WHAT WE WON'T HEAR IN THE DEBATES ABOUT THE VALENTINE'S DAY SCHOOL MASSACRE

On Valentine's Day, 17 people — including students and teachers— at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, were killed by a 19-year-old former student. 

This was the 10th mass school shooting in the United States in the past five years. 

Massacres of this type occur with such frequency that law enforcement has now established a separate category of crime which identifies a mass shooting as one where at least four people are killed in a single incident.

Once again, those immediately affected and the nation itself collectively will ask:  why?

And yet again, we will hear the noisy and meaningless debates over gun control.

This shooting in Florida has added another political aspect to the violence with politicians and police turning attention away from their failures and focusing in upon the need for more effective  "mental health screening".

As in the past, the same tired cliched explanations will be uttered by those in public authority with the means to do something real and positive about protecting school children, teachers and staff:  poverty, lack of opportunity, the proliferation of violence in entertainment and on social media.

But here's the real explanation the politicians, law enforcement, and public officials won’t mention and certainly are not open to hearing:  the lack of moral formation that is so prevalent among our young people and exhibited throughout our modern day culture. 

God, good and evil, right and wrong have been declared to be subjects which are anathema in schools and anywhere in the public forum.

Moral values no longer exercise any governorship over choices people make.  

There is a whole new value system which has replaced traditional morality:  instant self-gratification, the immediate and un-filtered fulfillment of oneself.

The fact is personal gratification is the new gospel in our society and certainly among our youth.

Of course, when such liberality  and license encounter the deep resentments which find harbor in certain troubled individuals, their depression and despair are expressed in dramatic acts of violence often exerted upon the weakest and most vulnerable.

Secularists have been successful in removing God, prayer, moral and civic formation from the classroom. 

Hooray for them!  An empty and horrific victory!

For they must accept that the blood of the innocent victims is on their hands as the value of human life and common decency which those values instilled has been erased from classrooms.

Late night talk show hosts and daytime gurus love to disparage anything to do with faith or religion, holding up for ridicule anyone who would suggest that the Evangelical Counsels contained in Sacred Scripture are a pathway to successful personal and social well-being.

These sociopaths (for that is what they are) are quite popular and enjoy legions of followers.  They are the "blind leading the blind" of whom the Lord spoke.


Let Americans, one and all, accept part of the blame on account of our indifference and our penchant for not holding those in authority accountable for their incompetence and political posturing.

God have mercy on those who have died, their families and dear ones.

God have mercy on our country.  

Help us, Lord, turn away from a culture of hedonism and death toward a culture of life and decency which flows from the knowledge of Your Will and Your Way.