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Debora123
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…Then perhaps you shouldn’t be so quick with your conclusion.
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cheezey
Guest
Agreed. It’s a shame, but most have to do this to know why not to do it.
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AuditVocemMeam
Guest
My conclusion was hypothetical - I don’t need to attend nightclubs to know that if this is happening, then we shouldn’t go. I was also responding to the idea that “don’t watch” is a viable option.
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cheezey
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Debora123
Guest
I don’t know if you’ve ever been to a 6 flags or Cedar Point, but it is not terribly uncommon for couples standing in line at amusement parks to make out. Should we avoid amusement parks too, then? I highly doubt it’s inappropriate to be present at a place where it is likely that you may see someone making out at some point, nor do I understand why you think not watching isn’t an option. It would be a little creepy if you just stood there and stared.
But since you’ve never been to a club, it could be that you have a very far fetched idea of what it’s like.
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AuditVocemMeam
Guest
One would have to take into account how connected the immoral act (inappropriate kissing) is to the activity in general (nightclubs or theme parks, etc.) - for example, one could walk along a city street and see some excessive display of affection, but the inclination to participate in those acts due to being in a city street is at most remote, and it is the same with a theme park.
Of course, I again have not been to nightclubs, but I wonder if these words from Cardinal Ratzinger’s Spirit of the Liturgy (p. 148) aren’t at least somewhat relevant:
It is evidently different in any case since the discussion is that couples might engage in inappropriate displays of affection at amusement parks or something like that, whereas we have discussed the problem of strangers making out at clubs. Is there something about the club atmosphere that leads to those kinds of acts more than a theme park atmosphere would? I can understand (not excuse) a misguided couple thinking that such behavior is appropriate, but strangers doing that is the height of depravity.
Of course, I again have not been to nightclubs, but I wonder if these words from Cardinal Ratzinger’s Spirit of the Liturgy (p. 148) aren’t at least somewhat relevant:
I understand that he is writing about rock festivals, but could not the problem of “the emotional shock of rhythm, noise, and special lighting effects” appear here too? Combine that with alcohol and people looking to commit sexual sins and one has a recipe for disaster.
It is evidently different in any case since the discussion is that couples might engage in inappropriate displays of affection at amusement parks or something like that, whereas we have discussed the problem of strangers making out at clubs. Is there something about the club atmosphere that leads to those kinds of acts more than a theme park atmosphere would? I can understand (not excuse) a misguided couple thinking that such behavior is appropriate, but strangers doing that is the height of depravity.
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EasterJoy
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I didn’t think she drew a conclusion; I thought she only gave an “if…then…” premise.
The question (I think), is whether or not the venue itself encourages bad behavior, and that is something that one would decide on a case-by-case basis. There are venues where the owners simply provide food and drink (including but not only alcohol) and music to dance to. That in itself is not a near occasion of sin for most people, even though of course some people looking for someone else with whom to sin will naturally look for people wanting to socialize and have a good time on a weekend night instead of visiting a library on a Wednesday morning. Then there are places that encourage people to do lascivious things and to act in intemperate ways in order to make the place more profitable. The latter ought to be avoided, because we ought not support businesses that are actively trying to ruin the morals of others, but the former can be just fine.
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AuditVocemMeam
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Not to be picky, but if you were referring to me, I’m male 
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PatriceA
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You are presuming the couples Debora was talking about at the amusement parks know each other prior to the day at the park…that’s not always the case. A lot of “hook ups” can take place at amusement parks and other places one would never associate that behavior. I’ve seen worse behavior at a few Catholic wedding receptions than what I experienced at nightclubs.
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LegoGE1947
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In the early 60s a rock singer Freddy Cannon had a tune where he “fell in love, down at Palisades Park”
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EasterJoy
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I think if you combine excessive alcohol consumption with people looking to commit sexual sins, that is all the ingredients that are needed to cook up a disaster. Yes, bad lighting and too much noise to hear yourself think would make the situation even more dangerous, a couple of guys at the door who don’t let anyone in who is exhibiting too much modesty adds to the nearness of the occasion of sin, but combining lust with alcohol is a fairly basic recipe for disaster.
