Youth's
Struggle For Decency: Obstacles To His Success | Home - Latest News | Introduction | Bayside Messages | Directives from Heaven | Testimonies | Veronica Lueken | Miraculous Photos | Videos |
Youth's
Struggle For Decency: Obstacles To His Success
“Mothers and fathers of the world,
will you not protect the souls of your children? You must take action against
those who are propagating the evil.
"Parents, have you examined what your
children have been reading? Their eyes, which are the mirror of the soul, are
being polluted, their souls being destroyed by the pornography being sold for
profit and gain. Why is there no action, My children, to safeguard your
children? Many parents will cry bitter tears of anguish, but too late, too
late!” – Our Lady, August 14, 1975
by Rev.
John A. O'Brien, Ph.D.(Imprimatur: †JOHN FRANCIS NOLL,
"Oh God! Why did I let her go? Why
didn't I say, 'No'?" Thus sobbed a mother as she knelt over the mangled body of
her daughter, looking in vain for some sign of life. It was 2:30 A. M. The
speedometer still pointed to 70, the speed at which the car was traveling when
it ran into the uprights of a culvert and catapulted its two occupants into
eternity. The radio was still splintering the silence of the night. Its blatant
jazz sounded a ghastly contrast to the silent figures of the two victims
sprawled upon the roadside. The boy was twenty-one, the girl but nineteen. They
were returning from a hilarious party at the beach cabin of one of their
friends.
As the mother peered into the face
of her daughter, looking for some twitching that would betray the least flicker
of life, and saw only a motionless face, glassy eyes distorted in terror, a
gaping wound in the forehead, the scene enacted at her home but six hours before
came back to her. She could hear Marjorie's plaintive remonstrance: "But,
Mother, they are all going. Why should I be kept at home? Why can't I have a
good time like the others?" The mother had been worried over the thought of her
daughter going to a two o'clock dance at a beach cabin. The younger set was
fast. There would be drinking--the show-off drinking of youth, taking not wisely
but too much. Chaperones would leave obligingly at eleven. What protection would
her daughter have in those subsequent hours? No wonder that she pleaded with
Marjorie not to go. Only to yield at last to Marjorie's counterpleading.
Hence it was that she sobbed her
regrets--regrets that she did not say "No," regrets that she did not fulfill the
duty imposed upon her by God and nature to safeguard her child from harm, even
though it means occasionally the cruelty of saying "No." Now, however, all her
regrets were useless. Her blinding tears, her aching heart, her tortured soul
were all impotent to put life back into the mangled body in her arms. Stark
tragedy had followed in the wake of her yielding against her better judgment to
her child's importunings--—the failure of a mother to do her duty. No power on
earth could now undo the effects of that tragic blunder.
The incident illustrates one of the
most important factors in the damaging of youthful character that is so
widespread today. That is the failure of parents to do their duty, their failure
to protect their children from temptations almost too strong for weak flesh and
blood to resist. Their failure to fulfill their divinely appointed duty of
watching over their offspring and safeguarding them from the pitfalls which mar
the shining innocence of their youthful souls. The epidemic of youthful crime,
the undermining of youthful morals will continue until the consciences of
parents are aroused and they begin again to give to inexperienced youth the
guidance and the protection which they so sorely need.
In the Church's war upon indecency
she summons parents, first of all, to do their duty. She thunders in their ears
the warning of their responsibility before God for the souls committed to their
care. She would strengthen their wills to do their duty of saying "No." She
would awaken them to the realization that the greatest cruelty they can inflict
upon their offspring often comes from the luxury of granting the child's every
wish.
Take the boys and girls in their
teens who are frequenting taverns, road houses and night clubs, where lascivious
floor shows are staged to incite the passions, where drinking and unsupervised
dancing occur. Is it any wonder that their resistance is broken down under such
a multiple bombardment and that the angelic virtue becomes seriously tarnished?
And who is to blame? Who but the parents? They are the sentinels appointed by
God who have deserted their post, the watchers who have fallen asleep at the
switch. The frightful wreckage of youthful morals is traceable to their neglect
of a divinely appointed duty.
