The first reading today shocks almost no one. We have seen so many such stories we become immune to the impact. Has the world become a worse place, no. On the contrary, if one is a student of history, one realizes immediately that the world has become a much more civilized place as the Christian faith has spread. What makes it feel worse is that sin that used to be a very private matter is now broadcast all day everywhere.
We can go back in our own nation's history at least as far as Jefferson to find adultery through a host of political figures to the most recent case of Tiger Wood. What they all have in common is that there power and fame exacerbation a tendency that can take place in any person, the tendency to explain away our sin.
While we look judgmentally on these famous people, we can forget that Lust is not the only sin that was considered dead there are six others:
Pride (judging others), Greed, Envy, Anger , Gluttony, and Sloth (Apathy)
The key for all of is that we recogize in ourselves when we begin to explain away the small sins before they grow, and the sins we explain away with "Everybody does it."
