Integrity by Stephen L Carter

...That ought to include all of us...

...Newspapers are daily full of stories about youthful "superpredators" and the pain and death they dispense so casually in drive-by shootings and other acts of violence...

...Carter has become one of our nation's most intriguing and noteworthy public intellectuals, largely because of his unerring instinct for the hot social issue of the moment and his willingness to tackle it head-on, with honesty, candor and-rare nowadays in public discourse-charity...

...I begin with the proposition," writes Carter, "that every person of integrity must be, by definition, a morally reflective individual...

...It is patently absurd for Carter to suggest that reporters and editors routinely "make the facts fit the story rather than making the story fit the facts...

...In either case, the term "examination of conscience" seems to have all but disappeared from the Catholic lexicon, and the practice appears to have faded as well...

...The president and the first lady are being investigated for an assortment of vaguely defined offenses, and one of the investigations is being led by a senator who is himself-to put it charitably-of dubious integrity...

...Carter has no easy answer to our problem, no moral equivalent of a quick injection of penicillin that will cure our illness and let us be on our merry ways...

...Carter's explication of the concepts of promise and commitment is a refreshing change from the superficial-and self-serving-treatments that one most often hears nowadays...

...And there is a general sense that all the institutions of our society- the churches, journalism, law, medicine-suffer from a lack of integrity that is corroding the foundations of our society and making it, in general, a far less happy place to be than it once was...

...It is not enough to say that it is the responsibility of the parent to teach their children right from wrong...

...What inspired the observation were the post-Vatican II simplification of Catholic liturgy and ritual (gone were midnight Masses, benediction, incense, and May crownings) and the near simultaneous advent of rock concerts, light shows, and other such crowd-pleasing spectacles...

...The answer is harder than that...

...Carter comes to one of the gravest only at the end of his chapter on "the media"-the unwillingness of so many journalists to hold themselves to the same standards of ethical conduct to which they hold politicians and other public figures...

...Hollywood has lately come to heel on the issue of content ratings for television shows, responding (belatedly) to the concerns of parents and members of Congress over the effects of motion-picture violence on children...

...If we are to look on our society as a community, the responsibility is a shared one: and so the lesson in right and wrong that children learn at home must be reinforced, not only in the curriculum of the public schools but by the example of adults and institutions throughout the society...

...The first step is the most crucial...

...Don Wycliff It was Father Robert Griffin of Notre Dame, I believe, who observed some time in the mid-1970s that the Catholic church had gotten out of the business of spectacle just when spectacle was becoming big business...

...One reason for the popularity of the character education movement is surely that parents understand the needs of their children for clear, firm moral instruction...

...We have all-not just Catholics-gotten out of the habit of moral self-examination Carter writes: We are in trouble because nobody grows up to be good by accident...

...The weakest of the discussions is- dare I say it?-of journalism...

...Too bad that, instead of spending space and energy on a pet peeve about the way some reporters take notes, Carter didn't expand his analysis of real problems of journalistic ethics and integrity...

...He might have usefully discussed the bind that some journalists find themselves in when their news organizations, out of legitimate concern about ethical issues like conflict-of-interest, promulgate codes of conduct that all but forbid journalists to be active members of the communities in which they live...

...The Catholic church got out of the business of encouraging it just when our society most needed it...

...act on the basis of that discernment...

...That one chapter aside, however, Carter has written a timely, important book that anyone concerned with living an integral life ought to read and digest...

...It is, in a real sense, to be born again to lives of integrity, which means following the three steps to integral living: discern what is moral...

...There are real sins in American journalism...

...It is ludicrous for him to suggest that Geraldo Rivera-type purveyors of "emotional pornography" are in any way typical of American journalists...

...Never before in reading any of Carter's work have I felt moved to say, "This guy doesn't know what he's talking about...

...Don Wycliff, a frequent Commonweal contributor, is editorial page editor of the Chicago Tribune...

...But that's what I felt about most of this discussion...

...The president and the Republican presidential nominee try daily to outdo each other in sounding concerned about the crisis of "values...

...It also doesn't hurt that, unlike many other academics, he writes lucidly, accessibly, even elegantly...

...Easily the best of these discussions is that about marriage...

...And both, Stephen Carter would say, are necessary to a life of integrity or, as he puts it alternatively, "the integral life...

...A similar observation might be made about the practice of moral self-examination...

...The worst thing about Carter's errors here is that they trivialize an important issue...

...And it is close to dishonest for a man as intelligent as Carter to use the blanket term "the media" to describe a set of institutions that range from the Chicago Tribune and the New York Times on the one hand to the National Enquirer and the "Jerry Springer Show" on the other...

...and assert forthrightly that one is acting as one does because it is morally right to do so...

...Much of our current moral affliction stems from our failure as a people to do this hard work of major discernment and, as important to cultivate the skills and the habits of discernment in our young people...

...Integrity's most fascinating section- and likely the most controversial-is part 2, "Applications," seven chapters in which Carter discusses what kind of behavior integrity would dictate for those involved in several key social institutions, including one with which I am intimately familiar: journalism...

...Indeed, in Carter's formulation, moral discernment is the necessary first step in living the integral life (the others being to do the right as one has discerned it, and to say forth-rightly that the reason one does it is that it is morally right...

...Integrity appears as America is in profound turmoil over our moral condition as a nation...

...Examining one's conscience is not quite the same thing as engaging in "moral discernment," but they are at least first cousins...

...Or maybe our society needs it so much now because the church stopped encouraging it...