“The Ethicist” is one of my favorite New York Times columns because it is insight into the “mind” of the woke. It is also the product of an “ethics” that is essentially relativistic at heart, save for occasional feints towards “consent” and “tolerance” (whatever that means). I know that, in their latter years, Ann Landers and Dear Abby were both somewhat woke, but “The Ethicist” is woke on steroids.

December 17’s “Ethicist” (here) presented a real dilemma. The correspondent says he actually likes an 85-year-old neighbor but for the fact that the elderly lady both prays for him and tells him that she does. The correspondent knows the woman is religious; she knows he is religiously indifferent. The correspondent wants to know why “she can’t respect my wishes” and not pray for him.

For once, I am somewhat inclined to agree with the “Ethicist.” As “the Ethicist” sees things, the “stakes are not comparable.” The correspondent, who does not believe in God, is not hurt by prayers to someone he doesn’t acknowledge; the woman, who believes she is Biblically required to pray for another, would be harmed by being enjoined from praying. Seems almost a perverse parody of Pascal’s wager. At best, says “the Ethicist,” the correspondent can ask not to be informed of the unsolicited prayers but, even there, as the old lady is unlikely to change her ways, the correspondent might “learn to accept this woman for who she is, hearing her prayers as a sincere expression of her loving feelings toward you.”

I feel no compulsion about informing people for whom I pray, even if they may never know it, but I can imagine some Protestant sects where this might appear to be a duty. Furthermore, the woman might consider it a kind of indirect spiritual work of mercy: as the correspondent would likely be even more averse to moral correction, the suggestion that God enlighten and help him through prayer might be another way to “instruct the ignorant” and obstinate.

But should we really be surprised when Times op-ed writer Jessica Grose on the same day warned Democrats (here) that they should not “forget” atheists, because they are “politically engaged” and a vital counterbalance to the bogeyman of Christian nationalism of which the Grey Lady is perennially spooked? This is not just about the perennially offended hypersensitive. Peel it back and you’ll find a whole anthropology, a very non-Judeo-Christian one. Here no one can offer any “good” for another without the other’s explicit consent. And since consent is constitutive of good, the offerer cannot know if the “good” on offer is really the “recipient’s good” and, therefore, not “good” on the spectrum of the dictatorship of relativism. In the end, there is no love here, because love is seeking the real good of the other, and the other’s good to this mindset is only subjectively real and not necessarily intelligible absent my condescending to share it with you. Prayer is a perfect example; it is not a good unless it is my good (which it isn’t), so that your offering it is, in essence, spiritual assault and battery using a ghostly weapon.

Lastly, has the mentality of the “naked public square” become so pervasive as to suggest it’s a violation of another’s “rights” to pray for them without their consent? If one learned that the communion of saints was engaged in unauthorized and unsolicited intercession on your behalf, would that constitute an offense — or proof that concluding “there is no God above” makes one a fool (Ps 14:1)? The question is, has our culture grown so intolerant of anything beyond the most privatized religion that some people actually think they have some right to demand others not pray for them? That, dear correspondent, seems far beyond what one may legitimately request.