How can any parent go to bed at
night with an easy conscience without knowing where his young son or daughter
is? How can he sleep when all the agents of vice, bedizened in luring garb, are
closing in on his young child at a night club or road house? How that father and
mother will squirm when they stand before the judgment seat of Almighty God and
see the accusing finger of their own child staring them in the face, and hear
him say: "I come, stained with the leprosy of sin, because you, my parents,
failed to do your duty. You, not I, are the real criminals!"
The first aid, therefore, in
youth's struggle for decency must come from parents in the form of wise guidance
and prudent direction. They must buttress the weakness and immaturity of youth
with their greater strength and experience. Unless parents be enlisted to do
their duty, all the agencies of Church, school and state will labor in vain.
Parental responsibility is the keystone in the arch of youthful character for
which no substitute has ever been found.
The second enemy to the moral
cleanliness of youth is the avalanche of filth being poured upon them today by
smutty magazines, lewd pictures and newspapers which relay the details of sexual
crimes and divorce scandals. Let the reader stand before any display of
magazines in a drug store, confectionery parlor or on the street corner and
glance at the covers. He will find that about 90 per cent seek to intrigue the
reader with the pictures of females in various stages of nudity, or with
suggestive titles to stories hinting of confessions of how a girl lost her
virtue, or of both combined. Never before in our country was there released upon
our youth such a tidal wave of pornographic literature. In the last
decade new
magazines have
been continually appearing, seeking to outdo the others in lewdness and
vulgarity, until now their number is legion. A magazine ostensibly catering to
business men, with notices of current styles in dress, carries the filthiest
pictures in color, defiling every home and office into which it is brought.
Others feature sexual crimes,
carrying their prurient details into the innocent minds of youth. How aptly does
the utterance of Charles Lamb apply to the publishers of these magazines: "If
dirt was trumps, what hands you would hold!" If they had set out to see how
effectively they could poison the minds, befoul the imaginations and sully the
hearts of youth, it is difficult to see how they could have improved upon the
means used. The spectacle of lewdness to be seen wherever magazines are
exhibited moved Bishop Schrembs to observe: "The present era of printing filth
has become so flagrant that it indicates an obsession bordering on madness."
How long are the American people
going to remain silent while this
Signs of
Revolt
There are not wanting signs that
the revolt long overdue is under way. Thus
Circulation Management reports that
A second
sign that the public conscience is awakening to this evil is found in the fact
that the newspapers throughout the country carried the following story of the
making of a sex criminal. Convicted of two offenses, involving criminal attacks
and sexual perversions which shocked the nation, the young man thus related the
circumstances which brought about his degeneracy.
"I say thank God I am locked
up--away from your hypocritical corruption-breeding world. I repeat it, thank
God I'm locked up.
"Who am I to talk like this:
"I'll admit who I am. I am the
so-called pervert who was convicted and locked up for a couple of the meanest
crimes the law ever dealt with.
"And that's why I'm glad that I am
a prisoner. I'm out of reach of the thousand and one incentives to vice that
'free people' throw around a guy like me when he's walking the streets looking
for a job. Nice people they are.
"Oh yeah?
"Pervert? That word makes me
laugh'. I'm no different than anybody else. I can see now what made me what I
am. It didn't come from inside me but from outside.
"From those filthy magazines that
you nice people allow to be plastered all over your newsstands.
"You think you're pretty smart,
don't you? You think you're getting away with something--with all the nude
pictures and suggestive jokes and rotten stories that anybody can get for a
nickel or a dime. And with your newspapers that can make believe they're
preaching and yet give all the juicy details of some filthy act that makes poor
kids and ignorant tramps burn. . .
"Oh, but you're wise. . . You
preach about bringing sex out into the open because you think it's fashionable
and sophisticated. . . You don't know the half of it.
"I was a kid at a newsstand when I
started down. I didn't know the meaning of sex, much less of perversion. It was
one of your respectable citizens who started me down. The big wealthy guy that
owned the newsstand.
