The continuing scandal involving the President of the United States has more casualties than might be counted in the first rough calculation.
Some of the casualties are obvious, of course. Mr. Clinton's reputation, not sterling to begin with, has been soiled even more, threatening to place the thumbnail sketch of his presidency alongside those of Millard Fillmore and Warren Harding.
Monica Lewinsky, once an anonymous government worker, now faces huge legal bills, even larger legal troubles and the prospect of going through the next century labeled as "that woman."
Countless others can be added to the casualty rolls, some through their own actions and some for no other reason than they were standing in the way when the juggernaut went by.
But if the polls are correct, maybe the most tragic victims are the majority of the American public who feel that their President has committed adultery, and then lied to them and committed perjury, but who also say that such things don't really matter.
The common and probable explanation for that attitude is that the economy is doing so well that no one wants to mess with the status quo. Impeachment hearings or a presidential resignation could result in higher unemployment or inflation, some people reason, and those are results no one wants to bring about; therefore, let's pretend that nothing important happened.
If that indeed is the popular thinking, then American society has reached a sad nadir. That attitude can be summed up very bluntly in this way: "As long as I've got mine, I don't care what else happens." That notion has undermined previous civilizations, where immorality and corruption at the highest levels were excused because bread and circuses could be found in abundance.
If our bank accounts are the only accounts we take into consideration when examining what we want our society to be like, then we should not be surprised when we wake up in a world that is constructed from girders of exploitation and foundations of greed rather than from buttresses of selflessness and vaults of sacrifice.
Lent is a good time for Catholics to reflect on what sort of society we want to build. Such reflection will also help us imagine what sort of ruins we might leave behind.