“Follow Your Heart” is awful advice ~ The dangers of Disney wisdom in a Post-Christian age

In practically every old cartoon from the 1940s and 50s, you can find the trope where one of the characters faces a comic moral dilemma. At that moment, two tiny versions of the character poof into being at either shoulder—one in angelic garb advising the more difficult selfless action, the other in a red suit with pitchfork urging the wicked, selfish alternative. 

But just as these cartoons are considered hopelessly quaint and old-fashioned today, so are the notions of morality which undergird them. Consider that we have now moved from the youthful innocence of Disney in the mid-20th century which produced such family-friendly fare as Lady and the Tramp and The Jungle Book, to a situation where Disney executives are openly demanding the promotion of deviant sexual practices to children and banning so-called gendered greetings at their parks like “ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls” because they are considered not inclusive.

Disney is a microcosm of how Americans at large have lost or killed their consciences—their ability to discern right from wrong or even admit that right and wrong exist. The Disney of the 1940s could safely encourage viewers to “follow their hearts” because the vast majority of people had reasonably well-formed consciences. That’s why Archbishop Fulton Sheen could have a top-rated TV show in the 1950s, and it is also why so many Americans in the early 1960s could respond with outrage when their Black brothers and sisters continued to be treated unjustly as second-class citizens.

But in a nation with no ability to discern right from wrong, with no understanding of how morality works, where acting in selfish ways is celebrated and even considered virtuous, the hollow advice to “follow your heart” suddenly becomes dangerous. It becomes a bomb within our families which threatens to destroy not only the individual but everyone around him, creating a blast radius that harms all of society.

A few sages of that earlier era knew even then that something was terribly wrong in America and the West. Venerable Pope Pius XII called out and condemned the relativistic new morality that was emerging at that time known as “situation ethics.” Venerable Fulton J. Sheen himself was aware of the very same trends. As early as 1936, he recognized that there was a nasty undercurrent actively eroding the moral pylons which supported Western civilization. Many of his modern contemporaries, he felt, were willfully deadening their consciences. He wrote:

“Would to God that our modern mind instead of denying guilt, would look to the Cross, admit its guilt, and seek forgiveness; would that those who have uneasy consciences that worry them in the light, and haunt them in the darkness, would seek relief, not on the plane of medicine but on the plane of Divine Justice.” ~Ven. Fulton J. Sheen: Calvary and the Mass

Who can deny that this trend of silencing the conscience via the use of psychiatry and drugs (legal and illegal) has accelerated since Sheen’s time, and at break-neck speed? 

By 1953 when his popularity was at its zenith, Sheen elaborated, saying that many had now succeeded in killing off their consciences—but at what cost? He wrote: 

“Some men believe that if they could drive God from the earth, the inheritance of sin would be there without remorse; and if they could but silence conscience, they could inherit peace without justice. It was just this mentality that sent our Lord to the Cross. If the voice of God could be stifled, they believed that they could enjoy the voice of Satan in peace…How many, even of those who have killed conscience can say, “I am happy; there is nothing I want?” ~Ven. Fulton J. Sheen: Victory over Vice

The honest answer to Sheen’s rhetorical question is: None. 

If you doubt that, consider the following trends that are prevalent in our increasingly atheistic and amoral society:

• Over 50% Of Liberal, White Women Under 30 Have A Mental Health Issue.
  
  
• Deaths from drug ODs, suicide soaring among millennials, report shows
  
  
• 39% of youth with same-sex attraction seriously considered attempting suicide; 71% reported feeling sad or hopeless for at least 2 weeks in the past year
  
  
• Why are Women so Miserable?

Since 2005, many hundreds if not thousands of articles pondering that last question have been written, and every possible reason for why women in particular are so utterly miserable in the post-Christian West has been proposed. My personal favorite is a 2017 article in the UK Guardian which posits that: “To be happier, women should try giving up on being good.” In the conclusion to this article, columnist Tim Lott writes: “Maybe women are unhappier than men because they pin themselves to higher moral standards. I think I would rather be happy than good.”

Did you get a whiff of brimstone reading that?

Sheen knew why people without God are miserable, just as the repentant reprobate Augustine of Hippo knew 1,600 years ago when he wrote: “Thou hast made us for Thyself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee.” [Augustine, Confessions, Book I, Chapter 1]

The truth is this: When you are raised with a poorly formed conscience, a perverted sense of right and wrong, or worst of all—the inability to even define what is good, to discern selfishness from selflessness—you will be miserable. 

For such a person with a badly formed or dead conscience, “follow your heart” is the most catastrophic advice that can be given. Often that poor soul’s untutored heart will lead him directly to destruction.