That is a good line and very true.

To take a slight detour, something in your comment reminded me of a major religious survey from PewForum. There are a ton of findings, but a couple things I remember are that 1) almost a third of American catholics are lapsed, which fits in with 2) almost half of Americans (of all faiths) are not of the same denomination in adulthood as they were in their childhood. I just browsed through a couple other items in the survey and, in a related manner perhaps, across the entire nation belief in God is always in at least the 60% range and up. In the South, it's above 80% across the board. But, if you look at responses to the question of whether their faith is the only true faith 'leading to eternal life', only 24% do think that and a full 70% agree that many religions lead to eternal life. That last bit has to be a huge shift over the last 100 years. It all signals to me that religion continues to play a central role in the life of most Americans, but they're treating it more as a healthy way to construct their lives and less as a list of rights and wrongs.

As for rebellion, boy, I don't know. It sounds to me like a very similar question to the one about balancing family vs nation; or nation vs. world; the self vs others. And maybe it is the same question. The value of rebellion is in its long-term effects. Taking your example, the rifts in the Anglican Church today are very painful, but if it makes it through the rifts, the church could be much stronger (assuming there is value in the rebellion) in the long term. So one has to weigh greater strength for the next generation against damage to our own. Do you destroy a marriage today for two healthier people in 10 years?

You also mentioned “posthumous evaluation.” Pain and the memory of it seem to recede with time. I'm not sure that in most of our posthumous evaluations we adequately understand the pain that we are now saying was worthwhile. The future is just as selfish as the present.

I like that last line and I'm keeping it.

As you were pondering cultural and societal moral structures, did you ever consider the role of rebels, rebels who challenge a society's moral structure, that is?

It's a subject hard to wrap one's thinking arms around, because of the dual aspect: a) immediate impact and b) later, often posthumous, reevaluation.

i don't discount the immediate reaction, because an assault on any system can have potentially hazardous and possibly lethal consequences.
Yet, I think rebels are necessary to maintain the vitality needed for a system to stay alive. .

I was reading about the rift in the Anglican Church, and it semed to me that as painful as that is for the members, without such periodic upheavals, any 'system' atrophies and becomes irrelevant.
The survival of the Catholic Church is not showing serious signs of atrophy, but it is changing, whether the Pope likes it or not. Many congregants simply disobey the rules, while others are turning to a more evangelical form of Catholicism. Maybe it's just a different, a more sub-rosa, form of rebelliom. .

Any thoughts?

I did a long guest post on cultural relativity almost exactly a year ago on TMV. Here's the link.

The most important point is that one of the purposes of living this mortal life (and I think this is even agrees with a Catholic perspective) is to create our ethical. fully human selves. We aren't born with character; we forge one. And we don't come into this world all the same, with the same potential. This very much means that one way of living might bring out the best in one person but hide many of the potential virtues in another. The same could be true of a society or culture. It's not clear at all that there is one singular best way to live. If so, this is a relativity of sorts and it might be fundamental to what living ethically means.

I kid, I kid…

Yes, but the thread here introduced moral relativism itself, though.

“it leads to the kind of moral confusion he warns against”

I would say it leads to agreement (partial or whole) or (complete) disagreement.

I think he made some acute observations. We are addicted to choice and depend on the markets to shape the nature of society, without considering the consequences. People make bad choices at times, and the markets are the playgound for competitive greed; they can not provide a moral compass.
Without a sense of direction, societies can do irreperable harm to themselves and to the earth that sustains them.

So far, so good. I agree that we need a moral compass, and probably, it's necessary to be simplistic in order to make a cogent argument. When his argument is extended from its narrow confines to broader implications, however, it leads to the kind of moral confusion he warns against.

The opposite of moral equivalency is moral absolutism. Unwavering trust in a moral absolute gives license to do anything, ANYTHING, in its name. That puts us on that old road to hell paved with good intentions.
While we definitely need a moral compass, we should not believe that North is the best direction to follow at all times and in all circumstances.

Of course, the Pope believes that he and the Catholic Church are the only true guides, and I take great issue with that. His repeated claims that secularism is inherently spiritually empty is only religious party politics talk. Taken with appropriate grains of salt, though, the Pope's speeches can provide useful food for thought. Sometimes.