I am more and more convinced that the scandals plaguing our Church and society, and the salvation of the world, depends far more upon individual, personal virtue than on any plan, committee, policies, safeguards, laws or procedures.
Hence, we should stop and ponder what may seem like the lesser things, which often are not all that lesser, like ‘modesty’, which I discuss in a Crisis article this morning.
I wonder how much a lack of modesty – if not its outright mockery – plays into t our current sex-obsessed culture, which infects even the best. I read with dismay of a popular, conservative, learned priest from a certain aposolate known for its orthodoxy, movement, charged with ‘groping’ one of his female spiritual directees. The recipient of these illicit advances has since been paid out to the tune of nearly a million dollars, and that’s in American.
Did a lack of modesty play into this debacle, as in so many others? Modesty – the virtue of refusing to unveil what should remain covered – is not just about clothing, but also about our thoughts, our speech, our movements, our eyes. For we ‘reveal’ much more by what we do than what we wear. Were there lingering and knowing glances, a caress here or there, an inability –or refusal – to keep ‘hidden’ what may have attraction may been interiorly experienced?
Anyway, read and comment, and I am always open to feedback.
And the Bank of Canada is filled with minds educated in modern ‘economics’ – more or less math with a dusting of sociology – but little else, and who seem to lack any immersion in the deeper, philosophical aspects of that science, upon which the Church has taught at length. Hence, they know not what to do with the economy. Interest rates are at historic lows, leading people to borrow money they can ill afford, to buy all sorts of things they do not need, from trucks to televisions to oversized homes and vacations. But if the Bank raises interest rates, not only will the ‘economy’ slow right down, more people will also be unable to keep paying back what loans they have, with dramatic spikes in bankruptcy, dumping toxic debt into the vast miasma that is our ‘money supply’, as I mentioned yesterday.
They are digging a hole deeper than they – we – can easily – now, even possibly – climb back out of.
Neither a borrower nor a lender be, barring exceptional circumstances, and maintain your independence from the vagaries of the ‘economy’.