By Selwyn Duke

There is a story today about how preteen girls are gravitating toward extremely revealing Halloween costumes.  They are big sellers nowadays, with sizes for girls as young as eight.

There is much I could say about this, too much for a piece of snap commentary.  So I’ll be as pithy as possible.

As I said in my last snap commentary about teachers’ affairs with students, is anyone surprised?  I have to laugh when I read an article like the one in question here, with its quotations from somewhat befuddled "experts" who posit their theories as to why we’ve descended into a particular type of turpitude.  Uh, call me crazy, but could it be because we’re becoming like Sodom and Gomorrah?

This is what happens when one views a given problem, as Fr. George Rutler has said, as an isolated social accident, not realizing that all the things experts scratch their heads about are part of a deep cultural malaise.  We try to explain each symptom when all we need do is diagnose the syndrome of which they’re all a part.

The problem with these experts is that they’re part of the problem.  If they don’t identify the fact that our society has become completely sexualized as the cause, it indicates that they’re blind to the gravity of that sexualization. 

The real issue is that too many of us accept the overall disease — we just object to certain symptoms.  Thus, we will complain about the younger generation, just like most every generation before us and as will most every one to come, but are blind to our own generation’s complicity in the matter. 

It’s not surprising; we’re all raised in a certain time and its norms are inculcated in us.  So we view them as simply the way things must be, as natural as the air we breathe.  This can be a problem, however, when one grows up breathing polluted air.  For he then often accepts those impurities and only complains when the next generation spews some new ones into the atmosphere.

So, yes, we should be critics of the culture, but we must also be able to perceive how many of the things we grew up with were part of the social decay.  I myself have done this; there are many things I had an affinity for during my salad days that I now recognize to be destructive.  How?  It’s just a matter of steadfastly striving to view matters under the light of Truth, as opposed to that of familiarity.  And unless one can do this, he’s just another old fuddy-duddy complaining about the younger generation.

This all is much like something I read some years ago about a college professor who was surprised that today’s students wouldn’t even render value judgments about the Nazis.  He  complained that they would say things such as (I’m paraphrasing), "Sure, I don’t like what they did, but who am I to judge them?"  Why be surprised, academia?  You’ve peddled moral relativism for decades, and your charges have learned well.  They have surpassed the teacher; they’re simply taking it to its logical conclusion.

Similarly, for generations now we have accepted increasing decadence.  In the 1960s, people wanted to cast off tradition to allow for free sex.  Are they now surprised that their children have descended to the next level?  Once you dispense with tradition, the sky — or, I should say, Hades — is the limit.  The kids of today are simply pushing the envelope, just as their parents did before them.

Don’t misunderstand me, we should criticize youths who have gone astray.  But that must be attended by criticism of our former selves.  Otherwise, we’re simply creatures of one age criticizing creatures of another.  And perfection isn’t embodied by any age, but by that with which the imperfections of all ages can be brought to light: Truth.