If you've ever done any study of anthropology, you probably noticed that every culture, even the smaller ones, always developed some kind of system that gave directions to the society. In the oldest cultures those directions were slowly moving to the political systems, for instance ancient Athens, Rome, Egypt, China, Japan, India etc. All of those big empires have one thing in common. They collapsed. They always reached a point when some kind of social destruction took place. It could be a war, or moral collapse, economical difficulties, or something else. There is always the question: why? Why couldn't those cultures reach any higher?
I think the problem is that our human weaknesses are like two very heavy weights attached to our legs. One is greed and the other is pride. I want to have more and only I matter. Those two elements come from the naïve approach of humanity-- that by 'having' we are more happy and with us in the center everything will have the right direction. Maybe you've noticed that those two weaknesses lead to something else - to wanting power over another person. Even the best social solutions sooner or later brought violence and misuse of people.
I think we are slowly coming to this point. I see more and more people wanting to control others, always in the name of their goodness, but actually it is more about being able to dictate the actions of others. The Democracies of Athens and Rome died because people gave up their freedom for cheap entertainment. Athens became weak because of corruption, the same for Rome. The average citizen stepped back from being responsible for things happening in the country and at the same time allowed a group of people to make decisions that affected him.
I think we are in the same moment right now and I am not talking about only this country. As a society, we've come to the point that many people have given up their responsibility for peace of mind and at the same time have given power to a group of people. We are kind of naïve again.
Somebody else will solve problems and we can enjoy our lives. Parents give children to the schools, students in a very passive way accept what the professors say, adults blindly believe everything on the news and slowly we are following the pattern of ancient empires. We became naïve.
Sometimes I think the last place of reason and responsibility is the Church because here only you are responsible for your decisions. Each one of us has to confess our own sins and there are no excuses. Each one of us has to make very serious decisions about being or not being with God. Nobody else can do it instead of us.
Jesus Christ never taught us about naïve faith. His teaching is very real, very clear, very straight forward. So I think it is the Church that can save our culture, our country, our communities. Let's grow up and be responsible again.