For the past 20 years, the University of Notre Dame has sponsored a yearlong dialogue on a given theme, with featured speakers, panels and other public events at which the year’s theme is discussed and debated.

This year’s theme is “Cultivating Hope.” Two weeks ago, Cardinal Robert McElroy, archbishop of the Archdiocese of Washington, D.C., participated in a Q&A session on campus with Notre Dame’s president, the Rev. Robert Dowd, CSC, during which McElroy offered his thoughts on ways to address political polarization in America.

The event was too brief for a topic of that magnitude. Even so, it revealed at least four glaring gaps I see in discussions about the political climate.

First, there is insufficient recognition that one of the biggest drivers of political polarization is the expansion of government.

Second, in conversations about heated political topics, well-meaning individuals often fail to distinguish between virtues, which are individual behaviors, and policies, which are institutional actions.

McElroy’s remarks were somewhat typical in that regard. His focus was on the need for “compassion” to help build bridges and better understanding.

Compassion is a virtue, an admirable individual attribute, a way for people to deal with each other one-on-one or in small groups. But it loses its meaning when it is elevated to being a justification for public policy.

Governance by compassion, therefore, results not in a more benevolent society but rather in a chaotic, anarchic and disordered one. This isn’t speculation; we see it every day.

Innocent people are victimized by crime because of “compassionate” policies that put repeat criminals — thieves, rapists and even murderers — back on the streets.

Which brings me to my third point: Americans who have been victimized by the egregious policies listed above (and so many others) have every right to be furious with the people responsible for those policies. The proper response to these abuses of power isn’t “compassion,” it’s outrage — and the use of every lawful means to throw those people out of power and, to the extent possible, remedy the wrongs they have done and repair the damage they’ve inflicted.

Fourth, while it’s popular to call for more “compassion,” I hear far fewer demands — even among Catholic clergy — for truth. But there is no “compassion” without truth.

To be clear, I’m not saying that all those enacting and promoting public policies based upon arguments about compassion are bad people. To the contrary, I suspect most are trying to be good people, and they’re doing what they have been taught and told was better, more moral, more upright. Viewing things through that lens, however, naturally inclines them to look at anyone who opposes them as immoral, lacking compassion and motivated by some malevolent impulse.

That’s why they resort to ad hominem attacks:

n If you state the biological fact that women cannot become men or vice versa, or that men have biological advantages over women, you’re just a “transphobe.”

n If you point out the hypocrisy of allowing marches and violent riots in 2020 while businesses, churches and schools were shut down, you’re a racist.

n If you ask hard questions about the mRNA shots and their side effects, you’re an “anti-vaxxer” who wants people to die.

n If you argue that legal immigrants should assimilate to American culture, you’re a nativist who hates “brown” people.

The unspoken basis for these anti-rational responses is a fundamental belief that “compassion” takes precedence over everything else; it is more important than science, more important than public safety, more important than the rule of law or truth.

In his comments at Notre Dame, McElroy did not say any of those things, of course. But I submit that by continuing to exalt the individual virtue of compassion when what we’re dealing with a collapse of the public’s confidence in our institutions, he is missing very important points and — albeit unwittingly — contributing to the very political polarization he wants to ameliorate.