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“A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes.”
A quick video clip emerged in late January that supposedly showed a group of Catholic high school students engaging in harassment of Native Americans. Celebrities, news outlets and social media were quick to pile on with condemnations, threats, and outrage. But within 24 hours, a different picture emerged – one that put the entire encounter in a starkly difference context.
But the Covington Catholic incident is merely a symptom of a society that no longer understands true virtue. Virtue signalling, instead, has arisen. Public shaming, outrage, and anger seem to have replaced human discourse and decency, especially online and in virtual spaces.
In this episode, Bishop Wall examines the consequences of pretend goodness, and recommends some practices for cultivating true virtue.
References:
“Suppose one reads a story of filthy atrocities in the paper. Then suppose that something turns up suggesting that the story might not be quite true, or not quite so bad as it was made out. Is one’s first feeling, ‘Thank God, even they aren’t quite so bad as that,’ or is it a feeling of disappointment, and even a determination to cling to the first story for the sheer pleasure of thinking your enemies are as bad as possible? If it is the second then it is, I am afraid, the first step in a process which, if followed to the end, will make us into devils. You see, one is beginning to wish that black was a little blacker. If we give that wish its head, later on we shall wish to see grey as black, and then to see white itself as black. Finally we shall insist on seeing everything — God and our friends and ourselves included — as bad, and not be able to stop doing it: we shall be fixed for ever in a universe of pure hatred.” – C.S. Lewis
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Intro music: Four, Floss, Five, Six by Blue Ducks is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 International License.
Outro music: Stay Warm by Scott Holmes is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial License.