Only the Living Swim Upstream, by Dr. Jeff Mirus 

By Dr. Jeff Mirus, Catholic Culture, Sept. 01, 2023

I am reminded of G. K. Chesterton’s statement in The Everlasting Man: “A dead thing can go with the stream, but only a living thing can go against it.” I also recently learned of a snippet from T. S. Eliot’s play, The Family Reunion, which he wrote in verse:

In a world of fugitives,
The person taking the opposite direction
Will appear to run away.

We live now in a secular age which is so diametrically opposed to the faith and ministry of the Catholic Church that we need quotations like this to encourage us. There are, of course, instances when either the dominant culture, or at least a strong majority of people, favors something good. After all, no human culture favors only bad things. As finite creatures who apprehend the good by our very nature, we are not only error-prone but also essentially incapable of mistaking all good for evil, or all evil for good. Moreover, without recognizing at least some goods, we cannot even begin to construct the arguments needed to justify our chosen evils. …

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