From my current reading....
which is The Church and I, by Frank Sheed.....

The reality of God is growing steadily dimmer in men's minds, the concept of the laws of moraility as Maker's instructions for the running of our own selves seems to have vanished altogether. Even if at odd moments conscience troubles people about what they are doing, words like "taboo" have reduced the authority of conscience so that it cannot stand up to the pressure of strong temptations.

The result-as I am weary of saying and my hearers of hearing- is that masses of people simply have no moral standards. By this I do not mean that they are living in a riot of immorality. Most of them have not the constitution for it, they would be dead in a week if they tried. What I am saying is that they have no moral standards: when they are tempted to some sin they feel they can manage they have no principle to test its rightness or wrongness. In the long run they can only follow their own inclination.

Neither in this nor in any other field is inclination likely to produce right conduct. Does it, by chance, produce happiness ? All the evidence says that it does not. The sin gets a stronger and stronger grip, the compulsion always harder to resist, the pleasure smaller and smaller. The moral muscles get flabby from want of excercise, there being no excercise in following inclination: and in flabby muscles there is neither health nor happiness. To tone them calls for effort. But unless men see the reason to make the effort, they will not make it.

In the known Law of God there is reason to make the effort. Christ told His Apostles to teach all nations to the end of time to observe all things that He had commanded them: and they had from Him a divine commission to "bind and loose", a phrase of the rabbis for declaring what was forbidden and what was permitted. As a Christian one cannot handle oneself as though Christ had not spoken.