When “Consent” and “Control” Replace Morals and Virtue, By David G Bonagura, Jr.

By David G Bonagura, Jr., The Catholic Thing, Oct. 23, 2019

Friends: Be sure to read Robert Royal’s latest report from Rome about the Amazon Synod. Click here to read “Journalists without Ethics?” (And all Bob’s reports can be read by clicking on EVENTS above and then, from the drop-down menu, Synod on the Amazon 2019.)

Our nation has long given up teaching morality. Today the word “morals” is uttered sparingly, having been replaced with “values,” a word more subjective and pleasant-sounding than its predecessor, which evokes objective standards and prescribed behavior. The slip to “values” happened almost effortlessly after secular forces evicted God from our school systems and the public square.

Morals are best understood when an established order provides a purpose for them, and belief in God who created an ordered universe once supplied that purpose. Now, with leading secularists denying any purpose to the world or to human life, it is no wonder that human behavior has taken some frightening turns.

Secular society is now caught in a snare it has made for itself. On the one hand, it fiercely advocates for an individual’s right, in the infamous words of Justice Anthony Kennedy, “to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.”  Should a person want to kill a child in utero, reinvent marriage, or refashion his sexuality, no law or institution ought to prevent that. ….

Read more at  https://www.thecatholicthing.org/2019/10/23/when-consent-and-control-replace-morals-and-virtue/