Great post! Its sad that this thread title has a thumbs down icon beside it.
Then again how often in 42 years since 1968 have priest broached the encyclical Humanae Vitae from the Ambo to faithful Catholics? Or was it that to many Catholics through pride didn’t want to listen, and priests were afraid that their pews would be empty if they preached and enforced the encyclical on the faithful? And now today its no damned wonder morality has gone to hell in society. So who takes the blame? Regrettably if were all honest and humble about it we all do.
To answer your question. Some of my fellow Catholics at the time believed The Pill would be great. No more worrying about condoms, right? Condoms can fail, even today.
And Playboy needed the Playboy Philosophy and all those other articles, to be considered a ‘serious’ intellectual alternative to what us Catholics were doing: no sex before marriage and the primary purpose of marriage being kids. They also insisted we Catholics hated sex to the point that they called us sexually repressed. We weren’t. We were doing what all cultures had done for thousands of years: chose our spouse, got married, had kids, and yes, enjoyed ourselves in the process. Their accusations were false. Mr. Hefner was promoting hedonism, that’s it.
Today, they just print pictures of naked people. Back then, the radicals, dissidents and anarchists had to have a respectable front to hide behind. To make it appear they had serious, valid reasons for suggesting their alternative lifestyles. In the late 1960s, the fine artists I knew kept arguing that real stories required a little "tasteful’ nudity but
only for the sake of the story. I bought that baloney. I, and others, actually thought there was some high-falutin’ reason for all of those creative people to introduce more sexuality in their serious literature, film or other media.
By the time graphic porn appeared in the 1970s, there was no more need for serious articles. The masks had come off. How much great art and literature has been produced by the porn industry since then?
Acording to the latest issue of Our Sunday Visitor, Lust is the number one sin and porn the biggest problem facing Catholics and non-Catholics. The addiction to it has broken up marriages, other relationships and reduced job performance. The article concludes that some prefer porn to having a real relationship with another human being.
Humanae Vitae warned about increased promiscuity if people didn’t listen. The Hippie pagan evangelists showed up in our neighborhoods at just the right time to offer us ‘freedom’ from what we believed in, and we were too naive and too stupid to not listen to them. Our beliefs told us to welcome the stranger.
I think too many Catholics today, because they had accepted No-Fault Divorce, and had a legal abortion or two, are too fearful to return to the Church. A Catholic friend of mine told me this about annulments after her second marriage, “I’m not getting an annulment. If I do, my kids will be bastards.” You see?
Nothing changed from the pulpits. I kept going to Church. It was the outside, walking and talking bad examples, in the form of Hippies and Women’s Libbers, who said, “Try it, our way, you’ll like it better.” In the late 1960s and 1970s, we Catholics were still too trusting of experts and others because we believed them. Our sincere trust and compassion were taken advantage of. And yes, some of us chose to do the wrong thing, and suffered for it.
Peace,
Ed
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Now that I’m thinking about it, it does seem apt as it does sadly reflect the attitude of many Catholics toward contraception. **