An open letter: sex and the breakdown of the family

To the communities of northeastern New York:

How long shall we raise our children to become young adults who quickly become single parents of young children in unstable homes? This is not an accident and I am not one who is given to hapless moralizing. I am deeply concerned. Children are being raised in unstable homes and the people of this community are to blame. And this is not to blame these young individuals but ourselves entirely as a failed community. Evidently young people are not being given a proper example in the home. Our preachers and priests are apparently speaking nothing to these issues. I know that nothing has been said about abortion, teen pregnancy and the requirement of abstinance before marriage in the last 15 years in St Mary's Catholic Church. And what are they teaching our children in schools? Marriage is no longer commomplace. This is a sad fact but not an irreversible reality. And I do mean marriage between one man and one woman in the traditional sacramental manner that defined marriage from America's earliest days. I'm not on the other hand referring to the serial monogamy, aka, shacking up and living together that passes for marriage today. I am referring to men who ask women to marry them and witness to that fact before God, country and neighbor. I just read in this forum today a topic speculating as to the fatherhood of one young woman's child. Unfortunate that she is a mother so young and worse that such a young woman faced with this circumstance is made sport of by nameless ignorant individuals from the safety of their computer keyboards. Young mothers should be supported and comforted, despite the errors of their ways. I stated this earlier: Technology has robbed many people of their decency because it liberates them to do in the privacy of their cowardice what they would never do with conscience and consequence in public. This community is in a moral crisis and it has nothing to do with the price of gas or the lack of good paying jobs. It has everything to do with how we conceive and raise our children to become valued, respected and productive members of society. Time for a change and time for the leaders of this community to speak up and stop fearing whatever stigma might seem to be attached with doing and saying the right things. We need not fear or revile our own mistakes and sins and judge one another, but we can at least agree to what we should best strive to be. If we do not learn and act and teach properly and accordingly to these concerns this community will fail and fade into historical obscurity dying the death of gradual moral oblivion.