Don’t just defend the fort. Attack!

[Benadam]

The opportunity to live the faith heroically is a huge Grace. Those couples are chosen soldiers enlisted to fight the forces of evil attempting to destroy the natural order.

 

[Annie]

But there are no reasons why there should be a blanket ban on sex outside marriage. That’s a purely religious view. I’m just pointing that out is all.

From the article:

Hasn’t the wisdom of Christian morality been proven, in the painful results of the sexual revolution? Shouldn’t the proponents of secular hedonism be the ones apologizing, for the grave damage that has been done to so many thousands of lives, so many thousands of souls?

Missionaries throughout history have presented the faith as a way to escape misery. Today we should be offering an alternative to the misery of broken homes and families, of emotional and sexual dysfunction. It isn’t really a matter of defending our fort, after all. It’s a question of helping oppressed people overthrow the tyranny of a perverse master.

The problem with your line of thinking is that it leads to a literal “self-centeredness.” If Joe doesn’t himself personally understand why or see what the harm is, then Joe will not follow the rule.

You, Freddy, understand that it is important to be kind to animals. You understand the harm that can come about if people lie or cheat.

But you know, there are people who make the case that no one is hurt if Joe steals a candy bar from a big corporation store. Why is that any sort of deal? Why should he get 6 months in jail for it?

You understand that, but not everyone else does.

I see that damage wreaked on society by the equivalent of millions of people stealing only one candybar, or maybe only once a year, but in that case why not once every 6 months, why only 1 at a time, why not something a little bigger…

You think sex outside of marriage is no big deal, that there are no secular reasons to avoid sex outside of marriage, but look at the results. Thousands of kids living in poverty. Thousands of kids living without a parent, usually their father.

When sex outside of marriage becomes the norm in a society, what happens to women? They become a objects much more so than when they were respected as the potential mothers of a man’s children. And what happens to men? They become simple staus symbols and women vie for their attention.

And the pairing up of people which occurs in a society in which sex outside of marriage occurs becomes skewed. Serial monogamy gives a promise of more sex for all, but the result is that a lot of people who want to marry end up not able to find a person to get married to.

The revolution cannot occur with a couple of factors being in place: fairly effective birth control and freedom for women in the work world. (Note: just because those factors are in place does not mean a sexual revolution will occur.) As time goes on and the men with more to attract women take up women, a lot of men are left without potential marriage partners.

Thus the men in such a society become discouraged as their efforts become less likely to be rewarded with a life-long partner and family.

And it all started with the small idea that just this once, under just these circumstances, sex outside of marriage would be ok.

Just like stealing one candybar…

 

[Loud-living-dogma]

Freddy advocates Satan’s position rather well here. I personally don’t want to engage.

 

[Maximus1]

The battle is being waged incoherently. And it plays out thereafter, as disingenuous. To make a living, to prosper, to seek wealth, requires certain compromise of black letter Christian ethics. And it goes on in our consumer driven secularist relativistic economic lives in incredible amounts by Catholic and others.
We rationalize two sets of rules whether we realize it or not. In many ways society opperates as a mutual support group to let us think this is the only right way. A group pat on the back.
The next step is to isolate " causes" where a pure Gospel ethic is applied selectively. Then identify " others" who are thr problem.
Truth is that is scapegoating. The placing of ones own sins that we despise about ourselves into another.
Jesus teaching that we cannot serve God and mammon. We violate this teaching and worse, we believe it ok. As if exempt from Gospel considerations. The sequelae is selectively blamed then on the other.

 

[ATraveller]

I’m sorry, but there is nothing whatsoever in the article that indicates any leeway whatsoever in what the church teaches.

Third time: Christian teachings don’t have to change. The spiritual reasons don’t have to either. There are plenty of non-religious people, though a small minority, who will see the appeal. These individuals may not know there’s an alternative to the modern West’s selfish hedonism. There are evangelists who have discovered such people.
Your “polite” discussion seems to involve playing ignorant.

 

[Theo520]

I think Church teachings (education) do have to evolve with the times. How it was taught worked fine for prior millennia, but something significant happened in the 60’s - we learned how to ‘hack’ sex so it was available for pleasure without the usual consequences. Reliable hormone birth control has upended millennia of culture.

 

[Pai_Nosso]

This is exactly what I’ve been saying. All the Christian churches remained silent when sexual immorality was introduced into society. Now a person cannot even say that it’s a sin without being called a bigot, homophobe or something.

But it has turned from acceptance to promotion. We see TV advertisements depicting sexual immorality, we see it on TV shows and movies. But the worse thing is that we see it in our schools, exposing children as young as 8 to this perverse lifestyle.

In England the Islamic community in an area took their children out of school and protested the school for teaching their kids about LGBT lifestyles. Good on them for standing up for their morals. I wish Christians had the same courage to do the same. Most of the population identify as Christian yet we’ve remained silent and allowed sexual immorality to infest our society.

 

[Elizabeth3]

All the Christian churches remained silent when sexual immorality was introduced into society.

Once the Protestant Churches ok’d birth control, they lost the ability to argue the point that sex was for both procreation and unity of the couple and the two couldn’t be separated in any individual act. If there was a way to have sex just for pleasure without the consequence of new life and if Christians were participating in this too, how can they argue effectively against the “as long as you have two consenting adults and no one gets hurt” argument or that marriage is necessary as a matter of justice to any children conceived? The Catholic Church alone could still make the argument but when there is such a division with the rest of Christianity, then it won’t have as great an impact on society. We lost unity on a very fundamental and important point in the sexual morality question.