How the sexual toxicity of the 1960s has harmed the Church

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Bradskii said:
That was true when I was growing up and is true now. It was true when my parents were growing up and will be true long after I am dead and gone. But does that mean you lose all connections with your children? Nonsense.
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So true. I don’t understand this concept of victimhood that gets portrayed here so often with the conspiracy theories and all that. Your post is an excellent articulation of why we should not think that way. Thank you for taking the time to post it. I enjoyed reading it.
 
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The current problem in the US is little kids being exposed to information that they are not able to handle either emotionally or on a psychological/biological level. They have yet to experience puberty. If a parent complains, they are told “it’s not a parental notification issue.” Taking away the right of parents to educate their children about things related to human sexuality is wrong.
 
Why is questioning authority a bad thing? For goodness sake, the American Revolution was one very large rejection of authority by thirteen British colonies who no longer wanted to accept that they had to pay taxes levied by Parliament, or follow any other British law simply because King and Parliament were an authority.
 
Questioning authority is different than rebelling against any and all authority, which is what happened in the late 60s and into the 70s.
Any type of “establishment” was considered crooked or “unpeaceful” whether it be Church, police, parents, teachers, managers, businesses. The movement was all about freedom to do whatever they wanted whether right or wrong. There wasn’t a right or wrong except peace and love.

They believed all you had to have was love, peace and harmony and everyone would be happy and no one would be in charge of another.

The American revolution was about a wrong that was seen and know that Britain was doing and plus a new government or establishment was created in America, people still recognized the need for a government authority. This is completely different than the hippie movement, which wanted no authority.
 
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niceatheist said:
Why is questioning authority a bad thing? For goodness sake, the American Revolution was one very large rejection of authority by thirteen British colonies who no longer wanted to accept that they had to pay taxes levied by Parliament, or follow any other British law simply because King and Parliament were an authority.
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There are two kinds of authority, rational and irrational.

Irrational authority seeks to maintain its position of power over its subject. Criticism of the authority is often forbidden. Power and fear are the motive forces at play. Such was the relationship between King and colonists.

Rational authority between the authority and subject differ only with respect to the degree of knowledge in a particular field. Rational authority seeks to achieve equality in time. Such is the relationship between parent and child, teacher and student, Church and members. Love is the motive force.

Moral rules, imprinted upon us by nurture or culture, provide a frame of orientation by which we experience and judge. We could not be human without some frame of orientation. Without this framework, our faculties cannot give meaning to our perceptions. Humans, free agents, must choose a framework. We often, as I did, take on the framework of our parents until we are able to argue with it. Our predecessors, therefore, are the source of our initial framework. In the course of a lifetime, however, we must affirm or alter our inheritance.

My parents and other teachers transmitted and entrusted to me the framework of our two thousand-year old Catholic heritage. The “entrust” component implies, I think, a covenant I have with my ancestry. The covenant requires me, in the course of my lifetime, to internalize the teaching, make it my own, but altering it only if I must. If I alter the teaching that I pass on to my posterity, I believe the covenant requires that the truth of my alterations be to me beyond a shadow of doubt.

As authentic humans, we must question authority otherwise we abandon our integrity. But we must do so responsibly.
 
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So in other words, you approve of the American Revolutionaries’ point of view, but disapprove of the 1960s Counterculture’s point of view. They were both revolutions, within the scope of what they were rebelling against, it’s just that one group, in your view, had just cause, and the other did not.

It’s not as if the society the Counterculture was railing against was perfect. It may not have been as egregious as King George III’s government’s actions, but American society had its share of injustices, and I don’t think it was a crime to point them out. That the Counterculture was hopelessly naive can’t really be debated, but while some here seem to think everything it was about was wrong, I think they had some pretty darned good points, amidst a lot of silly views. But then again, I think the same of the American Revolutionaries, who ultimately didn’t like that the British Crown wanted its colonies to pay at least some of the cost of their defense during the French and Indian Wars, were pretty wrongheaded as well.

The American Revolutionaries were right in demanding that they have some say in laws that were passed, but they were wrong in thinking that they didn’t have to pay some of the burden of their defense by the British army and navy.
 