"He used to bring his rotten
magazines to my stand and show me the worst pictures and give me the wink and
say:
"'Hot
stuff. It'll make you rich!'
"How was I to know that the stuff
was poison? I drank it all before I sold it. It changed my blood to fire. . .
"Where's the big shot that gave me
that start?
"I know. He's still doing his
corrupt business and he's still free. . . Don't let anybody tell you he's not
hurting anybody. He's killing people. He's making fiends out of innocent people.
He's the foulest thing on the face of the earth... I know, because I'm one of
his victims...
"And that holds for your newspapers
too. Even I who was guilty was ashamed of what they wrote in the papers about me
with their pious sanctimonious air. You're a bunch of hypocrites so long as you
let that stuff go on, and a lot of you are just as perverted as they say I am...
"Laugh if you want to. Say I'm
crazy. . . But the next time you see a line-up of sex-filled magazines on a
newsstand, or read a minute description of some crime in the newspaper--remember
that's why I'm here and why many another guy will be here when I'm gone."
Putting
Teeth into Protests
It would help mightily in
hastening the end of these salacious, smutty magazines, books and newspapers if
every reader would register his protest against the sale of such pornographic
literature, and then if the merchant persists in handling such items of filth,
transfer his patronage completely to a merchant with some sense of civic
conscience. The tremendous success of the Legion of Decency in its drive against
filthy movies lay in its enlistment of the individual conscience. Responsibility
reposed not in that vague entity, "the general public," but in each individual.
For the only way in which the general public can be mobilized is by enlisting
the individual.
Another factor in the speed with
which the Legion of Decency drove filthy movies out of existence was the
enlistment of its members not only to boycott the obscene picture, but also to
boycott completely the theatre which exhibited such films even occasionally. As
Cardinal Dougherty pointed out at a great mass meeting in
The result was a cleansing of the
Augean Stables of Hollywood, the rescue of the movies from the general disfavor
into which they were falling, and the opportunity for youth to see pictures
without being dragged through a sea of filth. Why not apply this same principle
to the cleansing of the press, to secure the elimination of the filthy magazines
and tabloids now defiling the youth of our land? If every lover of decency would
register his protest against the sale of these vulgar magazines by withholding
all patronage from the merchants who persist in selling them, the situation
would be remedied with the same promptness which characterized the
transformation of the cinema.
If every one of the millions who
read these lines will make a silent vow before God to act in this honest and
courageous manner, we shall make a contribution to the preservation of the
integrity of the character of youth and the safeguarding of their shining
innocence, which no man can fully appreciate or appraise. It will spell the
completion of a second major achievement of the Legion of Decency--an
achievement which will endear that organization to every citizen of our land,
regardless of religious affiliation, who loves decency and hates the corrupters
of youth. Will you begin, dear reader, your work of civic decency not tomorrow,
but today? God and the spiritual forces of the universe and the thoughts and
deeds of every lover of decency in the world will sustain and buttress you.
A third enemy of youthful morals is
to be found in the vulgar exhibitions featuring the entertainment at night
clubs, taverns, burlesque theatres and road houses. The competition has been to
outdo one another in vulgarity and lewdness. Apparently the manager who can pull
the most clothing off his entertainers is considered the greatest success.
Females in various stages of disarray, performing lascivious dances, are paraded
before the eyes of youth. Supplementing the inflammatory movements with obscene
jokes, plying them with drinks, the management does everything within its power
to turn the patrons into sex-crazed maniacs.
If the patrons on leaving such
places, with their minds befuddled by drink, their passions inflamed by all the
teasing tactics or semi-nude entertainers, do not attack innocent women on the
street, it is certainly not through any fault of the management. Here are the
founderies which turn out sex criminals by the wholesale. Here are the agencies
which poison the innocent minds of youth, which pervert their normal development
into wholesome manhood and womanhood, and send them out as criminals to prey
upon society.
