We have managed to dumb-down the virtue-based building blocks of today’s society. We can see this in many areas
first hand in every country across the globe. It is not only the students in our homes, schools, colleges, and employment who are affected. Over the past 30 years, these students have now grown up into adults. As a result, in many cases we have successfully substituted secular humanism for faith-based virtues in homes, schools, colleges and employment everywhere. By doing so, we have crippled the moral fiber of society, which continues into a downward spiral that affects all of us today. When we attempt to substitute God-given virtues with secular humanism, we begin cracking the firm foundation on which we are attempting to build.
Yes, this has been a problem since the beginning of our human existence. It begins by denying God, or at least excluding and relegating God in all or parts of life we decide to compartmentalize God, as if there were such a thing.
“For centuries, many have lived their lives (of work, study, business, research, social relationships, interests, etc.) in separation of the faith. As a consequence of this separation temporal realities have been adversely affected, existing, as it were, in the shadows on the fringes of the light of Revelation. Without this light many have come to consider the world as an end in itself, without any reference to God; therefore they have distorted the most elementary and basic truths,” wrote Francis Fernandez, in In Conversation with God, Vol. 2
Blessed Alvaro del Portillo, beatified on September 27, 2014 in Madrid, Spain, agreed in his Pastoral Letter dated December 25, 1985 when he added to the words of Fr. Fernandez, “In western countries, particularly, it becomes necessary to correct this separation because many generations which should belong to Christ and the Church are being lost in these years, and because, unhappily, from these places the harmful influences of a new paganism is being sent into the world. Thus, contemporary paganism, is characterized by the search for material well-being at any cost, and by the corresponding disregard – or to put it more accurately, fear, genuine terror – of anything that could cause suffering. With this outlook, words such as God, sin, Cross, mortification, eternal life – become incomprehensible to a great number of people, who are ignorant of their meaning and content. You have witnessed the incredible fact that many people began putting God in parenthesis, in some aspect of their professional lives. But then, as God demands, loves, and asks, they end up throwing Him out – like an intruder – from their civil laws and from the lives of the nations. With a ridiculous and presumptious pride they want to lift up in his place the poor human creature, who has lost his supernatural and human dignity, and has become reduced – it is no exaggeration, one can see it everywhere – to a stomach, sex and money.”
I remember the conversation I had one night some thirty years ago at the local high school during a meeting held for parents and teachers. I was speaking with a school official during the refreshments that followed the evening event. I was telling him what I was observing with my five children in the public school system, was teaching against what parents were teaching about ethics and morality. He was saying that the public school was not allowed to teach any particular belief system in the public school.
“We teach secular humanism,” he said.
“But secular humanism is a belief system,” I answered.
With the separation of church and state, it is understandable that public schools cannot teach one brand of religion in their schools. The frustrating thing parents must deal with in this situation, is that the schools, since they were not promoting a religion, but an alternative belief system, can teach against the very morals, ethics and character education parents teach at home, usurping the voices of the parents eight hours a day, five days a week. This is what happens when we so easily and neatly carve God out of our public and private existence, the existence created by God. We end up with secular humanism.
Secular humanism is a lifestance, or what Council for Secular Humanism founder Paul Kurtz has termed a eupraxsophy: a body of principles suitable for orienting a complete human life. As a secular lifestance, secular humanism incorporates the enlightenment principle of individualism, which celebrates emancipating the individual from traditional controls by family, church, and state, increasingly empowering each of us to set the terms of his or her own life.
A Secular Humanist believes in a consequential ethical system. This is nothing more and nothing less than cause and effect of actions and/or non-actions. Secular humanists hold that ethics is consequential, to be judged by results. This is in contrast to so-called command ethics, in which right and wrong are defined in advance and attributed to divine authority. “No god will save us,” declared Humanist Manifesto II (1973), “we must save ourselves.” Secular humanists seek to develop and improve their ethical principles by examining the results they yield in the lives of real men and women.
It is a sad state of affairs when we carve God out of our lives. So many people today see the direct results within all societies in the world of what happens when we diminish God, the Creator of All, to a fairy tale.
Human secularism leaves the children of 30 years ago, now adults, trying to fix real world dilemmas within their homes, neighborhoods, states and countries, trying to solve problems of war, conflict and social disease like COVID-19. Trying to solve problems without involving God (God forbid!) in every decision in all parts of life, is what is breaking the foundation of societies apart.
How does one teach our grown children, now indoctrinated in secular humanism, to believe in God, the very thing they were taught to shun for 12 grade-school years, plus an additional four or more years of college? To them, any and all religion was taught to be a farce, a laughable fairy tale. We see so many young adults in the world today aimlessly looking for answers, any and all answers that is, but not if they are God related.
I want them all to know there is more, much, much more than they have been indoctrinated to believe. They do not believe they have been indoctrinated. They think they have been freed. The truth is they have been bound up so tight that ridicule is the only answer that comes to their minds. If only all secular humanists would say a simple honest prayer, asking the God of all Creation – the God who Created the Big Bang (to their way of thinking) millions and millions of years ago, to enter their heart and show them the reality of God and the Trinity, which exists within all physical reality, so they could begin a new faith journey, with a deeper understanding of things they already know.
I encourage everyone, young and old alike, to at least try to open their minds (they think they are open minded!), to begin to pray. Invite God the Creator of the Universe (and all universes and galaxies, and science – which has become their god) to make His Presence known to them personally. God, the Father of All Creation, and Jesus Christ, God’s first Creation, and the gift of the Holy Spirit, will enter the heart and mind of all who pray in earnest.
It is not someone’s belief system that makes reality so; or makes reality what it is. How it is, is how it is. Some things are beyond our understanding, however reality is so, even if we do not understand it. God is God, even if we do not fully grasp every detail to every question we have. Not even everything in science has its fully comprehended understandings; those facts that were once expounded upon have changed with the light of new knowledge, for example, believing that the earth is flat.
The adult answer to our self-sabotaged society is to discover, learn and understand how matters of faith in God, the Father of all Creation, who is the Father of Jesus Christ, is ready, willing and able, to come into our lives and work with us, side by side with us, in enlightening our minds to solutions.
We have done many wonderful things in life. But I do notice how much more fulfilling and rewarding it is to work along side God, Jesus and Holy Spirit. We have spiritual tools at our disposal, if only we would use them. I know many of us use these tools, and have beautiful lives of faith. I am also noticing a world hurting by its own ignorance, self-induced problems made by our own making, fueled by greed and our out of control insane ego.
Virtues are the tools that can put us back on the road to living moral and ethical lives. Virtues are good habits, as mentioned in the previous post. Virtues are God-given. We can pray for more faith, hope and love. That is the best place to start.
God Bless