|
Transcript |
Private & Public Morality April 17, 1983 Dr. Benedict Before beginning the sermon this morning I think I would be remiss if I didn't point out that Mrs. Bradley, I think, is in the audience this morning and I would just like her to stand for a minute so that you can all see her. Thank you. It's nice to have you. I'm sure all of you will want to be talking with her after this morning's worship. Today I want to speak on the question of private and public morality. And by morality I mean the conformity to right rules of conduct which are determined to be right not only by custom and law, but also by religious teachings. Basically American law and custom is based on the Biblical tradition of "do unto others as you would have them do unto you." This is essentially the base, I suppose, of American morality. Herein lies a sense of equality or equity under the law. Each person is to have an equal opportunity to jobs, housing, and education. And in a way laws codify the right conduct that is exemplified in this biblical quotation. Basic to this concept, of course, is the sensitivity, or the responsibility, rather, of the contract. The contract is based upon honesty and integrity. And without this kind of keeping your word in our society, it would be impossible for us to exist. Basic honesty and integrity of a person's word, or a company's word is basic to the carrying on of any kind of business enterprise. Keeping our word with each other is fundamental. And making false statements to each other, either about our business or ourselves is now, of course, punishment under the law. In fact, there must be a certain level of honesty and integrity for any society to long endure. [unintelligible] during our recent mayoral campaign and election by the charge and the countercharges used by both candidates on the media. And I must confess to you I have put off preaching on this subject of private and public morality until after the election, lest some of you think that I was using this pulpit on behalf of the candidate which I work for. I felt that I should wait until the results are in before preaching on this, because I think it is a very sensitive subject, and yet one which we all must look at. I do think that we must reflect on the charges of immorality that were used in the past campaign these last six weeks. As you remember, Mr. Washington was accused of failing to perform work for which he had been paid, which seems to have been the case. Also for failing to file income taxes, although most of his tax had been deducted already from his salary, but he had failed to actually file his tax form. Also failing to pay a certain gas bill on a political office for which he said was really the responsibility of the owner. Now he admitted he had done these immoral acts, these private and immoral acts and said in this case he had paid the price. And in many ways he had, including a short jail sentence and at least a reprimand by the Bar Association, and for a period of time was kept from practicing law in the city of Chicago. These charges were essentially private immoral charges. Immorality which had to do with his own personal business affairs. Now, Mr. Epton, on the other hand was accused and I'm not sure if ever rightly found guilty, but accused by many in the press and some of the candidates of the Chairman of the insurance agency of the state to benefit certain insurance companies many of which use his law firm as a legal consultant in fixing [unintelligible] insurance in the state. Now Mr. Epton denied that this use of personal interest, or conflict of interest and apparently no legal action was taken in regard to it against him. And I'm not sure the charges were ever proven, but at least for some they felt that he had used his position as the chairman of the insurance department to somehow fix rates at the point that would be advantageous to certain law firms dealing with his own law firm. Now what you have essentially in this election are two classic examples of private and public immorality. Private immorality which, in effect, hurt very few people, in the case of Mr. Washington. The few people I suppose who had paid him and did not feel that they had received proper services. But in the case of Mr. Epton a public immorality, if it were true, represented a conflict of interest in which many, many people in this state who buy insurance were directly affected. What I'm suggesting is that in this campaign, there seemed to be much more attention and much more guilt leveled at Mr. Washington because of a certain private immorality, while in the case of Mr. Epton there seemed to be little concern on the part of the constituencies in terms of what would be called his public immorality. Now our society in general places a heavier guilt on private as opposed to public immorality. Stealing a few dollars from a person seems to be more immoral than making millions in a business enterprise of some description. I remember very vividly a personal experience with [unintelligible], while I was a resident of the federal penitentiary a few years ago. I was in there with a group of men [unintelligible] who had been with the Anaconda Copper Company. And during World War II, these two men were convicted of ordering a reduction of the amount of copper in wires which were sold to the American forces. And because of this reduction of copper, the wires sold to the American forces in World War II in many instances burned out, or broke off in the process so that many, many troops were left out in the field with no communication to headquarters simply because these two men, so the conviction read, had ordered a reduction in the amount of