Archbishop Joe Harris in a recent homily (reported on Labour Day on CNC3) proposed the source of the national malaise: “inequalities” and a culture of “extreme individualism” with an accent on “upward mobility”. These he linked to a failure of people to accept responsibility for the many woes afflicting the land. His sentiments were echoed by Fr Christian Perreira, delivering a sermon in San Fernando.
The clergymen lumped several things together in a simplistic fashion. The source is possibly Pope Francis, the socially conscious pontiff, but they’ve invoked words whose import they haven’t unpacked—like “inequality”; “values”; “personal responsibility.”
Each of those issues has been the subject of intense debate in the world outside, and much platitudinous drivel here. The inequality debate is probably the defining issue of this generation—and I’ll spend a few columns hence on it. However, a necessary preamble is the “values” business. We have to know what we believe and value and why, if we’re going to examine how we live or behave.
But where does this knowledge come from? Regular readers of this column might have noticed the bemoaning of the lack of data upon which to base conclusions and construct such arguments.
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