The triumph of relativism among young Americans (an article)

[mdgspencer]

In the link below, a bishop speaks the change in moral outlook among young Americans, providing a disturbing manifestation of their moral relativism. This change has occurred because Catholics have failed to pass the faith onto the next generation, and because of what our culture teaches every day to the young, leaving a hole where their convictions ought to be, he maintains.
see fatherdavidbirdosb.blogspot.com/2010/10/irenikon-young-people-today-have-lost.html

 

[christofirst]

That’s strong talk, spoken with conviction. I should have been more like the bishop while I was raising my son. Then again, people I know who grew up in the 1940’s and 1950’s, the “good old days” of a more strict Catholicism and a God-fearing culture, also fell away from the practice of the Faith. I suppose I mention this mainly to assuage my guilt as a father.

 

[John21652]

In the link below, a bishop speaks the change in moral outlook among young Americans, providing a disturbing manifestation of their moral relativism. This change has occurred because Catholics have failed to pass the faith onto the next generation, and because of what our culture teaches every day to the young, leaving a hole where their convictions ought to be, he maintains.
see fatherdavidbirdosb.blogspot.com/2010/10/irenikon-young-people-today-have-lost.html

This is not just an American problem. As the article says, it is a problem throughout the west.

Not just Catholics have rolled over either. The Anglican Church in England has compromised its core principles in the face of a demand for multicultural ‘tolerance’, which the Archbishop speaks of. Catholics do indeed have to stand their ground and make sure they either support the Church 100% or stop pretending to be Catholics.

As the Archbishop said -

“We need to stop calling ourselves ‘Catholic’ if we don’t stand with the Church in her teachings – all of them.”

He cites a falling away in catechesis during the 1960s and 1970s and how that has left a moral vacuum. The trouble was, in my opinion, that catechesis was too shallow. We knew the rules and the basic doctrines, but we didn’t truly understand the underlying reasons why. It was all too rote. Consequently, when the tide of moral relativism hit in the 1970s, we weren’t properly armed with the tools required to confront and defeat it. Todays Ctholics need to be better edicated about their faith than their fathers and grandfathers if they are to fill the moral vacuum that exists today.

As the Archbishop alludes to, it will take courage, conviction and perhaps a little less tolerance of the moral retardeness of todays society.

 

[fakename]

A lot of these problems have to do with living daily life with different people & religions; everyone sees everyone else and if an action is too extreme it will lead to ostracization.

The solution is to avoid different people because anything less requires heroic virtue and this is perhaps too much to ask for most people, for nature made run-of-the-mill people and not heroes.

That is, there is strength in numbers, but when the many are dispersed only the heroes can persevere.

 

[Holly3278]

If we’re embarrassed about Church teachings, or if we disagree with them, or if we’ve decided that they’re just too hard to live by, or too hard to explain, then we’ve already defeated ourselves.”
“We need to really believe what we claim to believe,” he stressed. “We need to stop calling ourselves ‘Catholic’ if we don’t stand with the Church in her teachings – all of them.”

I love this quote from the article. If we don’t believe everything that the Church teaches then yes, we should not call ourselves Catholic. Why? Because a true Catholic is one who believes everything that the Church teaches. A true Catholic is not one who picks and chooses the doctrines they like and rejects the ones they don’t like. In other words, cafeteria Catholics are not true Catholics in my opinion.

 

[sw85]

In the link below, a bishop speaks the change in moral outlook among young Americans, providing a disturbing manifestation of their moral relativism. This change has occurred because Catholics have failed to pass the faith onto the next generation, and because of what our culture teaches every day to the young, leaving a hole where their convictions ought to be, he maintains.
see fatherdavidbirdosb.blogspot.com/2010/10/irenikon-young-people-today-have-lost.html

The “moral vocabulary” bit is a very keen point. Modernity has succeeded even in obscuring the language within which moral theology is discussed. The result is that a large number of atheists have the rank temerity to accuse Christians of being “unloving,” because they conflate “love” with “affection” and not “willing the good for another.” And this, they say even while they butcher their own children and sodomize their neighbors and blaspheme against God.

I have no doubt this degenerate sinkhole of a civilization is damning souls by the billions. If my own heart weren’t so unresponsive to such thoughts, if I didn’t lack perspective on it as I presently do, I would tear my clothes and weep for the world.