THE MORAL LAW
very serious-minded person is asking nowadays "what's the matter with the moral world?" Not that the political world is serene, or the financial or the industrial world. But the particular sore spot in contemporary civilization seems to be the world of morals. Not only preachers and reformers, traditionally supposed to be prone to pessimism, but parents and teachers, principals of high schools and presidents of colleges, philosophers (professional and amateur), welfare workers, especially in children's courts, judges on the bench; the police (from the patrolmen on the beat to the chief at
headquarters), novelists, essayists, dramatists; the intelligentsia and the man in the street, whether it be Main Street or Wall Street, or perhaps Broadway, all sorts and conditions of men, no matter how widely and deeply they may differ on other matters agree that the moral world is topsyturvy. Ethical standards that had been fixed for centuries and that seemed everlasting are unsettled. Actions that used to be called sins are now condoned or even exalted as virtues, and on the other hand traditional virtues are looked at as something that belonged to the past.
Some observers of the "liberal" or "radical" type profess to be pleased at the revolution in morals; most sensible people lament it as a calamity; a few rather timid souls, having little experience and less, historical knowledge, are crying that nothing like this has been seen before in all the history of the world.
When it comes to assigning the cause or locating the blame, some say it is the war, others remember that conditions were alarming even before the war. Some---not a few---attribute the trouble to a materialistic-evolutionistic education. Socialists and communists blame the excesses of capitalism, financial scandals, stock market gambling and the like. Capitalists, in turn, declare that there is a Bolshevist conspiracy to demoralize the world.
In America a good many profess to think that Prohibition is the cause of all our troubles. Others remind us that the same evils exist also in Europe where they laugh at Prohibition, and so the argument runs, or not so much argument as crirnination and recrimination.
But it seems to me that the all-important question is not how we got into the mess, but how we are to get out of it, not what's the matter with the world, but what are we going to do about it?
I dare say that on that question also every man has his own opinion; but perhaps I may be permitted to propose my panacea;---Yet not mine but that of the vast and venerable Church to which I belong, the Church of infinite experience and of ages-old wisdom. Do not assume that I am immediately going to suggest religion as the only cure-all of social evils, and the savior of civilization. Religion, of course, would save the world, but religion is gone from the souls of millions of people and you cannot turn the mill-wheel with the water that is past.
Nor let any one imagine that where religion falls, law will succeed. Some superficial thinkers cry "there ought to be a law" for this and for that. But we have more laws than we know what to do with; we are stuffed, choked, suffocated with laws, and it does seem that the more laws we have, the fewer we obey.
Recognizing that fact, some five or six countries in Europe have suspended the, operation of their parliaments, have selected one man, a dictator, and have said to him "You be our law!" But that plan will not work for long. It is too much like putting a lid on a volcano and sitting on the lid., The volcano will blow up some day.
Perhaps some one anticipates that my cure-all is education. Education is indeed often proposed as the remedy for all the ills that society is heir to. As one of the popular modern prophets has said, "The race is on between education and catastrophe." But I suffer no illusions about education. We have had universal popular education for a hundred years past, and yet the very people who hail education as salvation, loudly declare that we are worse off morally now than we were before the free or popular school system was inaugurated, and before colleges became multiplied. The man who coined the phrase, "Education or catastrophe" favors a new kind of education, but his kind of education would not forestall catastrophe; it would precipitate catastrophe.
Well, what then shall save us? To maintain the suspense no longer---the solution is nothing novel, nothing spectacular; but something very simple. The salvation of society is in the family, the reorganization of the family, the reconstruction of family virtues, parental authority and obedience. The family is the nucleus of all society. You can have no prosperous state unless the family is healthy. You can have no effective church unless the family is sound. Every human being who comes into the world is born into two societies, a family and a state, and traditionally into three, a family, a state, and a church, and of these three, the family comes first and is of most fundamental importance. The family is the organic cell from which all human societies are constructed.
Now any doctor will tell you that if a man is sick, he cannot be cured unless by medicine and nourishment and rest, you can reconstruct the broken-down cells in his body. Tuberculosis can be cured by the rebuilding of myriads upon myriads of cells slowly and, as it were, one by one. Cancer will be cured when a wayis discovered to rebuild the cells faster than the disease breaks them down. No matter what the disease may be, even though it appears on the surface of the body, it can be cured only from within. You cannot cure Bright's Disease by slapping a plaster on your back. You cannot cure boils by rubbing on an ointment. You don't really cure a sallow skin with rouge. You don't increase red corpuscles with a lipstick.
