An introductory letter from the Director of The Center for Morality in Public Life’s newest project, The Whole Story.
We live in a theater of virtue, where our choices determine our character and really no one else’s. Our pursuit of virtue is based on a moral order established outside of any personal choice.
These issues are related; both problems are accompanied by errors that impede a proper response. Painting in broad strokes implies general solutions. But the life of the Church is always something much more local.
We focus so much on material and personal development that we end up creating a vision that sees (professional) advancement as the grasping of opportunity. But the answer has to be the long vision: The answer has to be hope.
In my few minutes of parenting, thus far, I have learned that neither nature nor nurture compel me to care for my little friend. No. It has to be love: something tender, precious and fragile.
Joseph Bottum’s conclusions about marriage may not be sound, but he has done a valuable service in broaching a new channel of discussion—over prudence, the virtues, and where exactly we decide to ground our own sentiments and concerns.
Pornography exploits human beings. Sure, no one is compelled into a photoshoot, but the freedom of engaging in smut does not somehow make it morally right. No one wants their daughter to be a porn star. And if you do, there is something wrong with you.
Without a political imagination that embraces the need for true self-governance, all we are left with is simple power politics. Cameron’s campaign against pornography rather than being a nanny-state overreach is a last-cry of a society trying desperately to recover some sense of dignity in self-governance.
In a post-Brave New World, women no longer need men for fertility. The scarier thing is that they don’t even need men for fulfillment. And men are left without any reason to grow up. And that’s now completely normal.
“Whatever it takes”—a third-way appears: work and live lives that make abortion truly the last and least of all options. No one should ever be alone. And no woman who faces a troubling moment should feel she should have one option alone.