Could you name something that is merely “misguided” if done by two people who know each other and yet is “the height of depravity” when the pair doesn’t know each other well enough? I’m at a loss to know what that would be. As far as I’m aware, the degree to which one knows one’s fellows in sin does not make a big difference when it comes to the gravity of a sin or the culpability of the sinner. Lust is not really better because you’ve taken the time to get to know your object–mixing in those golden emotions just masks the flavor of what is being done.
Still, it is a point well-taken that someone who wants to avoid the temptation to commit sexual sin would usually be safer at a theme park than at a nightclub…but I wouldn’t say that to a particular nightclub owner, because some nightclubs do not encourage patrons to treat each other like cuts of meat in a case. Sometimes it really is just a place where the owner provides good music so people will be more likely to want to hang around and enjoy the company of friends, during which time the owner will sell a lot of food and drinks. Provided the owner keeps an eye on people so they don’t drink too much alcohol (which some places do), that is not an inherently immoral business concept!
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on_the_hill
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As a matter of fact, my mom has said that it was common for fights to break out at wedding receptions when she was young. Blue collar Catholics + beer = ?
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on_the_hill
Guest
So a person might go to a club, and might see people kiss who might not be married to one another…
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AuditVocemMeam
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I didn’t mean to suggest that such inappropriate displays of affection between people who are in a relationship aren’t wrong. They are. I mean to say that it is much more understandable that human weakness should lead one to engage in too-affectionate behavior with someone to whom one is not married but with whom one is in a relationship, since that involves love and emotions etc. On the other hand, engaging in such behavior with someone one does not even know just shows how absolutely meaningless sexuality has become in modern culture, that it would be something for one to engage in with random people with whom one has either extremely little personal connection or none at all.
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PatriceA
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Or at any place adults frequent for that matter.So a person might go to a club, and might see people kiss who might not be married to one another…
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AuditVocemMeam
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I think in addition to the danger of “seeing” immoral actions and being led into sin by sight of them, my main objection is more that we are not to touch the unclean thing. Christ did not frequent orgies because He would not grace an immoral revelry with His company, and neither should we. And yes, Christ ate with sinners - repentant sinners. On His terms.
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EasterJoy
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I’m going to propose that you’re going too far, and here is why:
The Gospels don’t say the Lord ate with repentant sinners. It only says “sinners,” and his doing so did cause a scandal (because of course the Gospel cannot be referring only to alcohol consumption, since he would have been served wine in the home of a fully observant Jew of the time–they were not teetotallers):
“To what shall I compare this generation? It is like children who sit in marketplaces and call to one another, ‘We played the flute for you, but you did not dance, we sang a dirge but you did not mourn.’ For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they said, ‘He is possessed by a demon.’ The Son of Man came eating and drinking and they said, ‘Look, he is a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners.’ But wisdom is vindicated by her works.” Matt. 11:16-19
Besides, St. Paul wrote about our question directly–that is, not the “unclean thing” but rather the “unclean person”:
*“I wrote you in my letter not to associate with immoral people, not at all referring to the immoral of this world or the greedy and robbers or idolaters; for you would then have to leave the world. But I now write to you not to associate with anyone named a brother, if he is immoral, greedy, an idolater, a slanderer, a drunkard, or a robber, not even to eat with such a person. For why should I be judging outsiders? Is it not your business to judge those within?” *1 Cor. 5:9-12
So it is not our concern to be judging outsiders, but whether or not a venue a) is a near occasion of sin for us or those we socialize with and b) if by our patronage we are supporting what is explicitly and purposefully a near occasion for the general public.
We don’t have to leave the world–that is, we don’t have to seclude ourselves from those who go in for immoral things. We should choose friends whose association will be a spiritual help and not a temptation, but we don’t need to avoid every place where immoral people gather. We should not support a business whose raison d’être is to make money by seducing people into sin, but we do not have to boycott businesses who are legitimate but also count immoral people as their other patrons.
In the middle there is a grey area, and that is something to be considered on a case-by-case basis. It is worth thinking about whether we give tacit approval to the wrong thing by being at some club or other. Still, there is no blanket prohibition by which a Catholic may not socialize in the same places that the openly immoral frequent, none at all. We must admonish fellow Christians who indulge in immoral things, and stay out of their society when they do, but we don’t have to take ourselves out of the world.
