Changing Times

“Changing Times…Unchanging Morality”

Father Joseph L. Di Gregorio


• A teenager gives birth in a motel room. Her boyfriend discards the baby in a dumpster.
• At her prom a teenager gives birth in the ladies room. She discards the baby in a trash can, goes back to the dance and requests the band to play her boyfriend’s favorite song.
• A baby three-fourths out of its mother’s womb has its head stabbed and its brains suctioned out. The process, which is legal, is called a “Partial Birth Abortion”.
• In a Michigan courthouse, Dr. Jack Kavorkian is acquitted for participating in his 100th ‘doctor assisted suicide’.

These items may not seem familiar to you but not too long ago they were the headlines in newspapers across the nation. October is ‘Respect Life Month’. It seems a sad commentary, don’t you think on today’s society and the value it places on human life? And yet, people gasp in amazement at how this could happen in our ‘enlightened age’. Like the proverbial ostrich their heads are buried in the sand believing that if they see no evil, it doesn’t exist. What a wonderful way to experience life. Just like the Kiplingesque ‘Priests’ who walk the earth with their eyes shut and only open them when they reach the beauty of Seculda Gould. How much longer can we continue to be morally in dept and expect our great nation to grow and prosper? Not very long I suspect.

Have you ever read the lives of the prophets? Do you recall how many of them were tasked by God to preach to the erring generations about the necessity to reform their morally depraved style of living? And what happened to them. They were ostracized, banished and even killed. Should today’s prophets expect better treatment? When Patrick Henry delivered his memorable address at the Virginia Convention on March 23, 1775, he urged the delegates to read the signs of the times. We recall his famous conclusion, “As for me, give me liberty or give me death.” But how many recall the most significant part of that address? Towards the middle of his speech he said, “I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided and that is the lamp of experience. I know of no way of judging the future but by the past…”

Our society today is becoming soft and weak. Recently Air Force General Joseph Ralston took himself out of the race to become Chairman of the Joint Chiefs ‘simply’ because of an isolated indiscretion committed ten years ago. LT Kelly Flynn opted to take a General Discharge instead of going through the ordeal of a Court Martial ‘simply’ because she fell in love with a married man. And SSG Delmar Simpson is now enjoying the hospitality of the Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas ‘simply’ because he happened to have sex with eighteen female trainees at the Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland. Let’s face it, eighteen sexual encounters is not pushing the envelope on sexual promiscuity, at least not by today’s standards. What’s the big deal, society says. What’s the big deal? Simply that immoral behavior is wrong. It’s wrong in the civilian sector and it’s wrong in the military. Immoral behavior is wrong everywhere and always.

In his book, “The Tempting of America”, Robert Bork states, “What passes for constitutional theory in much of our liberal society is not legal theory at all, but an egalitarian political agenda which no elected legislature will enact, thereby prompting an elite intellectual and political minority to use the courts as a means of displaying democratic choice by the imposition of their (my italics) moral principles.” In other words, if we don’t watch what’s happening in America, we just might lose everything America stands for.
The bottom line in all of this is simply that we have to face ‘head on’ the challenges of our times. There are, in fact, absolutes in moral behavior. What was wrong a week ago, a year ago or twenty years ago is wrong today. The more we give in to the vocal minority who would permit whatever immorality our libido desires the more we surrender our future and the future of our Nation.

God Bless You…