copper which made these wires burn out or break off. And so these two were arrested for defrauding the government in relation to the production of copper wire. Well, the interesting thing was that these men served time, they got a year and a day sentence. At one third of that time you are eligible for parole. Practically no convict I know of has ever been released on the day when he is eligible for parole. You usually meet with the Parole Board, and they decide that maybe in a few months you should be let out. In the case of these two men, on the day on which they became eligible for parole, the Parole Board met and by afternoon these two men were ushered out the front gate in the beginning of June and taken home to their families. I remember the feeling on the part of many other men in that penitentiary, many of whom had been arrested for duplicating gas stamps. Some of you remember the gas stamps during the war? They had been convicted of producing gas stamps, so were sentenced to a federal penitentiary. But the feeling on the part of men who were arrested and convicted for perhaps a thousand dollars' worth of gas stamps were serving more than these men who had endangered the armed forces of this nation and perhaps had been guilty of seeing many of them die because of faulty wires, and these men went out the day upon which they became eligible for parole. What I'm suggesting is, there seems to be a real difference between private immorality, in which you yourself gain some personal thing in a very small way as opposed to public immorality. Now the defense used in public immorality is usually how morally the accused has been in his or her private life. We always say, "Well, he was a good family man." I don't whether you remember when Mr. Tom Hughes, he was a [unintelligible] on our city council a few years back, he was convicted for using his position on the city council to his own benefit and the benefit of many companies to which he was a part. And I remember very vividly the day that he was sentenced to jail, when Mayor Daley came out in the papers saying, "He was such a good family man." You know people are always good family men when they seem to be able to get loads of money out of using their positions for their own benefit. You remember [unintelligible], convicted for certain wrongs [unintelligible]. But the defense in that case, time and again, reminded the jurors that all these ten men were good family men. The point is that apparently private morality is to be given a higher place than public morality. Or in the use of political action committees, now, the funds of which have been given in many instances to senators and representatives. You'll remember that recently it was revealed how much some our own senators and representatives received from certain chemical companies. [unintelligible] that had a big problem of where to bury their chemical waste. And it seemed that many representatives and senators had received thousands, hundreds of thousands of dollars through their political campaigns from chemical companies who were very interested in certain laws dealing with the storage of chemical waste. These political action contributors did not seem to be immoral, unless the recipient somehow used that money in a very private and personal way. You remember that it was Attorney General Scott recently that was convicted for using some of his campaign funds for his own personal jaunts around the country. It seemed that the problem was not that he had absconded with some of the funds that had been given to him for political purposes, but rather the problem was that he had such a good time in doing so. But lately, this kind of private immorality seems to be taken at quite a different level than public immorality. And then you remember the [unintelligible] manager from University of Illinois in Champagne, who recently used university money to come to Chicago and kind of live it up. And again, [unintelligible] it said that even though he had apparently used this money for very high living in this city, with all kinds of women and so forth, the jury was duly reminded that he was a good family man. Now, recently in our own city, in the case of a past mayor of Chicago, or almost past mayor of Chicago, Mrs. Jane Byrne, she diverted community funds, you remember, taking them from their original purpose for economic development, and diverted these funds to public service projects. In other words, she used a good sum of money, I think almost ten million dollars, to create some three thousand jobs a few weeks before the election, just incidentally. And now it's discovered, of course, by the federal government that this is the case, so now this city will have to pay back all that ten million dollars into a money account because she misused it in using it for public service rather than for economic development. And then, too, likewise, she's been accused repeatedly of letting the city contract bids go to companies and executives who, in a sense, contributed some ten million dollars to her own reelection campaign. Now this is a use of public power, and taxpayers' money to, in a sense, get a kickback. Because what you do is you give a certain company a contract, if they will, in fact, contribute to your own political campaign. And just last week, Roy Williams, the President of the Teamsters Union was, you remember, convicted of trying to bribe a senator. And who John Hughes referred to as a good family man, and should now be let off because he's in bad health. We also need to remind ourselves, incidentally that Adolf Hitler did not drink or smoke, which is an interesting contrary. And one could also say, although this