I've thought a lot recently that there is a LOT of harm done when institutions prove themselves untrustworthy. I've seen political analysts talk about the decline of high trust societies and it isn't even necessarily that the trust was ever warranted, but the lack of it furthers decline and increases instability.

I'm a parent now with a wide range of ages. I know enough to know that the standard medical advice for some things is false or misleading a lot of the time. I know public health and the development of medicine as a discipline already had a lot of dark spots prior to 2020. That also doesn't necessarily make them wrong about everything, either. It stinks as a parent to be told, constantly, from all sides, that every choice we make is bad, and isn't it obvious what the right thing is, when it isn't obvious at all, even if you're an educated and intelligent person, and why can't we stop being so cavalier and heartless about our children or other people's children?

It really stinks to get a whiff of that from the Church. I would be so discouraged if I was getting this from my children's school, and yep, I would probably pull them to homeschool. Which would make me even more suspect to some, and round and round we go.

I appreciate this article as a sensitive handling of a very difficult and fraught topic.