It comes when relatives or friends who’ve been talking about their adulteries, or abortions, or self-absorbed, irresponsible fornications realize that you’re within earshot.
Or when they joke about something else they’ve done that’s baldy immoral, like stealing from an employer, and catch your look of astonishment, and fall immediately silent.
Or when one of them makes a remark that connotes contempt for someone because of his religion...maybe for your religion, or for you.
And such is the tenor of our time that you know, with the degree of certainty that was once reserved for God is watching, that you can’t say anything, of any sort, about their exchange. What ever you might say would result in making you “the bad guy” for making them feel bad about themselves.
So you pretend you didn’t hear them. Maybe you pretend that their conversation didn’t register because your mind was far away. Or maybe you say nothing and try to slip away.
But no matter what you say or don’t say, do or don’t do, it doesn’t matter. In their eyes you’re already “the bad guy. They already resent you for making them feel bad about themselves, because you have higher standards than they do, and they know it.
They have one recourse, and one only: to take offense at you. Sometimes it isn’t expressed where you can hear. Sometimes it takes the form of insinuations such as “He acts holier-than-thou, but give him a reason and I’ll bet he’d just as low as anyone.” And in an irony of ironies, the kinder and more courteous you try to be, the more they’ll resent you for it.
This is the price of having "old-fashioned" morals and ethics in an age of widespread moral nihilism. Anyone who lets it be known that he’s a Catholic and serious about it will pay that price at some time in his life. These days, even others who identify as nominal Catholics can make you feel it. That’s how bad things have gotten.
Yet in times past, your standards were effectively universal throughout the West. Those who were found to have transgressed those standards were expected to admit their fault and try to be better thereafter. Even those known to practice the most egregious vices were expected to maintain a veneer of propriety and to promulgate the Christian moral-ethical code to their children. Today this is called “hypocrisy,” and condemned as if it were a greater fault than open venality and debauchery.
If there’s any comfort to be had, it must reside in this: You’re not alone. No matter how isolated you are religiously, you can remind yourself that there are others in your situation all over America and Europe: people who are resented for maintaining moral-ethical standards that everyone was once taught from childhood and expected to maintain lifelong.
You have the right of it – and whether the others like it or not, God is watching. So stay strong.