may be making political judgment, but [unintelligible] Secretary Watts, who you know has wanted to sell most of the National Park System, and has tried to get all types of drilling rights off our shores, but this man who is supposed to protect the environment, protect God's creation, he himself is a born-again evangelical Christian. All I'm saying is that one's private morality many times has not had much to do with one's public morality. You will remember too that Mr. Daley, in the latter days of his reign, especially during the late sixties, approved the use of the police to spy on civic and religious groups in this city. He was notoriously known for always being afraid that some sinister forces from outside the city would summon people into Chicago to deal with civil rights issues. And he was sure that the movements for civil rights in this city were due to people being brought in, if not directly from Russia, at least from as far away as New York City to deal with the question of civil rights in Chicago. I know this case rather personally, because Anne and I were personally spied upon by the city government and you remember that fifth case finally went to court, and it was won in court and the police were reprimanded for having done this. And have been required now, the city has been required to pay millions of dollars in legal fees, because this case had gone on for six or seven years in the courts of this city. And all because a man, Daley, was using his political power for his own benefit. Political power to protect himself, theoretically, from people who disagreed with him. Now, there is a tendency, it seems to me, to slide into immoral behavior as a public official unless some kind of responsibility for one's actions is fixed. Well, in our constitution, of course, we try to do this by having a system of checks and balances. We recognize that power is dangerous thing. And if it is not checked by another branch of government, it is indeed dangerous. Because apparently, absolute power seems to corrupt absolutely. And when people get into position of power, and there is little to no check upon their activities, they have a tendency to use this power on their own behalf. I would suggest to you, that one of the things we have learned in this campaign, I hope, is that we must be vigilant all the time on the question of public immorality. And seeing that it has an even more devastating effect on a wide range of institutions. In other words, public immorality has to do with much larger numbers of people and much more devastating effects than private immorality. Private immorality usually hurts one or two persons, or another person around you. But public immorality has a tremendous impact upon the whole system of government and the whole system of justice and equity in our society. For this reason, it seems to me we must develop in America a whole [unintelligible] as public purview. Where people entering political life will thoroughly understand the nature of public immorality. They will be even more sensitive to the broad consequences of their public actions on policy. In conclusion, I would say that we all would say that Mr. Washington certainly straightened up his personal morality. There needs to be something said in this regard, and he has confessed that he [unintelligible]. At the same time, we need to be thinking also about the question of public morality. And one of the interesting things about Mr. Washington is, that while his record in terms of personal immorality leaves something to be desired, no one ever accused Mr. Washington of using his position in the state government or in the federal government for his own uses. In other words, his record on public morality was never questioned by anyone. That is, he never used his power in the state legislature, or in the congress to in any way settle his own debts. As a matter of fact, he probably couldn't pay his gas bill because he hadn't settled his own debts. He simply didn't use his position to gain for himself wealth of any kind, as has been the case in many legislators. So I would hope that while Mr. Washington's problems in private morality need to be looked at and he needs to be careful about them, I think I would say that his understanding of public morality, which he does by way of public power is one which we would acclaim, and hope it continues. And we would hope that other politicians in our government would now emulate. So that when they have these responsibilities in power, they do not use it on their own behalf. Let us bow our heads and pray. Eternal God, we give thanks this morning for our many, many people in political life whose integrity is beyond question. Who face the temptations of power with real honesty, and who in the carrying out of their public duties have real integrity. They understand that they are responsible to the people who have elected them. On the other hand, we would pray for those each day who would use their political power on their own behalf, or in turn, for their own aggrandizement. This we ask in the name of Him who taught us to pray, Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed by Thy name. They kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For Thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory forever. Amen. [music and singing] Dear God, we give thanks for these gifts. Not only the contributions in the collection plate, but for the moral and upright activities of the citizens and the public servants who accept your trust and both private and public morality. And now, may the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you evermore. |
People’s Church Audio Recordings Collection
