Vicina sunt vitia virtutibus.
(St. Jerome, Adversus Luciferem 15)

Vices are near to virtues.

Comment: This is a revealing comment from the man who brought the Jewish and
Christian scriptures into the Latin speaking world. St. Jerome is crediting
with translaing the Hebrew and Greek scriptures into Latin, known as the Latin
Vulgate. For this he is hailed as a great man, as a saint.

He was also known to be a very difficult man to get along with, impossible, mean
and vicious by some accounts. He and St. Augustine eventually parted company
over some issues that apparently had to do with his disagreable attitudes.

Vice and virtue--posed as opposites like this they betray a dualistic world
view, and in ethical systems where things are all lined up as opposites in the
universe of good and evil, they will also always be linked, very closely. It
cannot be otherwise. In a dualistic view of things, one cannot have a good
without a corresponding evil. In such a world view the more engergy one puts
into being or acting or speaking "the good", the more one also creates the
reality of "the evil". They will always be linked.

This can sound very complex, but there are very common, often overlooked
examples. When certain nations of people are labelled "evil" that
automatically implies that other nations are "good". In fact, no nation is
either good nor evil. At any given moment one can point to almost any nation
and find examples of things that aid and nurture life, and other examples that
are destructive--coming from the same place.

And so it goes. It seems to me that we can stand back and play the judgment
game, lining everyone up into these two catagories of virtuous and vicious, or
we can see life--life happening, exploring, erring, hurting, healing, becoming.