened by COVID-19. Finally, others criticised the rashness involved when a man of his age and frailty and with such a central position in the Church, decided to make a journey to a land racked by religious conflict and epidemic.
None of these risks appear to have been realised. His meetings with Islamic religious leaders were low key and reflected their mutual personal esteem. He seems to have returned to Rome with new energy, and so far there has been no evidence of increased infection due to his visit. The criticism, however, bears reflection. It leads us to ask what weight we place on courage, a quality much discussed in antiquity.
Such conversation is important in a society like ours which places great weight on risk avoidance. This emphasis, and the regulations that flow from it, have undoubtedly been effective in reducing incidents of food poisoning, deaths from guns, faulty cars, electrical appliances and in mining and construction accidents. Most recently and spectacularly it has been essential to curb the spread and death toll from COVID-19.
Although critics have dismissed many regulations imposed in the name of safety as manifestations of the nanny state, they have won general acceptance. The priority that a society places on the avoidance of risk, however, raises many questions of the value that it does and should place on courage — of choosing to enter risk and to persevere in it. Pope Francis’ visit to Iraq was certainly countercultural in this respect.
In warrior cultures courage was both easily identified and highly prized. It was exhibited in entering battle and fighting till victory or death, a duty that fell to all men of fighting age. Only when societies achieved some level of security did people reflect further on it. In Laches, one of Plato’s minor dialogues, the protagonists begin by defining courage in terms of the quality good soldiers show in war, but wonder what it involves for youths in a world where warriors belong to the past. In the dialogue Socrates pushes them to set it in relationship to other virtues