In a political wasteland dominated by billionaires, war criminals and mega-corporations, the head of the Catholic church is a rare figure of moral leadership<\/p>\n
What do Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin and Benjamin Netanyahu have in common? Answer: a chronic inability to tell right from wrong. The three leaders currently causing the most harm in the world share a predilection for violence, a chilling lack of compassion, and extraordinary self-regard mixed with paranoia. Yet the characteristic linking them most closely is their rejection of \u2013 or failure to grasp \u2013 basic moral standards. Worse, these men typically behave, in their public lives at least, in ways that are fundamentally immoral. And that\u2019s a problem for everyone. Their moral malaise is contagious.<\/p>\n
Ideas about what, in absolute terms, constitutes right and wrong are always contentious, as moral philosophers from Aristotle to Kant have shown. Pope Leo, leader of the world\u2019s Catholics, warned recently<\/a> that \u201cwe are living in a time when it is becoming difficult even to recognise what is truly good for everyone\u201d. Yet most people, most of the time, observe a personal moral code held in common with others. There is broad agreement, for example, that it\u2019s wrong to kill, steal, cheat and lie. In an ostensibly secular age, 76% of people worldwide identified with a religion<\/a> in 2020 \u2013 a potent expression of individual and collective morality.<\/p>\n Simon Tisdall is a Guardian foreign affairs commentator<\/p>\n Continue reading…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In a political wasteland dominated by billionaires, war criminals and mega-corporations, the head of the Catholic church is a rare figure of moral leadership What do Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin and Benjamin Netanyahu have in common? Answer: a chronic inability to tell right from wrong. The three leaders currently causing the most harm in the … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-75747","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75747","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=75747"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75747\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=75747"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=75747"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=75747"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}