Now society is an organism, that is to say, it is like a living body. If it is sick, @ou can't bring it back to health with superficial applications. You must get inside---inside the individual cells. To complete the analogy, enacting a law to cure a moral condition is like slapping on a plaster to cure disease; to rely upon book-learning as a cure for immorality is like going to a beauty parlor to get rid of indigestion.
Now this is all elementary, so much so that one is almost ashamed to spend time saying it. But, like a good many other elementary facts, it is forgotten. Take, for example, the statesmen who are trying to patch up this broken world. How do they go about it? They summon international conferences; they meet and debate and lay down rules and regulations about warships and airplanes and poison gas and international-commerce. But of all absurd notions (and their name is legion) the silliest is that a disintegrating civilization can be held together by conferences or by diplomatic maneuvering. If history teaches us anything, we ought to know that the fate of nations does not depend upon the encouragement of trade, the payment of war debts, the adjustment of customs and taxes, the regulation of commercial rivalries, or even upon the suppression of the opium traffic, or the control of the manufacture and distribution of alcoholic drink. What doth it profit the state to arrange all these details if the home, the family, the soul of the state be lost? Statesmen are careful and troubled about many things, but one thing is necessary, domestic morality.
In the days of the decadence of the Roman Empire, the Emperors who, with all their faults, were less blind than most contemporary statesmen, made frantic and desperate attempts to reconstruct the old institution of the Roman family. They failed ; the family was so badly disintegrated that it could not be built up again, and so the Empire tottered and fell. It wasn't so much the barbarians from without that smashed Rome. It was domestic corruption. In earlier days, when Rome was healthy and vigorous, she could have taken on the successsive waves of barbarian invasion and turned them back as a rocky headland turns back the breaking surf.
Now all these observations are by way of calling attention to the supreme importance of the Fourth Commandment, "Honor thy father and thy mother, that thou mayest be long lived upon the land which the Lord thy God will give thee." It has been frequently remarked that this is the only Commandment with a promise, and I hope it is legitimate to interpret that promise as made to the nation, and not to the individual. Whether the Lord meant that one who obeys his parents will live longer than one who does not, may perhaps be questioned, but one thing is certain, a nation will not long survive if parents cannot command and children will not obey.
The Catholic Church includes under that Commandment the entire matter of family discipline, the duties of parents as well as of children. For, of course, there is no rule that does not work both ways. If children have duties to parents, parents have reciprocal obligations to children.
It is not my purpose to enter into minute detail with regard either to parental or to filial duties. I think it better to present some few fundamental considerations and leave both parents and children to apply them in the family life.
Parents, then, first of all should be persuaded of the duty and the dignity of their vocation. The primary purpose of the union of man and wife is procreation, and that very word hints at the Godlike prerogative of fathers and mothers. God Himself is Creator, and the masterpiece of God's creation upon earth is a human being. Men of science are fond of dilating upon the magnitude and the mystery of the starry firmament. Astronomers tell us unimaginable, incomprehensible facts about the universe revealed by the telescope. And on the other hand biologists insist upon the equally bewildering mysteries discovered by the microscope. But there is no marvel in nature that can surpass the miracle of the origin of a human being. Only God can produce life, but by a most amazing condescension He has permitted man and woman to share His divine prerogative. Under God they say "Let there be life"; under God they become creators. When a mother brings forth a child it is as it were a sublime miracle. She might well hold up the babe in her arms and offer it to God, as the priest in the Mass elevates the newly consecrated Host in the sight of God and man. And from that moment the parents are not only endowed with a quasi-divine dignity, but with a most sacred responsibility. The task placed upon them, say rather the vocation with which they are blessed, is one that requires the use of high intelligence, as well as affection, and such difficult virtues as patience and everlasting vigilance. There can hardly be any vocation that calls for more devotion, loyalty, self-sacrifice than that of being a parent. If man and wife have hitherto been careless, self-indulgent, sinful, they dare not continue to be so after the birth of a child. Formerly they endangered only their own souls, now they are to a degree responsible before God for the soul of their child. They must watch over his physical and mental development, the growth of his moral charaeter, learn to read the riddle of his personality, and bring to bear upon his training every ounce of intelligence and good will that God has given them.
