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Honesty |
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The wicked prize itself buys out the law Recently I wrote about the foundational values of our lives and what determines them. I gave the example of a family in England who were jailed for their theft of some $362,900 after the computer system of a Birmingham Building Society broke down and began spilling out money. The mother of the family said "We are just an ordinary hard working family who thought it would be some extra cash. Who wouldn’t have done it? I am just in shock." Determining their actions by the maxim that "everyone does it", and being happy to blame the bank rather than take personal responsibility seem to me to be irresponsible values on which to base moral decisions. I then posed the question: what is the foundation of your values and decisions? Do you have a firmer foundation which lies outside purely self interest? Do you value the principle of the common good, or does the self form the be all and end all of your reflections on personal behaviour, do you act only on what is rather than consider what ought to be? And if you value the what ought to be, how do you determine what ought to be? Our Catholic Church offers a fairly clear approach to developing a system of moral values which is based on the Old and New Testaments as well as two thousand years of thinking, reflecting, discussing and writing, and the resulting values have underpinned our Western society for hundreds of years – to such an extent that those same values also underpin the best of Western literature. You only have to read Shakespeare or Dickens or Tolkien to see these values at work; you can read John Donne, Milton, Keats and Gerard Manley Hopkins and find the same moral and spiritual values. A writer like Graham Greene, especially in his greatest novel, "The Power and the Glory", builds on the same foundations but finds a measure of compassion which challenges us to think differently about the judgement of God. I recently watched a performance of "Hamlet". This is a play I have seen over and over again on stage or on the big or little screen; I have taught it numerous times and studied it at some depth; and like the best literature, it continues to reveal truths showing after showing. On this particular occasion I heard, as if for the first time, the words of Claudius – who had killed his brother and married his sister-in-law, to say nothing of his drinking, his hypocrisy, his fundamental injustice to Hamlet and indeed to his kingdom. "Something rotten in the state of Denmark" was essentially down to Claudius but it also involved all those who followed his lead: corruption can flow down from the top, and it is then so easy to say "well, everybody’s doing it". The words that particularly struck me were in his soliloquy, his attempt to pray, his most honest moment in the play, but one he was not able to carry through to action: "In the corrupted currents of this world/Offence’s gilded hand may shove by justice,/And oft ’tis seen the wicked prize itself/Buys out the law. But ’tis not so above./There is no shuffling, there the action lies/In his true nature …" In other words, the way of this world is often to countenance evil, often where money or power is involved; but the reckoning has to come eventually – the afterlife guarantees that. The same insightful criticism of the power of money or position is found in Shakespeare’s "King Lear". Old Lear, having lost position, power, family, friends and his wits, says with searing clarity: "See how the Justice rails upon the simple thief. Listen with your ear: change places and which is the Justice, which the thief? You have seen a farmer’s dog bark at a beggar. There you might behold the great image of authority. A dog’s obeyed in office!" He goes on: "Through tattered clothes great vices do appear; robes and furred gowns hide all. Plate sin with gold and the strong lance of justice hurtless breaks; arm it in rags, a pigmy’s straw doth pierce it!" How easy it is for all of us to be blinded by power and wealth and position. How easily we follow the bad example of those around us. Surely we are fuller human beings, more true to ourselves, if we can stand by our own sound moral values rather than change our tune according to every wind that blows, according to whatever suits us at the moment.
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