Telling the Truth and Being 'Nice:' Not Necessarily the Same Thing

I signed a letter this morning, supporting our parish priest.

Seems that there's been a complaint about the horrid way he acted last Sunday.

He said something naughty.

He said that people who support today's value system, where it's okay for people to crawl into bed with each other, for boyfriends and girlfriends to shack up, as long as it feels good or they're 'in love,' were "speak[ing] ... without regard for facts or truths" (Princeton's WordNet) That's the translation into nice, unemotional, intellectually-distanced English.

What he actually said was that the perverse beliefs and values cherished by so many people these days were, quote, "bullshit."

The congregation laughed - the sort of laugh you get when people hear something they agree with affirmed, in a language they're familiar with. From the looks of it, though, there were a few who were offended: either by the naughty word, or by being told that the nice and easy, value-free version of ersatz Catholicism they preferred wasn't valid. Or maybe something else ticked them off.

Me? I probably wouldn't have used the term, "bullshit," myself, in a similar situation: but I think it was an accurate description of this culture's fashionably casual ethics.

I'm not pleased with the normalization of vulgar language that began in the sixties and seventies. On the other hand, I think it's high time that people start calling the abyssal nonsense that passes for wisdom in today's America what it is: even if that means occasionally using terms that just about everybody understands.