How long shall we allow these
vicious cancers to thrive upon the bosom of society, eating their way into the
very heart of youth? If a sewer pipe should be detoured so as to carry its
contents to the reservoir supplying a city with its drinking water, would not
every citizen instantly refrain from using the water thus contaminated? Would
not every resource of the city be instantly bent to remove the source of
contamination? But what about the streams which carry the sewage of moral filth
into the minds and hearts of young men and women? How can the magistrates of a
city justify their apathy in allowing lewd burlesque performances, filthy floor
shows in night clubs and road houses, to spread the germs of moral leprosy among
its youth? How can citizens, fathers and mothers, remain silent when these
agencies are daily undermining the moral character of their children and
tainting them with lechery?
Here again there are not lacking
signs that the revolt of an outraged citizenry, long overdue, is getting under
way. Already the police commissioner of New York, Lewis J. Valentine has flung
down the gauntlet to the theatrical operators specializing in nudity. Backed by
an indignant public, Commissioner Valentine has declared war to the finish upon
those purveyors of gilded filth who would fatten at the expense of public
decency and the morals of youth. If his example be followed by the commissioners
of other cities, the racketeers in obscene exhibitionism will find out that
there is no place for them in the American scene.
The example of Mayor Edward J.
Kelley of Chicago in pressing into service all the resources of his office in
driving a play, remarkable only for its vulgarity and profanity, from the stages
of that city should be followed by every magistrate who believes in decency and
reprobates filth. If every magistrate will have the courage and backbone to do
his sworn duty to protect the public weal, these agencies of moral contamination
will be driven from our cities and from their rendezvous along our hard roads as
well. Such officials can always be sure that if they carry their case to the
public, they will always win. For the American people have a long tradition as
courageous defenders of public decency and protectors of the morals of youth.
"You'll
have to Excuse Me. . ."
In addition to the action of civic
officials to protect the morals of a community, there is much that can be done
by the individual private citizen. In the last analysis, he is Mr. John Public.
He must strike the spark which will kindle the corporate conscience of a
community. If he is indifferent and apathetic, how can he expect the officials
who represent him in public office to be otherwise? If, on the contrary, he
burns with indignation at the sight of the agencies which menace the moral
health of his children, something of his flame will spread to others until the
whole corporate conscience is aflame.
As an illustration of this, let me
cite the example of Gene Tunney. In a mid-western city a group of business men
were entertaining Mr. Tunney at a dinner. Following upon the meal several female
entertainers appeared to put on the floor show which was bidding fair to become
as regular a part of a stag dinner as the inevitable ice cream and coffee. It
was at the time when the craze for nudity had reached its height.
They had not proceeded far in their
number when Mr. Tunney sensed the situation. Here he was, the honored guest of a
group of well-meaning business men whose overzealous but misguided entertainment
committee had ordered not wisely but too much. The entertainment was offensive
to his moral code. Trained from childhood in the high standards of Catholic
modesty, he felt the upsurge of indignation that comes into every truly Catholic
breast at the sight of the debasement of womanhood. What was he to do?
In his predicament others might
have argued that they could not afford to offend their hosts, they could not be
expected to go single-handed against the opinion of the group, they could not be
expected to lead a revolt alone. So, others of weaker mold might have argued in
the effort to countenance, or at least condone, the negative passive attitude of
doing nothing under the circumstances. But not Gene Tunney. There was only one
thing for him to do--his duty. He did it.
Arising from his seat at the
speakers' table, he said simply: "Gentlemen, I don't care for this type of
exhibition. I find it indecent and offensive. You'll have to excuse me." Suiting
the action to the word, he walked quickly from the room with every eye upon him.
It was just the spark needed to ignite the smoldering conscience in others.
Quickly other chairs were pulled back and an exodus began which caused the
undraped females to repair in dismay from the scene. "Go," said Lady Macbeth to
her guests when Macbeth's uneasy conscience was causing him to see the ghost of
his murdered king, "and stand not upon the order of your going. But go at once."
Such was the unsounded order which depleted the banquet room in that midwestern
city and sent the diners on their way.
