LETTERS TO THE EDITOR: READER RESPONDS TO COLUMN ON MORALS

To the Editor:

The Jan. 10 edition of the Southeast Missourian included on the editorial page an item by Robert L. Bartley, editor of the Wall Street Journal. I defer to Mr. Bartley as a writer, but I think it necessary to challenge his sense of moral evaluation.

Bartley writes, "Well, we teach little children not to lie because it's wrong morally, but also because it often has serious consequences." The seriousness of lying is measured by the injury done to another. Bartley infers that lying "shreds the bond of trust with the people." A serious matter. He implies that lying is even more morally reprehensible than sexual misconduct.

The seriousness of sexual misconduct is also judged by the injury that might be suffered by a husband or wife, children, parents, friends, associates, or self; and by the harm that is done to society by scandal, especially when the offender is a public official. Bartley writes, "We don't care whether he did it (sexual conduct) or not..." Surely, that is a minority moral stance. Bartley asserts that it is "unseemly to gossip about the most private aspects of someone else's life." The reference was to sexual misconduct. That fetish could be effectively discarded if writers and electronic journalists would discipline themselves to treat the reporting of sexual misconduct in a mature way.

If one is to be held suspect as a political leader because of a history of lying, he should be totally discredited for a lifestyle of breaking the solemn vow promising love to a spouse for a lifetime.

Lying is an unfaithful use of one's capacity and duty to communicate truth. The sexual misconduct of a married person is unfaithfulness to the vowed love of a spouse. The latter clearly has a potential for more serious harm to others; a greater "blow to presidential credibility."

There are some who might be affronted by these comments. Some would exclude God and Religion from a consideration of Bartley's comments; however, Bartley does not do so. We should consider carefully: If we exclude God from considerations of "morality" he have remaining only the unsubstantiated merely human opinions of individual persons. The growing tendency to speak and write in terms of "moral values" is an explicit affirmation of God. Perhaps we are beginning to sense the truth that we are hopelessly unable to distinguish the good from the evil; the humanly upright from the perverse without a standard of moral conduct, beyond human insights. In our society, that moral code has been supplied by the Judeo-Christian ethic.

Of course, there is an "out." When one wishes to establish one's own opinion as irrefutable one has only to label it as, for example "politically correct." The pitiable violator has the formidable challenge of disestablishing the "correct" opinion of his accuser, who has no greater insights or jurisdiction than he has.

There is a bit of subtle, ironic humor in all of this. The more we protest the bringing of God and Religion into public affairs the more it becomes necessary, it seems to invoke those superior powers -- that uncontestable wisdom attributed to -- who else? -- one's self!

Msgr. Joseph E. Gosche

Pastor St. Michael Parish

Fredericktown