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<\/a>Guest post by Allison\u00a0<\/i>I don\u2019t have any delusions about the human race. We\u2019ve been messing up our lives ever since Eve ate that apple. While we all keep sinning, in recent years in our popular culture a new trend has taken hold: celebrating sin.
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This phenomenon allows us to label some people \u201cbad boys and girls\u201d and leaves the rest of us off the hook. If we are busy laughing at Octomom or Jon Gosselin, we don\u2019t have to spend time contemplating our own failings. I am Catholic because my Church recognizes that we all sometimes fall short of God\u2019s standards. And it offers us the Sacrament of Reconciliation<\/a> as a way for us sorrowful sinners to redeem ourselves.<\/p>\n
For some reason this week, I can\u2019t get Rielle Hunter out of my head. The woman who committed adultery with presidential candidate John Edwards now is featured in the latest issue of GQ, scantily dressed and lying seductively in their daughter\u2019s bed. Have we lost all our shame as a culture?<\/p>\n
Please understand, I don\u2019t mean to single out Ms. Hunter for judgment. She is merely one in a long line of lost souls who have gained fame by behaving in ways that, in an earlier generation, would have caused her and her family great shame. She and others have gone on to make money by celebrating their failings. GQ seems to be earning plenty of advertising dollars with this formula: unwed teen father Levi Johnston, who fathered a child with one of Sarah Palin\u2019s daughters, appeared shirtless in their May 2009 issue, holding his baby.<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t want to go back to the days where we stoned adulterers. But for all the jabs we hear about\u00a0 \u201cCatholic guilt,\u201d my Church recognizes that we do sin and offers us, through its Sacraments, an opportunity to get back into God\u2019s sanctifying grace.<\/p>\n
Like many parents, I worry about the world my sons will leave home for, a world that makes a mockery of the Ten Commandments, including its admonishments against adultery, and against stealing and lying. It\u2019s a world that thinks it\u2019s entertainment to label, often with those folks\u2019 permission, some souls \u201cbad boys and girls\u201d and put them on display.<\/p>\n