June 2004
Cardinal Williams' observes that the country is becoming a "moral wasteland" a place where traditional values and beliefs are being systematically subverted as society elects to live on a diet of "junk food provided by bankrupt liberalism". Cardinal Williams encourages people to challenge the culture of exaggerated individualism, and to serve society by they way they live their lives as individuals and families.
Liberal policies of government in recent times have accelerated the rate of social change that has been taking place in New Zealand for a generation or more. We live now in a nation where the guiding principles and moral signposts of previous generations have become blurred.
Traditional beliefs and values have been systematically subverted by the derision and outright hostility to the whole Judaeo-Christian ethic upon which civilsation has been based for the past two millennia.
Relativism and permissiveness have been deliberately promoted, and morality reduced to purely subjective preference. Our failure to protect basic values and rudimentary citizenship is fast converting our country into a moral wasteland.
We have rejected the moral sustenance of the past, and are attempting to live on junk food provided by a bankrupt liberalism. Policy-makers disastrously tried values-free education. Exponents of unfettered market forces brought about the highest levels of unemployment since the 1930s, with consequent hardship for thousands of families, and unprecedented use of foodbanks.
Television, motivated by the imperative to produce profits, minimizes information in favour of entertainment. Much of our media is quick to espouse the populist or politically correct view of issues, without serious analysis. Sundays have been secularized. Good Friday only narrowly escaped relegation to just another shopping day.
The probity of medical practitioners is put into question by those of their colleagues who issue spurious medical certificates attesting to the presence or the risk of mental illness so as to ‘legitimise’ abortions.
The definition of marriage is being widened to include all manner of relationships which are anything but marital. The traditional family unit as essential to the wellbeing of society is increasingly ignored by legislators. Some scientists want no ethical restraints on their research and its applications. Their motto : if it can be done, it should be done.
Under the guise of compassion, euthanasia is gaining ground and so bringing closer the prospect of human beings regarded as having value only as long as they are useful and trouble-free.
Parents are deprived the change to support their children in matters as serious as abortion, with its related physical and psychological consequences, if a child who could be as young as 12 does not want them to know that they are sexually active.
The liberals have reformed the law on prostitution. Street walking is now as respectable as shop walking.
“Conscience votes” in Parliament have become meaningless.
Can we restore health and sanity to New Zealand society? My answer is yes. Yes, by challenging a culture asserting the exaggerated individualism that what one does is no one else’s business. Yes, if the intrinsic dignity and value belonging to each life is respected and protected from its beginning to its end. Yes, if people are convinced of their individual responsibility to serve society by the way they live as individuals and as families, by the use of their resources, by their civic activity, by contributing to economic and political decisions, and by personal commitment to national undertakings and the common good.
The perennial work of the barbarian is to tear down existing standards, and to debase ideals that have come to characterize a society built on sound moral principle. The barbarian need no longer be clothed in animal skins and wielding a club. The modern barbarian may be soberly suited and stylishly presented, their weapon the skilful use of spin doctors to dupe the unwary, the unsuspecting and the uninformed. The outcome is no different.
George Bernard Shaw once remarked of a powerful modern country that in the course of human history it was the only nation to have passed from barbarianism to decadence without going through the stage of civilization.
I take leave to wonder whether that comment might not rightly be applied to New Zealand before too long.
Cardinal Thomas Williams
Archbishop of Wellington
Copyright 2008 Catholic Communications for the NZ Catholic Bishops' Conference
