In light of the October 1st Las Vegas massacre, I came across a text in Ratzinger which mentions that the greatest catastrophe of our materialist social system is "the starvation of souls and the destruction of the moral conscience."
Ratzinger warns that the geatest danger to the West is to continue the basic error of communism. And the basic error of communism was not economic but human. Communism's error is a lie about the human person: that man does not have an immortal soul, i.e. that man is just material.
"Commentators have...ignored all too readily the role in [the collapse of the communist systems] played by the communists' contempt for human rights and their subjugation of morals to the demands of the system and the promises of the future. The greatest catastrophe encountered by such systems was not economic. It was the starvation of souls and the destruction of the moral conscience.
"The essential problem of our times, for Europe and for the world, is that although the fallacy of the communist economy has been recognized--so much so that former communists have unhesitatingly become economic liberals--the moral and religious question that it used to address has been almost totally repressed. The unresolved issue of Marxism lives on: the crumbling of man's original uncertainties about God, himself, and the universe. The decline of a moral conscience grounded in absolute values is still our problem today. Left untreated, it could lead to the self-destruction of the European conscience, which we must begin to consider as a real danger--above and beyond the decline predicted by Spengler."*Without Roots, Joseph Raztinger, New York: Basic Books, 2006, 73-74."
*"The obligatory reference here is to the following words of Erwin Chargaff: 'Where everyone is free to play the lion's part--in the free market, for example--what is attained is the society of Marsyas, a society of bleeding cadavers.' Ein zweites Leben. Autobiographische und andere Texte. Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1955, 168."
Ibid., 155, n 13.
How many "shades or grey" are there? None!, when it comes to a decision between right and wrong, truth and error.
In a nation which now glamorizes sadomasochism and every other perversion, and we deliberately slaughter our progeny, it should not surprise any of us when the lion we create of ourselves comes back to devour us. If there is no right and wrong then the passions reign supreme. And if the passions are supreme then the law of the jungle (viz. lawlessness) is the only law.
Morality concerns the truth regarding right and wrong. Evil exists. Man is capable of evil because he has a soul which makes him free to decide what he will do, whether good or evil. That is a choice which no man can escape, no matter how many times you are told that you are simply a product your circumstances. Everything you do as a person you decide freely to do, and that choice includes a moral weight, with all of the consequences thereof upon you, upon others and upon the world, and upon eternity--good or evil.