For years the slogan “Friends Don’t Let Friends Drink and Drive” has been the salient reminder of the dangers of driving under the influence.
This saying has become a part of our culture, embedded into our collective consciousness as a guiding principle in those moments where car keys are in hand after one too many brews. It’s not a bad slogan, as far as slogans go. It is always timely, with an almost proverbial-like quality. But what I’d like to call to your attention is the assumption behind this quote.
The “Friends Don’t Let…” campaign starts with the assumption that you and I have a responsibility to assist others for their own good. It boldly calls us to action in sometimes dicey situations (ever try to get the keys from a determined drunk?). We can be assured that our efforts will not be universally applauded and may perhaps cause some rather angry reactions. But the working assumption is that I have a better perspective than my intoxicated friend and that, for his own good, I am going to take his keys and drive him home. This places the burden on me, the sober one, to be brave enough to speak the truth and act on it. The idea is that if you care at all and are a responsible member of society then you will not “let friends drink and drive.”
I bring this up because I believe it correlates to what I’m going to call the “Catholic Moral Imperative”. The Catholic Church is regularly bashed for its stances on a host of issues from contraception to homosexuality, to the plight of immigrants, to the plight of the unborn.
That’s just the short list. The complaint is that the Catholic Church is meddling in people’s business. The charge is often leveled that the Church is oppressive and anti-fun and hurtful. The culture claims it is fine and can “drive” itself without any help from God, the Church, or YOU.
The problem is that the culture is drunk off its keester.
It is drunk on humanism and relativism. It is suffering from its own over-excesses of pride and self-reliance. It has been blinded by pop-psychology and the feel-good gospels of Oprah and Dr. Phil. It lives in a time where people believe theology is as malleable as a lump of clay and that objective truth is an oxymoron. This society thinks nothing of murdering the unborn or the aged. It doesn’t think that sex is anything more than a recreational biological function. Many people bury the deeper ‘questions of life’ under layers of distraction.
The average “Joe” simply does not realize how much he is weaving across the center-line of his life until he leaves the road and finds himself wrapped around a tree. Yes, our culture is clearly, to continue the analogy, too drunk to drive.
The Catholic Church has an imperative to be the moral voice for a society that has lost its moorings. It is not “nosiness” that motivates us; it is Christ-like concern and compassion. It is not a desire for oppression that calls us to speak out. Quite the opposite, it is the desire to see the oppression of immorality lifted, so that the fullness of life Jesus promises in John 10 can be experienced.
The Catholic moral imperative is to be willing to look foolish for the sake of the Gospel. It is to speak out to an intoxicated culture so that it might improve and that lives may be saved (in this world and in the world to come). This is not a popular position, it will bring us jeers and insults and we will meet much resistance. But hasn’t it always been so for faithful Christians? I once heard a very wonderful and faithful friend say, “Courage begets courage”. May it be so with us!
June 20th, 2008 at 7:37 am
How about starting with more Catholic Bishops (shephards of the flock, chief teachers of the Church, etc.) being “willing to look foolish for the sake of the Gospel?” What we get more often, instead, are timid, one-bullet Deputy Barney Fifes who would rather duck behind their desks at the approach of a Catholic “pro-choice” politician than call that peron to account by name for their scandalous very un-Catholic voting conduct on the floor of the House or Senate. It makes it doubly hard for us layfolk to take on these rascals when their Bishops demonstrate no great willingness to do what is right and take the worst offenders (they know who they are) “back behind the woodshed” (as they say down in these parts).
June 20th, 2008 at 9:57 am
It is interesting how the drinking and driving ads have never been labeled as intolerant. Part of the reason I suspect is because people can see the danger drinking and driving poses to others. Now immoral sexual behaviour is hardly without victims. People get hurt all the time. Still the illusion that it is a victimless crime is pretty strong. People once said that about drinking and driving. Most now know that is not true.
Maybe we need ads where we show children whose families were destroyed by sexual sin. Maybe show teens who committed suicide because someone abused their feelings to get some sexual pleasure. Maybe show people with anoxeria tell how the pornographic culture destroy their self esteem. There are plenty of casualties but they are not as graphic as bodies being removed from a car wreck. With sexual sin most of the time you can just say it was the other person’s own dumb fault for expecting more from you. It is a hard case to make with car accidents.
June 21st, 2008 at 9:11 pm
dennisofraleigh, you are quite right, of course, that we need REAL moral leadership, and we’re not getting it from the vast majority of our bishops.
However, if you look closely at history (and I’ve read enough of your posts over the years to know that you do), you’ll find that, almost without exception, the moral revivals of history have come from the ground up. Jesus Himself faced the same predicament: he could have been born a Pharisee or a Sadducee and “laid down the law” (almost literally). Instead, He came–alone–out of the most backwater place in Israel and taught those who knew they didn’t have the “right requirements” to be leaders.
My point should be obvious: I believe that God has commissioned the laity to ignite a moral revolution in our day. For whatever reason–and speculation is only that–the Hierarchy is either unable or unwilling to institute the disciplines necessary to accomplish the renewal. That means that either we sit here and watch the world go to hell around us, or we do what has to be done. I vote that we roll up our sleeves and show the bishops how it’s done.
June 24th, 2008 at 8:43 pm
Beautiful analogy.
August 5th, 2008 at 3:37 am
DECREE ON ECUMENISM
UNITATIS REDINTEGRATIO
INTRODUCTION
1. The restoration of unity among all Christians is one of the principal concerns of the Second Vatican Council. Christ the Lord founded one Church and one Church only. However, many Christian communions present themselves to men as the true inheritors of Jesus Christ; all indeed profess to be followers of the Lord but differ in mind and go their different ways, as if Christ Himself were divided.(1) Such division openly contradicts the will of Christ, scandalizes the world, and damages the holy cause of preaching the Gospel to every creature.