Cut It Out

I stopped watching TV news three or four years ago. But you have to know what's going on, somehow, so there are a few sources I've come to trust. But guess what? They're just as depressing as TV news. Because what is actually happening is worse than what you might imagine if you stayed ignorant. It used to be that the central theme was always money. Harry Truman said that any politician who leaves office richer than he was when he started is a crook. What do you see when you look at our political class? Just listen to the hearings in Congress. And our corporations are no better. U.S. companies don't indulge in principled stances regarding Hong Kong's independence or Uighur genocide; as long as Chinese money rolls in, companies roll over. International drug and human trafficking are the biggest businesses around - and the U.S. is their best customer. Recently the goal seems to have changed: from going green to Bud Light, ideology looks like the motivator. But if you look closely enough, even these can be compromised if money gets in the way. How many corporations that boycott states whose policies they don't like cheerfully do business with countries that execute homosexuals?

Whatever your issue, whether it's crime or corporate greed, public immorality, racial inequality or political corruption, the source of the problem is always somewhere else. Or someone else. Let’s not look at facts or figures or any kind of verifiable claim because - after all - it’s the system. Or the structures. Or the history. Or the other party. Or - you name it. It's just not - never - my fault.

But it is not the system that is corrupt. Because systems do not act, they merely provide a framework within which individuals act. And money and power cannot corrupt anyone except those who trust money above honor or integrity, trust in money or even worship it, or the power or security it can buy. And passing more laws, strengthening more rules, regulating more activities, will not change that fact.

One hundred forty-seven years ago the statesman Henry Clay was due to vote on a controversial measure - what it was no longer matters today - and was warned by a colleague that if he voted for the bill he would lose his chance to be president. Senator Clay replied, “Sir, I would rather be right than President.”

Can you imagine many - if any - of our politicians saying such a thing today?

On the contrary. What we hear is “I have to raise money - no matter how - to prevent the bad guys on the other side from ruining the country.” Or "I have to keep the profits up - no matter what moral principles I compromise." Or "I have to force others to adopt my vision - because I cannot be wrong."

Excuse me, Mr. Politician, Mr. Chief Executive. If you break the law, or even bend it a little, you are one of the bad guys. The system is not to blame for your actions. You are.

You are a moral agent. And if you are for sale, do not blame the purchaser.

We are all moral agents. And no matter how we may want to squirm and point fingers elsewhere, we must each accept responsibility for our own actions. And that is one of the duties of the Church - to shine the light of God’s truth even into the murky little shadows of our excuses and rationalizations. But it isn’t welcome.

The poet T. S. Eliot wrote, at the beginning of this century,

“Why should men love the Church? Why should they love her laws?

She tells them of Life and Death, and of all that they would forget.

She is tender where they would be hard, and hard where they like to be soft.

She tells them of Evil and Sin, and other unpleasant facts.

They constantly try to escape from the darkness outside and within

By dreaming of systems so perfect that no one will need to be good.”

Since he wrote those prophetic words the Church has to a large extent bought into the myth, by talking about sinful structures instead of about sinful people, and focusing on economic justice rather than personal holiness.

But agitating for more and better laws serves mostly to keep us too busy to tackle the more painful and necessary examination of our inner condition. Because the fact is that law does not eliminate corruption. Don’t get me wrong. There is a difference between good law and bad law. But good law cannot fill an ethical vacuum.

There is no law on earth - not even God’s law - that can immunize society against moral corruption. If good laws could make good people, why didn't the Israelites - with the Ten Commandments right in front of them - create a perfect society?