With Good Reason Introduction to "With Good Reason"

Mar 11, 2008

Catholic News Agency is pleased to announce that it has added Fr. Thomas Berg, LC, as one of our featured weekly columnists.  Fr. Berg’s column, “With Good Reason”, addresses a variety of issues at the intersection of ethics and culture.  Here is how Fr. Berg describes his column, and why he calls it, “With Good Reason.”

“It’s no secret to most readers that public discourse today—on virtually any topic—is too often vitiated by poor reasoning. From the pages of the New York Times, to the blogosphere, to the nightly news, to conversations at the grocery store, it does not take long for the attentive ear to identify the lack of sound reasoning that is pervasive of our culture. So, I think it’s very healthy to call people's attention to this fact. The American democratic experiment cannot long survive awash in a cultural Kool-Aid of poorly reasoned assertions about morality, politics, and culture that lead to poorly reasoned (or unreasoned) behavior. Who we vote for, what we complain about, the clothes we buy, the number of children we decide to have, the career choices we make, our religious commitments and the faith we profess cannot be, must not be the result of more or less passion-based, emotivistic responses to cultural stimuli that either threaten or promise to promote one's egotistical preferences in life. Such a culture will not sustain a thriving and well-ordered democratic way of life. Our click-for-an-emotion culture of text-messaging, chat-rooming and MySpace deadens the very capacity for reasoned reflection in the lives of millions of American teens, twenty and thirty-somethings.”

“I would suggest that if international Jihad doesn't do us in, this particular cultural crisis will. Consider this weekly e-column as one small contribution toward averting the latter. I sincerely hope that what I write will be thought and said with good reason. And I hope it will be worth your while. I can't guarantee that, of course, but I'll do my best.”

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