On the Giving and Receiving of Honor

The Catholic Thing

By Stephen P. White
No one esteems a man for having lived an easy life. No one thinks more of a man for never having faced hardship, trials, or want. We pray that we might be spared such trials ourselves. We are grateful when those we love are spared such sufferings. But we do not admire them for it.
There are certain kinds of ease - the ease that comes with inheriting great wealth, for example - that we generally hold in suspicion, if not outright contempt. We may occasionally envy those who live such lives of unmerited luxury, but no one ever mentions a silver spoon by way of a compliment. Still, we know what it is to desire for ourselves what we do not admire in others.
By contrast, we often admire those who have suffered much. We admire those who have overcome great adversity, seeing in their perseverance proof of some virtue or other. The suffering of others can move us to compassion, which is natural and good. There are even some forms of suffering that inspire not just compassion but a certain awe or reverence for the sufferer.
Such people have endured or faced evils the rest of us tremble to contemplate and they grow in our estimation for it: a young widow, a patient facing a terminal diagnosis, a combat veteran. In this last case, our admiration is often combined with gratitude. Our veterans chose to stand in the face of danger - physical and moral danger - for the sake of the rest of us. We honor them accordingly.
We set aside the anniversary of the armistice, which brought the Great War to its close as a yearly remembrance.
This week we celebrated Veterans' Day. We honor most those who have given most. We honor them for their sacrifice, and they honor us by receiving the gratitude and esteem of their nation.
To borrow a line from Lincoln, it is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But it is not just remembrance and gratitude that we owe to our veterans. We honor them, which is something different and something more than offering thanks or rewarding virtue and sacrifice. We don't speak of honor much these days, at least outside of the military, but it is a vitally important part of social life. What honor adds to gratitude is worth closer consideration.
To honor someone is to confer upon them some measure of our own esteem. One cannot give what one does not possess, so in a real sense, one cannot honor another unless one is himself, in some sense, honorable. The more honorable, the more dignified, the more prestigious (in the best sense) the one conferring honors, the greater the significance of the honor conferred.
Thus, the greatest honors are bestowed on behalf of a whole people, not simply as a sign of private appreciation. The highest formal honor conferred by the United States is given in the name of the institution that represents the sovereign people of this nation: the Congressional Medal of Honor.
We bestow honors as much for the sake of ourselves as for those upon whom we bestow them. We honor a soldier, it is true, for his own bravery and gallantry. But we also honor him because we want to publicly associate ourselves with those virtues and with the one who possesses them. In bestowing an honor, we elevate for ourselves, and for all, an example of those merits and virtues to which we aspire.
An honor bestowed is not a wage, not a compensation for services rendered. Which is why an honor, well bestowed and well received, usually elicits from the honoree, not a sense of a just remuneration, but a very different response. Honor has this strange quality: it is the source of mutual pride and humility, for both the honoree and the one by whom he is honored.
This mutuality also explains why refusing an honor can be such a stinging rebuke to the one who offers it. There are honorable (as it were) ways to decline an honor, but refusal of an honor sometimes constitutes a public insult, that is, a declaration that the person or group bestowing honor lacks the honor and dignity to confer an honor ...