Gene Tunney has fought many a
battle. He faced the bullets on the firing line in France. His breast was bared
to the bayonets in Flanders Fields. He traded punches with the Manassa Mauler in
the squared ring and lifted the heavyweight crown from one of the greatest
fighters that the game has ever known. But Gene Tunney never fought a braver
fight than he did that night in a mid-western city when he fought single-handed
an army of a hundred men and sent them fleeing from the scene.
The records of the War Department at
Washington enshrine for posterity the story of his courage under fire. The files
of every newspaper in our land hold safely in their keeping the memory of his
victories in the ring. I want these lines to record a triumph never heralded
before, a conquest that never found its way into any newspaper in our land, the
bravest fight that Gene Tunney ever won--the victory of moral courage over the
tyranny of a crowd.
One of the criteria which Immanuel
Kant frequently proclaimed would enable one to judge the ethical value of an act
is its effect upon human welfare and happiness if it were performed universally.
Act in such a manner, urged Kant, that if all others did likewise, it would make
for the weal and happiness of all mankind. Judged by this standard, the action
of Gene Tunney bears the stamp of the noblest ethical character.
A mind that surpasses the mighty
intellect of the philosopher of Koenigsberg as the brilliance of the sun
transcends the candlelight, Jesus Christ, placed upon it the stamp of a divine
approval when He declared in His Sermon on the Mount: "Blessed are the clean of
heart, for they shall see God." Reflecting the thought of the same divine mind,
the great Apostle of the Gentiles declared: "Be not deceived, God is not mocked.
For what things a man shall sow, those also shall he reap. For he that soweth in
his flesh, of the flesh, also shall reap corruption. But he that soweth in the
spirit, of the spirit, shall reap life everlasting."
If every citizen would follow the
example of this courtly gladiator of the ring, the pestilential swamp of filthy
shows would speedily be drained. Indeed, if every reader would register his
protest against whatever vulgar exhibitionism there is in his community, the
festering brothels of night clubs and road houses which feature obscenity would
be swept by the tidal wave of aroused public opinion from the American
landscape.
Thus far we have considered the
forces which menace the integrity of youthful character, the enemies of youth in
their struggle for decency and honor. The treatment would be woefully
incomplete, however, if we did not at least point out the most powerful ally of
youth in their noble struggle. That ally is religion. It takes youth by the
hand, guiding him over the pitfalls that beset his way, and puts his feet safely
upon the paths that lead to the sunlit mountain peaks of nobility of character.
It whispers in his ear the voice of
duty and proclaims to him that God and one constitute a majority. Not only does
it make clear the moral law, but it supplies sanctions for its observance. In
other words, it puts teeth into the moral law, makes it functional by supplying
adequate incentives for its observance. Without religion, ethics is apt to
become a mere bundle of high-sounding platitudes, garbed in glorious rhetoric,
to which men pay lip service on public occasions and conveniently forget about
in private practice.
I walked one hot July day through
the cemetery of Pere Lachaise in Paris. It is the Westminster Abbey of France,
the Valhalla of her illustrious dead. After reading the epitaphs on the tombs of
generals, statesmen, scientists, literateurs and artists, I wandered over to an
obscure corner where the weeds were growing luxuriously high. Here to my
surprise I stumbled upon the grave of Oscar Wilde.
I was startled to find this gifted
son of England buried in an obscure grave in the alien soil of France. He had
won a place as one of the brilliant literateurs of England, an enormously clever
playwright, an able poet, an eloquent orator whose witty repartee made him one
of the popular idols of the drawing rooms of London. Yet lacking the restraints
of religion, he fell to the lowest depths of moral degradation and fled in
disgrace to the alien land of France.
The weeds, thick and tall upon his
grave, seemed to shout out to me with myriad voices: "Culture, education,
refinement do not save. A man may walk intellectually among the stars and grovel
morally among the swine. The conscience which does not sink its roots into the
subsoil of religious faith or project its antennae up beyond the roof of the
skies misses alike the music of divine inspiration and the thunder of divine
commands." If I could take each son and daughter of America by the hand and have
them stand with me before this weed-covered grave, I would let this silent tomb
preach to them a sermon more moving than any ever framed by human lips--a sermon
proclaiming the hollowness and the emptiness of culture which is not deepened,
broadened and stabilized by the mighty and everlasting verities of a religious
faith whose cosmic Underwriter is the infinite and eternal God.
