When a nation becomes more interested in the conflict of opinion than in maintenance of principle, the hour has struck for it to re-examine its conscience. When virtue and vice, patriotism and disloyalty, filth and purity are put into a boxing ring, in which the spectators have no other interest than to watch them knock out one another brains, then the moment has come when there is nothing left to sacred that one ought to die in its defence and nothing so evil that one ought to oppose it with all his strength.

What psychological and spiritual factors produce such a situation in a nation? Two may be mentioned: (1) Loss of ideals, purposes and values. (2) A consequent emptiness and loneliness of heart.

(1) Loss of purpose. When the engineer of a city waterworks becomes totally indifferent as to whether the pumps supply water to the citizens or not, he is at loss to understand why they should fume and rage at their empty faucets. The murderer who cannot accept the first principle that life is sacred, cannot get into his head why society should be so "vindictive" against him. The conductor of a train who believes that he should be "broad-minded" about whether his train goes to Washington or Buffalo, cannot sympathize with irate passengers who are so "reactionary" as to believe that the train should travel to the destination to which it was appointed. When citizens lose a sense of the value and the meaning of life, they cannot see why right is any more important than wrong; from that point on, ethics is reduced to the level of a sporting event or a Smorgasbord.

Ignoring the end or goal of life, the only interest left is in the choice of means. Power then becomes more important than ethics, as our power to make atomic energy exceeds our moral capacity to decide how to use it. If men don't forget that the purpose of a chair is something on which to sit, they can live peacefully in the same room. But when the purpose of a chair is ignored, as it is in a brawl, then the chair becomes a means of combat; one individual decides it is a good instrument with which to smash heads. Such a combat, regardless of where it is staged, can be interesting only to those who have lost inner peace and order and have forgotten the supreme goal of life.

(2) The second reason for the over emphasis on conflict of opinion is to be found in the emptiness of heart. Man's inner world, being without meaning, is painful and frustrating. To compensate for it, he tries to create the same disorder outside that he finds inside. As Franz Werfel put it, "he turns away from his inner world because its emptiness is more painful than the emptiness of the factual world which is at least relieved by noise and hubbub".

When the human soul loses its own order, it becomes the instrument of destruction. When personality is directed to God and neighbour, there is inner peace; but when the soul is torn from its appointed order, like an airplane motor that is ripped from the wing and tears into the cabin, there is nothing but chaos and confusion. The empty house is desolate because there is no personality to put order and unity into it. The soul cannot be empty being desolate. Being made for the infinite, nothing finite can completely satisfy it. If it were ruled by love instead of whims and fancies which also seek to justify the way a man lives, there would be much inner peace and contentment. Peace is the tranquility of order, and order implies the subordination of senses to reason, reason to faith, body to soul and the whole personality to God.

Decadence is characterized by man's failure to read aright his position in the universe, to be more concerned with the tune that Nero plays as he fiddles, rather than the destruction of the city by fire. The quarrels of children are due to the absence of love; the contentions and strife of men are due to the want of meaning. As a result, problems are settled by pressure rather than by principle. In a family, the children who quarrel are reprehensible but they are less reprehensible than the parents who idly sit by and watch the fight as if some great issue were at stake. If our democracy becomes an arena in which contentious individuals are given major attention, let it be on guard; it may be democracy that will be knocked out.

BY ARCHBISHOP FULTON J. SHEEN ( 1895-1979 )

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Sunday, May 24, 2009

I have through years of reading, pondering, reflecting and contemplating, the 3 things that last; FAITH . HOPE . LOVE and I would like to made available my sharing from the many thinkers, authors, scholars and theologians whose ideas and thoughts I have borrowed. God be with them always. Amen!

I STILL HAVE MANY THINGS TO SAY TO YOU BUT THEY WOULD BE TOO MUCH FOR YOU NOW. BUT WHEN THE SPIRIT OF TRUTH COMES, HE WILL LEAD YOU TO THE COMPLETE TRUTH, SINCE HE WILL NOT BE SPEAKING AS FROM HIMSELF, BUT WILL SAY ONLY WHAT HE HAS LEARNT; AND HE WILL TELL YOU OF THE THINGS TO COME.

HE WILL GLORIFY ME, SINCE ALL HE TELLS YOU WILL BE TAKEN FROM WHAT IS MINE. EVERYTHING THE FATHER HAS IS MINE; THAT IS WHY I SAID: ALL HE TELLS YOU WILL BE TAKEN FROM WHAT IS MINE. - JOHN 16:12-15 -