Losing Our Sense of Shame

Some months ago Dr. Joyce Brothers wrote an article for the Philadelphia Inquirer’s magazine Parade. The title of the article was “Shame May Not Be So Bad After All. Her basic point was that we, as a society, are losing our sense of shame, a major element of self-control. Self-esteem has become more important than self-control.

She illustrates the point with a series of vignettes starting with Adam being ashamed of being naked before God, through the outrage at Ingrid Bergman’s adultery in the 1940s, to Madonna’s “I have no shame” in the 1980s, to the tolerance of the grossness of Howard Stern in the 2000s.

This is a great example of a slippery slope. The more acceptable some practice becomes the easier it is to push the envelope a little further.

We are seeing the same thing in our society’s respect for human life. Forty years ago abortion was considered a shameful crime. Now society not only considers abortion acceptable but, with the license of the Supreme Court (if it is legal it must be moral), it is being treated as an almost benevolent medical practice.

The same focus on ‘self’ that is driving our loss of shame is now undermining our respect for human life beyond abortion to infanticide, euthanasia, assisted suicide, and the many horrors being inflicted on the human embryo.