I recently read a story about a man who was driving in the car with his teenage son. They had the radio on as they drove, but the lyrics of the song they were listening to were hard to make out.

Gradually the man understood through the beat that the lyrics were morally problematic promoting the choice of evil falsely imagined to be good. He pointed this out to his son who replied, “They are really not so bad as long as you don’t think about them.”

The son casually articulated a standard modern response to hard problems.

Like a child who hopes that by covering her eyes the adult in front of her can’t see her, we hope that not thinking about problems somehow makes them go away.

At the very least, however, avoiding morally troubling questions dulls our reason and our capacity to discern in them the differences between right and wrong, between God’s plans and those of the world. Ultimately, we can lose track of those differences altogether, and by then we have lost our ability to witness forcefully on behalf of right and good.

I bring this up because we face several issues at the moment that continue to threaten our society and the Church. Two such issues remain unresolved because in many cases there has been an unwillingness to think deeply enough about them and their consequences.

I am referring to the threats to our freedom to practice and live our faith fully and the efforts to redefine God’s plan for marriage by means of a human legislative vote.

As we are all probably aware, the government’s rules for the implementation of the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare, as it is commonly known) require that certain services must be provided by insurance policies, whether one wants any of the services or not, or whether one has an objection to providing them or not.

Among such services are some that contradict our Catholic faith, such as the furnishing of artificial contraceptives, some of which can result in early abortion.

In effect, government is telling us as citizens and as Catholics that we must obey its mandates and not our faith. While there are some narrow exemptions that have been granted for employers, for most individuals and institutions failure to provide these services that contradict our faith would result in crippling and ruinous fines. Some of our institutions could be driven out of business.

Why, we might ask, in a country conceived and built upon religious freedom, is there not an overwhelming objection to such coercion from a government that is, after all, supposed to be the servant of its people?

Why is there not a stronger outcry against the proposed infringements on our freedoms and against the possibility of further restrictions on our faith that these steps, and the ideas behind them, could portend?

Sadly, perhaps many think that it is really not so bad as long as you don’t think about it.

Similarly, we face the on-going effort to redefine the nature of marriage in Illinois. And one of the frequently asked questions is, what difference does it make? Different strokes for different folks, right?

But to think about the question is to recognize God’s hand in our nature as man and woman. It is to see that marriage is unlike any other pairing or friendship because the union of man and woman alone has a fruitfulness that perpetuates the human race.

And to think about this proposal even more is to recognize that it will inevitably lead to further challenges to the freedom of religion in the teaching and observing of Christ’s word about the nature of marriage between a man and a woman, and about the fundamental order that God created, with its truth, beauty, and good for all persons.

For both issues, many who know better prefer to keep silent, choosing to go along to get along, to avoid controversy or the sharp looks and even condemnations that come with putting truth over fashion. We are, after all a pluralistic society, and it’s easier and “nicer” not to think too hard about the consequences for us and our children.

But our silence based in a failure to think issues through and to draw the appropriate conclusions and moral distinctions is not good manners.

It is, rather, to fall short in forming our own consciences and playing our vital role as witnesses to Christ before a world that so needs to be reminded of God and His plan, His loving order.

The man and his son could change the station or turn off the radio. We cannot make the modern challenges to faith go away by simply ignoring them or their consequences.

Things can indeed be bad even if one chooses not to think about them, and they can get worse even as the beat goes on.