Adultery to save lives justifiable?

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I don’t understand why anybody could conceivably believe a terrorist/nazi would keep his word!
 
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MamaJewel said:
But just like the prisoner in the concentration camp, Jesus understood that to resist is futile.
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Jesus was, is, God. Resistance would have been the opposite of futile, He could have called down fire and brimstone from heaven, called legions of angels to destroy the entire Roman Empire. Christ’s humility and submission in torture and death is an example to us precisely because, unlike any torture victim in history, He did have all of the power in heaven and earth to not only resist, but, end it.
 
farronwolf said:
So without pointing to any particular post, what I am getting from some is:

Every victim of sexual assault is sinning because they didn’t die instead of submitting to the sin of sex outside of marriage.
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I don’t think anybody here means to say that. Most surely I did not mean to say it.

Not necessarily. If somebody points a gun at you and says “Gimme your wallet or I’ll kill you” and you say “ok” and hand over your wallet, that does not count as consenting to donate your money to the gunman.
If he then says “Ain’t you got more than this!?” and you rip off your gold ring and toss it to him, that does not count as actively participating in the exchange of funds.

A woman who says “ok” to the demand for sex at gunpoint is not giving consent: she’s submitting. If she tries to placate the rapist that does not count as willing participation. She’s still submitting to an outrage upon her person.
 
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No offense meant to the OP…

I think these absurd scenarios of hypotheticals are an example of a vice and the difference between curiosity and pure knowledge.
The more sensational the hypothetical scenario the farther it takes us from the truth…

Curiosity killed the cat…

 
This!! And a serious lack of historically accurate knowledge. Seems everything that is known about Nazis comes from comic books these days. The complexity is completely lost.
 
I regret my first post to this thread. I gave the impression that I thought the woman, the victim in this scenario, was automatically guilty if she submitted.
That isn’t the case.
There is a very big difference between someone who consents to do something evil because he or she hopes to accomplish some good end, and the victim of another’s evil who only submits.
A woman who submits to rape because the rapist is holding a knife to her child’s throat is not consenting to a plan to do evil: she’s a victim as much as the child.
 
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A person who is raped is not consenting if there is no knife to anyone else’s throat, if she submits to the threat of being punched, she is not consenting.
 
In any hypothetically posed scenario any hypothetical outcome is possible…

Now if you’ll excuse me I haft to go feed Mr. and Mrs. Schrodinger’s cat while they are at the store getting some gunpowder.
 
The laws, customs and expectations of the Old testament don’t necessarily apply to us now.
We don’t expect modern Christians to circumcise boy babies because Old testament Jews were told to. We don’t expect people to offer lambs or doves as blood sacrifices on certain occasions or to anoint their doorposts with blood during the Jewish Passover. Neither should the Old Testament practices apply to a modern case of rape.
In particular a woman does not have a religious duty to fight her rapist.
 
I beg to differ. Coercion uses intimidation or force to compel a person to do an act against his or her will. Consent is to give voluntary assent or approval to an act. By its nature, coercion literally goes against the voluntary will of an individual.

A victim is not an active participant, even if he or she does not fight back.

If an individual’s life is threatened, that is intimidation or force. Such coercion negates the individual’s consent because defense of one’s life is expected. People will do what they must to stay alive and that is why threatening a person’s life is a form of coercion.
Zaccheus said:
A woman who says “ok” to the demand for sex at gunpoint is not giving consent: she’s submitting. If she tries to placate the rapist that does not count as willing participation. She’s still submitting to an outrage upon her person.
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Thank you for this^^ Zaccheus.
 
not coming from a very educated perspective, but I’m sure god recognizes everyone’s intentions. so if this in fact happen I’m sure he would pardon due to it being more of an act compromise/sacrifice.
 
Consent under duress is not consent at all.

If for example someone’s employer threatened their job security unless they slept with him/her, there is no consent (which is what McCarrick did with a lot of seminarians).
 
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This happened historically. Helena Citronova, a Jew from Slovakia, internated in Auschwitz, saved herself and her sister Rozinka’s lives by being the lover of SS Franz Wunsch . It’s reported : • 'Had it not been for the fateful moment when Helena was asked to sing for Wunsch’s birthday, she wouldn’t have survived. She had been sentenced to death earlier that day*
  • Wunsch sent her biscuits, passed her notes saying ‘Love - I fell in love with you’. He even saved her sister Rozinka from certain death.
    ‘When he came into the barracks where I was working, he threw me that note. I destroyed it right there and then, but I did see the word “love” — “I fell in love with you”,’ she said years later in Israel.
    ‘I thought I’d rather be dead than be involved with an SS man. For a long time afterwards there was just hatred. I couldn’t even look at him.’
    But she admitted that her feelings for Wunsch changed over time, especially when her sister and her sister’s children arrived at Auschwitz Birkenau. Helena learned that they were to be sent to the gas chamber and her SS admirer tried to help them. Helena went on: 'So he said to me, “Tell me quickly what your sister’s name is before I’m too late.” So I said, “You won’t be able to. She came with two little children.”
    ‘He replied, “Children, that’s different. Children can’t live here.” So he ran to the crematorium and found my sister.’
    Wunsch was able to save Helena’s sister by saying she worked for him in Canada, but he could do nothing for the children.
    Helena and her sister survived Auschwitz, and although her relationship with Wunsch never developed further, she did testify on his behalf years later at his war crimes trial*
Just wanted to share this story, it’s historically accurate, Miss Helena testified for him.

Adultery is wrong but in some circumstances although not physically you can be emotionally forced to do it. If someone were to kill my brother’s life and my only chance to save him was to go to bed with the killer…disgustingly enough I would do it probably. God said do not commit adultery but Jesus said love your neighbor as yourself… a brother is more than a neighbor.
You are not committing adultery because you want to engage in sexual acts but because you want to save a human life… idk 😐
 
TheAdvocate197 said:
Scenario: you are at a concentration camp and the camp commander says that if you sleep with him he will spare your family from execution. Yes, adultery is considered an instinsically evil act, and it is easy to say “don’t do it.” But would you really fault someone who did this spare his family? Would it really be the greater evil to let your family die?
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Another of the endless speculative fictional What IF? posts generated as an attempt to present a Conundrum to God’s Commandments…

Answer: No.

It is never right for one to Mortally Sin - Including Murder - for any reason…

_
 
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Agreeing to do evil with the hope that evil forces wouldn’t be outright lying in the first place? No, I wouldn’t do it. All the great saints, and Jesus himself, are what they are because they never bargained with evil. If your family is killed because you do not submit to doing evil in hopes of saving them, the moral weight of that is NOT on you, but on the one who killed them, who likely would have killed them anyways after you cooperated with evil.

And, yes, sex under duress basically amounts to rape. But the person must still resist. The crime wouldn’t be “adultery” because it would be rape. The crime would be submitting to cooperate with the evil of a concentration camp in the first place.
 
The good news is that we are not bound by the laws that were binding on the Hebrew people.
 
farronwolf said:
So would the woman need to be beaten unconscious before she could no longer consent to the act
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The question essentially was at what point of psychological duress does one become incapable of free choice. I answered rightly that I don’t know. Either way, it was irrelevant to the question the OP originally asked, which had to do with that conscious free choice, assuming that one was capable of making it.
 
It would still be morally and gravely wrong to do so. Everyone has already acknowledged the fact that it would be an extremely difficult situation, as would any of potential martyrdom. It’s still our Catholic duty to stand strong in those situations though.
 
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