If you’ve spent some time reading catechetical materials or hanging around theological circles, you’ve likely heard the venerable maxim that Catholicism is the religion of both/and.

What this means is that the Catholic faith and its vision of reality holds together pairs that may seem to be mutually exclusive but aren’t. For instance, God is both three and one; the Eucharist is both a symbol and a reality; revelation is communicated to us via both Scripture and tradition; we should speak with both truth and charity; and, to cite the name of this column, the Christian on this earth is both already on the path to salvation and not yet completely there.

In other words, where the logic of the world sees an either/or, Catholicism often sees a both/and. The Catholic both/and recognizes a connection between paradoxical terms, such as the divine and human natures of Christ, and it doesn’t collapse the terms into each other. Jesus really is God and man, and divinity and humanity are not the same thing. To understand such a concept correctly, distinct elements need to be held together even while they are distinguished from one another.

Both/and is an important principle that helps illustrate how so many mysteries of the Catholic faith hold together. However, we can take both/and logic too far. We can treat it as an absolute and begin to apply it indiscriminately to every pair of terms or concepts —which leads to major misunderstandings and distortions of our faith. Because the truth is that while Catholicism may give special pride of place to both/and, it’s also the religion of either/or.

For instance, consider what happens to each of us individually after death. It isn’t both heaven and hell; it’s either heaven or hell. Similarly, an act can’t be both good and evil. It is either good or evil — even if there are all kinds of complicating factors and nuances that might go into determining its nature! And finally, we cannot grow in virtue and in vice. It’s one or the other.

It simply is not true that the best answer to any theological question is always both/and —and here’s why.

Both/and is not an axiom handed down to us from God. Rather, it’s a common characteristic of many mysteries of faith that we’ve discovered, but only by first receiving and accepting these mysteries as part of God’s revelation. The most important thing is not the both/and principle, but fidelity to the word of God.

But that same word teaches us that either/or is also a part of the story: either sheep or goats, either wise or foolish virgins, either Peter or Judas. Therefore, we can’t get carried away in our both/and absolutism to the point that we start overriding clear either/or principles that are laid down by Christ and his Church.

You may have noticed that a lot of the examples I’ve given of either/or truths deal with morality. Which makes sense: Evil is a privation of the good, so the two are contradictory and can’t be held together. But when both/and thinking gets carried away and turns into an end in and of itself, it begins to look for nuance and agreeability where there really isn’t any to be found. In doing so, it can verge on denying the existence of moral absolutes, or that certain actions — like abortion, adultery, lying, or depriving someone of what they’ve justly earned — are categorically wrong, everywhere and all the time.

There are some circles that cannot be squared. And sometimes, as Catholics, we just need to say no.

But perhaps we can lay out this article’s conclusion in a format that will satisfy both/and enthusiasts: There are both/and truths and either/or truths. And the key to recognizing and accepting both lies in a more fundamental obedience to the word of God and the teachings of his Church.

Liedl, a Twin Cities resident, is a senior editor of the National Catholic Register and a graduate student in theology at The St. Paul Seminary School of Divinity in St. Paul.