What happened to courtesy?

Courtesy does not come to us naturally. It’s artificial, learned. It’s a lubricant in society that eases our relationships with one another. It’s artificial, but it isn’t phony. I believe it’s a necessity in an ever shorter supply.

Having been brought up in Kentucky, one might say I have been influenced by the southern traditions of high congeniality. Huck Finn’s “Yes, ma’ams” come to mind; and I do indeed still say yes, ma’am. The night they drove old Dixie down was a night no doubt duly accounted for in Divine Providence, but good manners began to die, too; and I’ll call that a shame.

Courtesy is right and important. St. Paul says in Philippians, “…Let all parties think humbly of others as superior to themselves, each of you looking to other’s interests rather than to his own.” If I push in ahead of you, grunt when you speak, in general fail in civility, much less pay deference to you dignity, I have done more than abrogate courtesy, I have harmed you. That makes it a moral matter.

I’m not talking about knowing which fork to pick out of a line of forks at a state dinner, but the common greeting, the consideration and respect we as individuals owe to one another.

Something grates against my bones when I hear a youngster respond to a teacher with “yeah.” Something goes to war inside me what a failure to hear is rejoined with “what?” Something wrinkles my brow when overfamiliarity occurs where unfamiliarity exists.

Words are, too, important. It does matter that people say please, that people say excuse me, that people beg people’s pardon. Addresses like Mr. and Mrs. and Ms. and Father and Sister and Brother and Bishop all matter. Children do need to learn to say thank you, and not just grab the candy and run. Courtesy is tightly linked with words – they are tools of respect; they erect it where it did not stand.

There are times of course, when words are obnoxious. Someone obstreperously butting into a conversation would do well to keep silence. There’s a time for reverent quiet; there’s a time to make noise.

It’s true, manners can be carried to ridiculous extremes. The French, in their précieux period, were loath to refer to teeth, for example, considering the word too earthy. They preferred “the furnishings of the mouth.” They disliked “feet,” preferring “les petites souffrantes,” the little sufferers. Sometimes discourtesy can be disguised in preciosity. A friend one filing through the college cafeteria line told one of the cooks: “Madame, this fare is a gastronomical felony!” To which she replied, “Why thank you!”

Courtesy, for all its sometimes culturally affected oddities, nevertheless has a certain core value, an intrinsic place in any time period. For all the funny distortions that can occur, we need cultural mechanisms for getting along. For sure, the gentility of the South is gone. Going, too, I’m afraid are the sentient good manners of the North, East and West.

Lord, thank you for giving us one another. Lord, please guide us in our ways. –T.R.

written by Thomas A. Russell
first published in the Lafayette Sunday Visitor on November 1st, 1987