Virtue (which is the habitual actions that helps humans be the best humans a human can be) stands between two vices.

It’s like walking on a road between two ditches. Sometimes, we move a little this way and a little that way to ensure that we can keep our footing especially if the road is slanting or it’s muddy out, but the aim is to always stay on the road.

Temperance, which is the ordering of our appetites (food, drink, sexuality, speech) is a good example: what I have to eat versus what the 95 year old or 18 year old eat varies, but each person might be living out what helps their flourishing. It’s not relative, it’s personal.

Unfortunately, our society doesn’t like to think in terms of virtues, opting for extremes and ending up “in the mud.” I don’t watch a lot of news or TV anymore, but I can only surmise the commentaries after two mass shootings in two different parts of the country with, seemingly, two different motivations: “Gun Lobby,” “taking our 2nd Amendment right,” “it’s not guns that kill people but people that kill people,” “Replacement theory,” “conspiracy theory,” “right wing gun nuts,” “left wing communists,” “effects of COVID”, “effects of internet” ,“effects of polarization”, “effects of right-wing extremism”, “effects of left-wing cultural infiltration.” Much will be published, less will be said.

I know that some parents have kept their kids at home and the trauma, i.e. the effects of negative events on our memories affecting our intellect and shaping our will, will variably affect us. It does seem that the U.S. has stopped reckoning with its own idols on both sides of the political spectrum, driving underground the healthy, mature, and virtuous growth of youth — especially around emotions — replacing it with TikTok videos.

Let’s be clear, the murder of innocents is always evil from conception to natural death. That’s the easy part. What’s not so easy is: what does safety and maturity and adventure and growth look like for children growing up today, which both exalts and condemns virtually and virally? What does real safety look like for hearts that yearn for adventure and to make their mark in the world, not feel smothered or hovered over? How can someone expect to grasp what is good or evil if they have never asked what is worth living for in the first place? In effect, what does it mean to educate a whole person? What are the first things, the truly necessary things?

These are the questions I fear won’t get talked about, among adults or among kids. May God have mercy on us. May the souls of the faithful departed through the mercy of God rest in peace.

“If you go off to die, then take us, too, / to face all things with you; but if your past / still lets you put your hope in arms, which now / you have put on, then first protect this house.” – Virgil’s Aeneid, Book 2

Father Louis Cunningham

Sacred Heart Parish

Enumclaw