Morality of Suarez Biting: Not Black and White Catholic Soccer Behavior

The majority of moral challenges we face on a daily basis, both in football and in life, lie in complex shades of grey, colored oftentimes by our position, our life experiences, and the circumstances of the situation. Black and white decisions are rarely relevant in daily moral life because when they do crop up, it is not difficult to discern right from wrong. The stark nature of their moral value clearly indicates which path we ought to take.

It is the grey areas in which our moral fiber is truly tested, and in which we spend most of our lives.

What was Suarez thinking when he bit Chiellini in the Uruguay vs. Italy World Cup match? None of us can say, but I do think that most of us can agree that this is a pretty clear black and white situation. My honest assessment of the situation is that there is something mental that happens with players like him and Pepe in their moments of insanity that for some reason paints that decision grey instead of black. We also saw it with the Alex Song punch in the back. The rush and intensity of competition can be like a narcotic; it can overpower and let loose the deepest corners of our personality. It is for this reason that sport can be such a powerful crucible for personal change; because the normal inhibitions and rational processes that usually dictate our behavior can be overridden by the powerful waves of passion and desire for expression, for victory.

Both deep beauty and deep ugliness can come out in sports, as Suarez showed in his three biting incidents, and as these softball players did when their opponent injured herself in the waning moments of the game.

The relevant takeaway for the Catholic athlete is that we can make a conscious decision to look at our sports as more than just a game. By realizing the deep moral context of our sporting actions, we can turn the game we love into something even more than it already is - we can turn it into a powerful mirror for reflecting our character. If we begin to look at the beautiful game (and ourselves) this way, then we can take that information and use it to cut away at our weaknesses and replace them with strengths. Instead of just a hobby that we happen to be passionate about, football can also become a crucible for purging us of our weaknesses and forging in us ever stronger virtues.

We’ll later begin a series of examinations on practical and functional ways to improve specific character traits through the practice of soccer. Some early topics will include:

Mental fortitude - the ability to react positively to adversity and still summon your best.

Temperance - the ability to feel your passions deeply and tap into their power, but also to understand them, control them, and rule over them.

Confidence - freedom from fear and doubt. The ability to think fast, unencumbered by these burdens, and take risks. Confidence also leads to mental fortitude, as it allows you to brush off failures and defeats without letting them affect your psyche.

What has your experience with soccer taught you about yourself? How would you like it to help shape you into a better and stronger person?

Christian love for your soccer teammates: a competitive advantage

One resounding theme, as the players told it in “23 Stories, One Team”, was the overwhelming importance of coming home to a family that loves them no matter what they do on the pitch. Michael Bradley, for example, says that if you were to come home and not have your son there, not have your wife there to greet you, then it just wouldn’t be the same.

For their family members, it doesn’t matter how badly they played or how egregious their errors were - when they come home, win or lose, they will be loved in exactly the same measure. They have people who will truly celebrate their excellence with them in their moments of victory, and truly accompany them to the depths of their sorrow in defeat. They embody unconditional love, that Christian principle of the fundamental value of a person completely outside of their actions. Just by being a human being, you truly are a wonderful and unique piece of art to be treasured and cherished. Yes, your actions to have a moral value and a moral context, and also have utilitarian, worldly values as well, but those actions and their values are completely separate from your intrinsic value as a person.

A person is valuable just because they are a person. “I think, therefore I am” becomes “I am, therefore I am valuable”. That doesn’t make you a good or a bad people necessarily, and you have your own free will to choose whether to live beautiful or horribly, but nothing you can ever do will change your status as a human being, which is a valuable and unique and beautiful thing to be.

Now, for a moment, let’s imagine the player who doesn’t have a loving family and circle of friends. How heavily will his successes and defeats weigh on him? How rocky will his life be when his sense of self-esteem, of self-worth, comes from how he performs that day on the pitch? On one hand, he may be driven into depression by his seeming inability to consistently feel valuable. His life may become a wasteland of fearfulness, timidity, and bitterness, deterring him from taking action and taking risks. Dealing with failure would become a supreme challenge, because every failure would be equivalent to proof of his own worthlessness. In a small minority, it may drive that player to a standard of excellence that is unapproachable, simply because he cannot stomach the feeling of being worthless. However, this success would be a house of cards built on sand, as one’s continued feelings of self-worth and value would be contingent on a continuing string of victories. As soon as the wins stopped coming, desperation, depression, and all sorts of hell would be set loose, and that is when extreme measures like steroids, match fixing, and dirty play suddenly stop seeming so black and white and instead start looking like debatable shades of grey.

Winning as a false God - this is one of the key heresies of sports culture. This is what leads us into false degradations of human worth based on performance, into an obsession with victory no matter what the costs, into inflated and deflated impressions of self-worth, and the elevation of poor role models into positions of societal spotlight and public esteem.

In a later post, we will also explore the concept of practicing universal love within a team, and how that can radically and fundamentally alter team dynamics and performance. If being loved unconditionally off the pitch can transform a player’s ability to perform, then how much more effective would it be to experience that same universal love on the pitch?