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EasterJoy
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Using a contrast such as “misguided” vs. “the height of depravity” is going a bit far, though, don’t you think? Kissing some guy you just met today where everyone can see you do it is foolish, yes, worthy of embarrassment, yes, but not exactly evidence of “absolutely meaningless sexuality.” Not everyone who accelerates too fast necessarily lacks brakes. Some people are after exactly the meaningless kind of encounter you’re talking about–I say this because they do, so it requires no judgment to say it!–but others leap in after their emotions too quickly, instead, and repent at their rashness at their leisure. And yes, sometimes marry each other some day, too…the little new stories of people married 60 years are full of those rash couples who jumped into marriage after knowing each other a week. As the song goes,* “C’est la vie”, say the old folks, “it goes to show you never can tell”*
If it is more lewd than kissing, then let’s hope that not even the married would feel free to do it in public. If some couple is doing things in public not decent to do in public, it hardly matters to me whether they are married, engaged, or total strangers. If something is properly kept private, it ought to be done in private. They need to get some self-control and cut it out! If an establishment were one where that was the norm, I’d leave. It is not pharisaical to say that something like that upsets one’s stomach!
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AuditVocemMeam
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I am primarily referring to the incident in Matthew 9. “And afterwards, when he was taking a meal in the house, many publicans and sinners were to be found at table with him and his disciples. The Pharisees saw this, and asked his disciples, How comes it that your master eats with publicans and sinners? Jesus heard it, and said, It is not those who are in health that have need of the physician, it is those who are sick. Go home and find out what the words mean, It is mercy that wins favour with me, not sacrifice. I have come to call sinners, not the just.” Christ calls us all to be just, so He does not need to call the just to the state in which they already are. He calls sinners to be with Him. He is associating with them in the role of the physician healing them from their faults, not as an equal and not as someone who is idly “doing his own thing” while they engage in immoral behavior. I am open to correction, of course, but I cannot think of any incident where Christ is recorded or said to have voluntarily associated with sinners in the act of sinning without it being part of an attempt to convert them.
I think there might be room for another distinction in there. It is impossible not to associate with the immoral of this world, and so we are not commanded not to associate (i.e. eat with, talk to, be friendly with) with them. It would be quite difficult for our day-to-day lives if we had to enforce such a prohibition. But that is quite different from associating with them in the act of sinning, like, for example, going to a club where people are actively and obviously committing gravely evil acts. In fact, there is no sense in which we would “then have to leave the world” if we were prohibited from attending venues that are, in practice, dens of vice. We can quite happily be friendly with certain people in daytime when they are not engaged in their less tasteful acts, and then when they go to commit said distasteful acts, we can simply refrain from participation in venues that encourage or support that behavior.
I think the venue can still be inappropriate even if it is not “explicitly and purposefully” a near occasion for the general public because the atmosphere conducive to sexual and alcohol-related sins can be developed unintentionally or without really thinking of the moral consequences, etc. Even if it couldn’t, I think an atmosphere like that, purely on account of its object and effect (that of exciting the passions and inhibiting reason, intended or not), rather than its intention, is inappropriate, so I see no moral reason to admit intention as a consideration in whether attendance at these clubs is good or not.
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AuditVocemMeam
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I think it’s easy to agree that we should not patronize a business which is on the far end of the spectrum (purposely leading people into sin) and that we can patronize a business which just happens - with essentially no causal relationship - to be used by people for immoral purposes (I am thinking of, for example, someone wearing immodest clothing to a restaurant). The middle is perhaps less easy to understand, but I would contend that it is the effect which a certain business will (or is, upon rational consideration, likely to) have on people by which we ought to judge whether it is appropriate to patronize these businesses without regard to whether they intend for any immoral actions to result. So, for an establishment with intense lighting effects, loud rhythm and noise, women who wear relatively little, and a permissive alcohol policy, we would judge the appropriateness of attending such a venue based on what those qualities do (in practice and in theory) to people rather than whether the proprietors intend those effects to those who frequent the venue.
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