Friends

+ Cardinal George Pell, Archbishop of Sydney
27 Jul 2003

Adversity separates good friends from acquaintances and enables us to identify who belongs in each category, who are only fair weather friends.

Good and true friends are precious. Once gained we should make sure they are never lost, even when time and distance bring separation. The telephone and e-mails are a boon even to friends on the other side of the world.

Emigration to Australia is now radically different from 100 years ago, when communication was so slow and travel so rare and expensive. Emigration no longer has to mean a life in exile without return, without communication with the friends of earlier years.

Big cities can be lonely places for many and country communities can be the same for those who don't fit. But often country life provides more communities, more groups of friends outside individual families than the city. One of the blessings of good Catholic parishes in both city and country is the friendships found and nurtured there.

But bad friends are bad news. Friends who share a weakness can damage one another, e.g. drinking or gambling together; going further into excesses together than either would singly. There is always an element of selfishness, of counterfeit friendship when companions are bound together by weakness.

Sometimes it can be much worse when crime and vice are what unites persons. Honour among thieves is not unknown, although the warping effects of drugs on personalities are making this rarer and rarer. Companions in vice, fellow addicts of disordered pleasures are not true friends, but people who often turn on one another in adversity to save their skins.

a friend of mine claims that he can tell what a person is like if he knows who are that person's three or four closest friends. In most cases this claim would be justified.

If we are to maintain our beliefs or enthusiasms we need to mix with at least some like-minded people. Sometimes young Christian adults who practise their religion can feel isolated among their peers. If not one of their close friends is a believer, it will be almost impossible to remain faithful, even with a believing family. Just as we eventually become what we read, so too we take on the colours of our close friends. Only moral heroes are able to stand alone for long.

Parents know how crucial the choice of friends is for their children, because good friends improve and inspire us, bad friends drag us down.

Friendships take time and effort and sometimes require forgiveness. They remain one of the least biological forms of love, but still one of the most important.