By Dan Shea

In his era, G. K. Chesterton said, “A strange fanaticism fills our time: the fanatical hatred of morality, especially of Christian morality.” He also said something that is still true today, “Religious liberty might be supposed to mean that everybody is free to discuss religion. In practice it means that hardly anybody is allowed to mention it.”

Today the culture ignores eternal truths allowing license and exalted self-rule to be misconstrued as liberty. This sows the seeds of decay about the foundations of democracy by underestimating the value the Judeo-Christian traditions that made the circumstances for our communal and personal lives possible.

Modern society has been easily manipulated through invasive social engineering. It requires one to profess the prescribed social attitudes beyond one's reasonable purview. When the collective mantra rings with enough pretentious compassion people are relieved from having to get personally involved or taking any corrective action. It is sufficient to feel the pain.

What vamps as public opinion is mostly strident propaganda and is vastly disproportionate to the number of people who hold such views. This technique goes unchallenged due to the distorted concept of tolerance and the willingness to feign moral ambiguity. The public must champion principle and justice over rampant demagoguery and blatant partisanship. Otherwise, America remains a society of warring tribes each seeking advantage and wampum for their councils.

Society functions on the premise law is king, a law that is severed from the natural law and nature's God. It is not virtue that must first be restored but the realization of the deadening effects of personal sin. Only then can virtue, goodness, and decency be restored.

This notion that traditional values are now irrelevant lets this new type of tolerance to encourage everyone to make decisions relative to their situation as long as they subscribe to the dominate culture's dictums and are willing to condone any form of behavior rather than upset anyone's homeostasis. In truth, this is not tolerance, but moral cowardice.

Moral people repudiate personal relativism as a substitute for reason and truth. They insist that standards of behavior be fashioned by universal truths and right reason to be effective in protecting the common good. Allowing unrestrained relativism to be considered as valid as universal truths and reason, means that all opinions are equal. Of course, then the opinion that contends all opinions are not equal is also valid.

This gives cause to reflect on Ronald Knox’s assertion made in the early twentieth century, “These times call not merely for generating moral outrage. Rather, we are rediscovering how the Spirit is descending upon the faithful reclaiming them to ancient faith and calling them to repossess captive institutions.”

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http://www.catholic.org  FL, US
DAN SHEA - EDITOR, 661 869-1000

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Keywords

MORAL