December 2, 2017

Secret Faults

I think a great learning for our time will come in exploration of the question: What is acceptable but profoundly wrong in our own time and culture? — just as acceptable as were slavery to the founding fathers and sexual harrassment to the bosses in their corner offices, and just as profoundly wrong; wrong then and wrong now.

But what other things in our present culture are equally bad, but equally accepted?

Systemic racism is just one such thing, still too acceptable by some. And systemic sexism, enacted into practice by unequal pay and unfair policies, feeds and nourishes a culture in which women still are second class citizens.

But what else is in there, at the roots of our culture, accepted, but rotten at the root? What wrongs are so accepted that no one but the victim notices, and keeps silent because “that’s just the way things are.” The Psalmist had it right, “Who can tell how often he offends? Cleanse me from my secret faults....”

—Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

2 comments:

George said...

Fr Tobias, one of those things commonly accepted, especially among Christians, is the unjustified killing of the non-human animals, their exploitation, and all the culture that encompasses that. Veganism is much more practised by atheists than by Christians, that are still using bad hermeneutics to justify the unjustifiable. And this makes us loose credibility, and the Gospel cannot be proclaimed. For the children of this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG said...

Georges, I think this is spot on. I can well imagine civilized society 100 years from now looking back on the meat industry of today with horror.