Successfully to rear a child, or a houseful of children, is a work more difficult, more worthy of study and at the same time more interesting and more praiseworthy than to rule a city or to be president of a nation. Perhaps that is the reason why there are so@few notably successful parents. The world is full of incompetent ones. They allege the difficulty (they call it the impossibility) of bringing up a family under modern conditions, in a world that has grown reckless and immoral, in a society where the privacy and the sanctity of home life is generally disregarded; where there are so many distractions of mind, so many influences that over-stimulate the passions, so much glaring bad example, so much ostentatioti, luxury, artificiality; in an epoch when disobedience and heedlessness, always characteristic of childhood, and of youth, are particularly accentuated. But they must understand that God expects them to fulfill their duty, even in spite of the obstacles presented by an artificial civilization. Modern parents cannot expect medieval conditions; if they live in a great American city they must not complain because they are not situated in a quiet, remote little village of, let us say, the Austrian Tyrol, where presumably, raising a family is a simple and easy matter. God gave them love, the impulse to procreate, and God will not play them false. With diligence (and again I repeat with intelligence, for I consider intelligence tt prime necessity in a parent), with good-will and well-balanced affection, with self-control, with prayer and study of their problem, with divine grace flowing not for one moment but permanently into their married life from the Sacrament of Matrimony, they may expect to succeed.
If finally, through no fault of their own, they fail, wholly or partially, they may be excused, like a priest who is devoted and energetic and self-sacrificing but who seems not to get results. Even Jesus Christ praiseworthy than to rule a city or to be president of a nation. Perhaps that is the reason why there are so@few notably successful parents. The world is full of incompetent ones. They allege the difficulty (they call it the impossibility) of bringing up a family under modern conditions, in a world that has grown reckless and immoral, in a society where the privacy and the sanctity of home life is generally disregarded; where there are so many distractions of mind, so many influences that over-stimulate the passions, so much glaring bad example, so much ostentatioti, luxury, artificiality; in an epoch when disobedience and heedlessness, always characteristic of childhood, and of youth, are particularly accentuated. But they must understand that God expects them to fulfill their duty, even in spite of the obstacles presented by an artificial civilization. Modern parents cannot expect medieval conditions; if they live in a great American city they must not complain because they are not situated in a quiet, remote little village of, let us say, the Austrian Tyrol, where presumably, raising a family is a simple and easy matter. God gave them love, the impulse to procreate, and God will not play them false. With diligence (and again I repeat with intelligence, for I consider intelligence tt prime necessity in a parent), with good-will and well-balanced affection, with self-control, with prayer and study of their problem, with divine grace flowing not for one moment but permanently into their married life from the Sacrament of Matrimony, they may expect to succeed.
If finally, through no fault of their own, they fail, wholly or partially, they may be excused, like a priest who is devoted and energetic and self-sacrificing but who seems not to get results. Even Jesus Christ did not save and sanctify all'with whom He came in contact.
Evidently, all these obligations and responsibilities on the parents' side imply sacred duties on the part of sons and daughters. It is generally said nowadays that you cannot command young people to obey. Catholic moral theology lends no countenance to such an opinion. Parents have a right and a duty to command, and children are bound under pain of sin to obey the just commands of parents.
Fortunately, young men and young women have naturally high ideals. If they do wrong it may be partially on account of the innate evil tendencies, but more often it is because they are ashamed or afraid to be unlike their chums. But if you know how to elicit their true interior convictions, you will find them, I believe, in most cases highly idealistic. Tell them, therefore, to live their own life and not to be apes of the vices and follies of persons with whom they come in contact. When they need advice, they must have it, and having it they are morally bound to heed it. It is not a matter of option, but of divine command: "Honor thy father and thy mother!"
When fathers and mothers and children live to gether in a happy home, You have the acme of civiliation. The home at its best is a shrine, a temple, a citadel of defense against an evil world, a center from which virtue and healing go forth for the regeneration of the race.