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What happens if some group disagrees with this two thousand year old authority? After all, the Protestant Reformation was a rebellion against that authority on theological grounds, and the Enlightenment was a rebellion against it on philosophical grounds, and like it or not, both Luther and the Locke had some rather good points about the faulty nature of that authority, and more keenly about how that authority was being misused to the detriment of society. I can’t say I approve of all of their solutions (though I find little in Locke’s thinking I can disagree with).

Just because you think that authority is absolute and unquestionable doesn’t bind others to the same point of view.
 
So here you are putting words in my mouth that I did not say. Yes there were issues about the American revolution, good and bad and there were some protests in the 60s that were needed and right but generally speaking in the 60s most any and all authority was thought corrupt just because of its position of authority.
 
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Responsibility. Transmitting truth to the next generation is very important. Thank you.
 
niceatheist said:
After all, the Protestant Reformation was a rebellion against that authority on theological grounds
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Not to get away from the topic at hand but check out the movie Luter on vimeo. There isn’t a reformation if nothing is reformed and the protestant revolt was more of an attack than any kind of reformation or protest or even rebellion.
 
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And this is what some people don’t understand and don’t want to accept. From the period:

“Freedom!” Usually false freedoms or another way of saying: “I want what I want regardless of what went on in the past.” Some wanted a clean, clear break from the past. As if their Hippie thinking could create a new version of reality. What they had was a repackaged version of Beat (Beatnik) living. Loose women, booze and some drugs.

“Don’t trust anyone over 30!” A very broad brush statement where everyone was bad. Really?

“Off the pigs!” Kill the police. Why? Because they could lock you up for having dope. That was a “bad” thing.

“We’ll burn this country down if we have to!” The missing part: “unless we get our way first.”
 
This is it exactly. It wasn’t about questioning a decision someone in authority made but just a hatred for any authority.
 
niceatheist said:
What happens if some group disagrees with this two thousand year old authority? …

Just because you think that authority is absolute and unquestionable doesn’t bind others to the same point of view.
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Re-read my post. I wrote the opposite to what you argue against above. I did not write that any authority is absolute or unquestionable. To the contrary, I wrote that authentic humans must question received wisdom, internalize it and make it their own. ?

The Church teaches exactly that:
CCC#1776 Deep within his conscience man discovers a law which he has not laid upon himself but which he must obey.
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If Luther and Locke responsibly informed their consciences then they must follow their own lights.
 
o_mlly said:
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niceatheist:
What happens if some group disagrees with this two thousand year old authority? …

Just because you think that authority is absolute and unquestionable doesn’t bind others to the same point of view.
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Re-read my post. I wrote the opposite to what you argue against above. I did not write that any authority is absolute or unquestionable. To the contrary, I wrote that authentic humans must question received wisdom, internalize it and make it their own. ?

The Church teaches exactly that:
CCC#1776 Deep within his conscience man discovers a law which he has not laid upon himself but which he must obey.
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If Luther and Locke responsibly informed their consciences then they must follow their own lights.
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I have no idea what an “authentic human” would look like. Luther pretty firmly believed that Rome was in the wrong, both in its acquisition and use of temporal powers and its theology. He was hardly the first to say that, and in fact I’d regard Luther is just Augustine 2.0.

Locke was trying to formulate an ideal society where religious differences could exist side by side, by pulling the state right out of the religion business entirely. He was the most significant influence on the US Founding Fathers. But for that to work, it means rulers can’t just fall back on “God says so”, but have to have rational justifications for any law. It also means that differences of opinion, even deep-seated differences have to be tolerated, and considering we are all humans, we are all going to have some pretty significant views on certain matters.
 
On Catholic Answers, no such roadblock exists. And I was paraphrasing a Church official. That was not my comment in that regard.
 
niceatheist said:
Luther pretty firmly believed that Rome was in the wrong, both in its acquisition and use of temporal powers and its theology.
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Just because he believed certain things did not make them true. It is not always right to act on our beliefs. Luther brought about a lot of chaos.
 
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