In the second chapter of the Acts of the Apostles, St Peter gives a sermon which converts 3,000 people.

In that sermon, he says something that I haven't heard in any

sermon, namely save yourself from this

St Peter's words were true then and they're true now. But we don't like to think of this generation,

this culture, these people as wicked.

It strikes us as too negative, too regressive.

We would much rather like to believe that really things are on the up and up.

The world really is friendable.

We would like to believe that as the title of a recent article from the Atlantic put it,

the world really is getting better.

We keep quoting Fulton Sheen. There aren't a hundred people who hate the Catholic Church,

but there are millions who hate what they wrongly

perceive the Catholic Church to be.

Maybe that was true in the 50s.

Call me a pessimist. I do not think that is true anymore.

St Paul tells us that, quote,

though they know God's righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die,

they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them.

Nowhere is this more true than in the realm of sexual morality.

One of the ways our enemies, and we indeed have enemies, give approval to these evil deeds is through the abuse of speech.

Mastivation is not self-abuse, they say.

It's self-care.

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