David Letterman’s recent outrageous display of poor taste and insensitivity regarding Sarah Palin’s daughter, Willow, and the liberal press’ defense of it, points to a larger cultural issue — our nation has grown hard of heart.
Civility has been bartered for crudeness, courtesy for contempt, and politeness for self-aggrandisement. In the end, hardness of heart leads to a complete disregard for the human person and reduces him to nothing more than a joke’s punchline — or much worse.
Consider the incident involving the teens who attacked another teen this week, beat her up, and cut and torched her hair. Or the unconscionable murder of the Holocaust museum security guard, Stephen Johns, by James von Brunn.
While we find such things shocking, we ought not. These are the predictable behaviors of a people who has lost sight of God and the moral law. Anything, and any one, becomes simply the means to an end — our own narcissistic interest. Left unchecked, hardness of heart becomes a cancer of the soul that leads from disregard for our neighbor to disdain toward our neighbor to the destruction of our neighbor. It’s the continuum of a degenerating moral conscience.
People of faith must push back. We must work to preserve all that is God-honoring in our culture and work even harder to restore that which has been lost. Through legal and legitimate means, with the love of God in our heart and the conviction of His Holy Spirit in our soul, we must do what we can to stem the tide and to renew a reasoned order. Our action and our witness can do much to affect the tenor of our times.
In a letter written to the Bishops in March of this year, Pope Benedict XVI said this, “The real problem at this moment of our hisotry is that God is disappearing from the human horizon, and, with the dimming of the light which comes from God, humanity is losing its bearings with increasingly evident destructive effects.”
But the Holy Father, in that same letter, points us to the solution: “In our days, when in vast areas of the world the faith is in danger of dying out like a flame which no longer has fuel, the overriding priority is to make God present in this world and to show men and women the way to God.”
The Holy Father clearly outlines our duty and our responsibility. As believers, we have a job to do. May we have the guts to do it.
Dear Johnette,
I admire your committment to your faith and the Lord. We need more people like you in the Catholic faith to defend what this country was founded on. The moral decay in this country is so widespread it’s sad., but we must not give up because that is what the evil one wants. My shield of armour is on!!
God Bless,
Mary
Hi, Johnnette: If it weren’t for you, EWTN, Pope Benedict XVI and others of our persuasion, this country would be long gone! I have to remember this now especially because of the present administration.
By the way, I really enjoyed your talk with Fr. Corapi. He’s one of my heroes and I ordered the audio CD. That was one wonderful program and I am so grateful to you for airing it.
Dear Johnette,
I will say that I can relate to Willow’s journey . I myself was a teenage girl having a baby .I was not at all sure what to do but I knew I was a child of God and so was this baby . I have listen to so many conversations about sad and what a loss it is to have baby when you are a teenager. Thirty nine years later it is my joy to be with my family who my son has been married for 21 years and my daughter for 19 years and they still love their spouses and are best friends with them as well. We have lived through the death of their dad the births of their 6 children . My second marriage the birth of their half sister when there was a twenty year age differance the death of her dad .Prayer kept us together , The rosary prayed helped us through the sad times. The best is dinner time when littlest one know Grace and has special thanks and prayers.I know I am more blessed and loved than alot of people that believe teenage mothers are ruined for life and would have been better off aborting the baby . It is quite funny to see we take up a whole pew when we go to mass together especially when it is for the recieving of the sacraments . Faith and Family , Family and Faith they are timeless and Gods gift to us if we are willing because he does give us free will.Thank you for your show I record it weekly and try to get lots of others to do the same . Sarah Palin and Willow I believe will help many women [mothers and duaghters]grow in love and acceptence because we all fall from grace and we are still loved .Sarah Palin will be an icon for mothers dealing with teenage mothers. Good thing she is young and hopefully God will bless her with lots of words of Wisdom.
Dear Joanne,
Thank you for your comment and your candid sharing. When we choose the will of God, we do discover the truth and the life-giving reality of Romans 8:28 — “God works all things for the good for those who are called according to His purposes.” Everyone who has ever had life, and will ever have life, has been called by God to have life. May we all live in His abundant love.
Johnnette
Dear Johnette,
I will say that I can relate to Willow’s journey . I myself was a teenage girl having a baby .I was not at all sure what to do but I knew I was a child of God and so was this baby . I have listen to so many conversations about sad and what a loss it is to have baby when you are a teenager. Thirty nine years later it is my joy to be with my family who my son has been married for 21 years and my daughter for 19 years and they still love their spouses and are best friends with them as well. We have lived through the death of their dad the births of their 6 children . My second marriage the birth of their half sister when there was a twenty year age differance the death of her dad .Prayer kept us together , The rosary prayed helped us through the sad times. The best is dinner time when littlest one know Grace and has special thanks and prayers.I know I am more blessed and loved than alot of people that believe teenage mothers are ruined for life and would have been better off aborting the baby . It is quite funny to see we take up a whole pew when we go to mass together especially when it is for the recieving of the sacraments . Faith and Family , Family and Faith they are timeless and Gods gift to us if we are willing because he does give us free will.Thank you for your show I record it weekly and try to get lots of others to do the same . Sarah Palin and Willow I believe will help many women [mothers and duaghters]grow in love and acceptence because we all fall from grace and we are still loved .Sarah Palin will be an icon for mothers dealing with teenage mothers. Good thing she is young and hopefully God will bless her with lots of words of Wisdom.