Monday, December 10, 2018

Freedoms vs. Pastoral Issues

In our age, things have become physically possible which were impossible one or two generations ago -- sex changes, cloning, surrogacy, and so on -- not to speak of what has become possible, in a sense, though a changed legal landscape. But little attention is given to the pastoral issues surrounding these changes, and they are big. If we look at the distress which emerges from yesterday's moral issues -- misogyny, paedophilia, prejudice, and so on -- perhaps we may know what the future holds. I imagine that, within the next generation, we shall see a strong human reaction -- not necessarily a principled or carefully reasoned reaction -- to freedoms we gain today. OBSERVATION: I say this on the basis of pastoral experience. What was accepted yesterday -- or was accepted, so to speak, through silent suffering -- becomes the outrage of tomorrow. Because back then, the pastoral issues were overlooked -- and today, there are various such issues overlooked, too.

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