Our friend Father Pitt, who has just released a lovely little picture-book of Pittsburgh cemeteries, shares this interesting epitaph adapted from Psalm 51:7 (because the monument stands in a Catholic cemetery, the quotation is adapted from the Douay version, where it is Psalm 50:9):

The epitaph would not be interesting in itself, but as applied to the deceased, it has a certain ringing appropriateness:

Here, by the way, is an excellent argument for the use of a professional proofreader even in very short texts, especially when there is a possibility that one’s mistake in the name of a certain gulch will be immortalized in stone for more than a century.

Dr. Boli has long believed that many of our conflicts today come from a misunderstanding of the difference between approval and tolerance. They are nearly opposite. It is possible for a Baptist to tolerate a Mormon: that is, to welcome him as a neighbor, to vote for him as a candidate for city council, to patronize his business, and to leave him alone to worship as he chooses. But do not ask the Baptist to approve of Mormonism. The Baptist must condemn Mormonism as fiction and heresy, or he ceases to be a Baptist. Likewise, the Baptist has every right to expect tolerance from the Mormon, but it would be shameful indeed if the Mormon were to approve of the Baptist’s religious doctrines: it would be an admission, in fact, that the Mormon’s supposedly fundamental beliefs are nothing more than a sham.

When advocates of a religious system or an alternative family arrangement demand our tolerance, they have Dr. Boli’s heartfelt support. When they demand our approval, however, they are asking for something to which they have no right. Dr. Boli has lived a long life, and he has seen many changes in the world, but he has still not been able to bring himself to approve of Presbyterians.

We all need a basic lesson in tolerance, and fortunately it is given very succinctly here, in a short passage from a very sensible etiquette guide published in 1855.

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Every denial of, or interference with, the personal freedom or absolute rights of another, is a violation of good manners. He who presumes to censure me for my religious belief, or want of belief; who makes it a matter of criticism or reproach, that I am a Theist or Atheist, Trinitarian or Unitarian, Catholic or Protestant, Pagan or Christian, Jew, Mohamedan, or Mormon, is guilty of rudeness and insult. If any of these modes of belief make me intolerant or intrusive, he may resent such intolerance, or repel such intrusion; but the basis of all true politeness, and social enjoyment, is the mutual tolerance of personal rights. And every one who wishes to see the world anything but a scene of conflict and a prison house, must be willing to give this toleration themselves, and to demand it of all others, and for all others. Admirable was the answer of a friend of ours to some one who came to him with a complaint of what he thought the improper conduct of a neighbor: “I may not approve this man’s acts,” he said; “they may be contrary to my judgment, and offend my taste, but I would shoulder a musket to-morrow in defense of his right to do as he pleases in a matter that infringes upon the rights of no other person.”

No doubt there is a criticism which is proper and useful in society. There is no objection to very free criticism, when made in the spirit of toleration. The critic who says: “Neighbor, I understand that you ate cabbage for dinner to-day. I consider eating cabbage immoral, and opposed to the best interests of society.” This may pass, and I may thank my friend for the suggestion, and engage to take it into respectful consideration. But if he adds, “You have no right to eat cabbages, and if you persist we intend to pull your house down,” I should be apt to buy a revolver and try the issue.

It may be known, as a matter of fact, and innocently related, that such a man is a fire-worshiper; that such a woman knits on Sunday; that another eats his Welsh rarebit with mustard; that Miss Jones has the misfortune to be devotedly in love with her friend’s husband; or that Mrs. Thompson accepts the free-love theories of the Fourierists. But when such matters, the love or the mustard, become causes of persecution, there is a very gross violation of the first principles of good manners.

——The Illustrated Manners Book, 1855.

As to the author, “We have solemnly pledged to keep his incognito sacred,” says the publisher.