Above the portals of the College of
Agriculture at the University of Illinois are inscribed the words: "The wealth
of Illinois is in her soil and her strength lies in its intelligent
development." I would paraphrase that inscription and say: "The wealth of
America is in her sons and daughters and her strength lies in their development
of character and intellect." They are our greatest treasure, the jewel that is
richer than all our tribe, the pearl that passeth all price. They are our hope
for tomorrow, our promise of a better day.
My plea to the people of America,
of every faith and creed, is simple and brief: Let us guard our chief treasures.
Let us protect the shining innocence of youth that their manhood may be noble
and strong. Let us of the older generation remove from their environment the
pitfalls and traps which would ensnare them and lead them into the devious paths
of vice and crime. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. "Train up a
child in the way he should go," says the Book of Proverbs, "and when he is old
he will not depart from it." If we play fair with them in their youth, the
staggering bill from our penal institutions will take a sharp decline. Let us
help them to develop a rugged moral character and a "chastity of honor which
feels a stain like a wound." It will be our greatest contribution to the making
of a nobler America and the building of a better world.
My last word is to youth. I
believe in you. I have faith in you. For almost a quarter of a century I have
mingled in friendly intimacy among the youth of one of the largest universities
in America. I have witnessed your eager cries for victory, heard your serenades
and hearty laughter, and have been your confidant in times of trouble when the
tear replaced the smile. As I have gazed from your shining buoyant faces at the
temptations which we of the older generation have allowed to grow up around you
on every side, my wonderment has been not that of the conventional critic that
you are so wild, but that you are so good, so wholesome, so sound.
The Clean
Glory
I say to the youth I love: Hold
fast to the clean glory of your shining innocence till the white-winged reapers
come. It will be your cloud by day, your pillar of fire by night. Nothing you
can ever gain will compensate you for its loss. Your fidelity to your ideals may
cost you much in money, in friends, in sacrifice. But the surrender of your
ideals will cost you more. For a transient gain you will barter the infinities.
A good conscience will be your sure reward. "Only the heart without a stain,"
says Goethe, "knows perfect ease."
When enemies surround you on every
side, recourse to God in prayer will put steel into your quivering flesh,
convert your weak velleities into mighty volitions, and endue you with the
strength of thousands. The mighty hand of the everlasting God will be stretched
down from on high to succor you. But you must clasp it. Parents may warn,
teachers may counsel, heralds of the Gospel may admonish, but you must choose,
you must decide. As an unnamed poet points out:
To every
man there openeth
A way and ways and a way,
And the
high soul climbs the high way,
And the low soul gropes the low.
And in
between on the misty flats
The rest drift to and fro.
But every
man decideth
The way his soul shall go.
Thousands
of years ago the Psalmist asked: "Who shall ascend into the mountain of the
Lord: or who shall stand in his holy place?" To which the inspired answer came:
"The innocent in hands, and clean of heart. He shall receive a blessing from the
Lord, and mercy from God his Saviour." That answer to youth's query in every age
is as true today as it was when uttered milleniums ago, and it shall still be
true at the crack of doom. Youth of America, storm the heights, walk among the
stars, keep your conversation with God and the angels, hold fast to the
everlasting values that you may be the architects of a nobler civilization, the
sculptors of a new world, the builders of a better day.
"My child, you must now set up a task force to stop the wave of evil in pornography that is engulfing your country and the world. Action is needed. There are many true spirits who will help you in this fight. It is truly a battle of the spirits." – Our Lady, August 14, 1975
Directives from Heaven
D15 - Holy Matrimony
D16 - Role of Parents
D183 - Sex Education
D216 - Pornography
D223 - Adultery & Divorce
D316 - Protect Your Children
