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garn9173
Guest
leave it to the morality police of the CAF to hit this thread hard and heavy. That is all 
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billcu1
Guest
What’s relativism?
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edwest2
Guest
It is a failed framework on which to build communities, and to live our lives.
“The doctrine that knowledge, truth, and morality exist in relation to culture, society, or historical context, and are not absolute.”
Peace,
Ed
“The doctrine that knowledge, truth, and morality exist in relation to culture, society, or historical context, and are not absolute.”
Peace,
Ed
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thewanderer
Guest
I think he was moreso asking how is his post reletevistic.
Honestly, all he said was that different people are aroused by different things, some are more easily aroused by others. Thats just a plain fact, it is hardly the philosophy of reletavism.
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Portrait
Guest
Dear billcu1,
Cordial greetings and a very good day.
Relativism, dear friend, is the erroneous view that all truths are subjective and that one man’s notion of truth will not necessarily be held by another man who is the product of a different belief system. This eventually leads one down a path to an ultimate quagmire of competing opinions where everybody is right and nobody is wrong. It is, moreover, essentially a denial of any absolutes, especially as regards morality, and has become increasingly popular in Western society since the permissive revolution of the Sixties. However, it is a dangerous deceit which allows sinful men to live in a state of denial respecting that which is manifestly and objectively wrong. All that matters is one’s own desires and happiness for, after all, nothing can be said to be certain.
Moroever, dear friend, relativism says the notion that ideas of good and bad, just and unjust, desireable and undesirable differ from place to place and from people to people, and thus moral judgments should be withheld. A moral absolutist, such as a Catholic, would declare idolatry and incest abhorent no matter where they were encountered, because the prohibitions against them were fixed by the all-powerful, one God. A moral relativist, however, would have to tolerate them as expressions of legitimate cultural difference.
In April 2005, the former Pope, Benedict XVI, delivered a homily before the College of Cardinals in which he contrasted a steadfast faith in Christ and Church with the pernicious pluralism of the day:
“Having a clear faith, based on the Creed of the Church, is often labeled today as fundamentalism. Whereas, relativism, which is letting oneself be tossed and “swept along by every wind of teaching”, looks like the only attitude (acceptable) to today’s standards. We are moving towards a dictatorship of relativism which does not recognize anything as for certain and which has as its highest goal one’s own ego and one’s own desires”.
The cultural revolution of the Sixties, with its anti-Christian moral relativism, took a perverse delight in discarding accepted norms of behaviour (and dress) and we today, dear friend, are living with the legacy of that decade of decadence. This is why people have become desensitized to nudity and why immodest attire no longer offends many of our pagan neighbours or, alas, even some putative Catholics. Former generations of the faithful, who’s consciences were properly formed, would have known instinctively that unseemly garments did not sit comfortably with the holy religion of Christ. However, the relativistic times in which our lot is cast has made even Catholics uncertain and confused as to what modest attire is or whether nudity is morally permissible.
We have, dear friend, come to the point where immorality is no longer seen as a vice and where chastity is no longer seen as a virtue. Pleasure is the only standard of conduct and so every man does that which is right in his own eyes. All this is reflected in the way that people dress, especially women, and where there is widespread moral degeneracy you will always find men and women revealing more of their bodies so as to appear sexually provocative to one another. Is it any wonder that nudity and lust are now a common feature of our sex saturated and morally bankrupt Western culture?
God bless.
Warmest good wishes,
Portrait
Pax
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edwest2
Guest
Dear Portrait,
As I watched, starting in 1968, there was a gradual series of changes initiated by small groups inside and outside the Church. Deception and outright lies led us to this point. Some we have only recently learned about, others, we had hoped to contain at the time.
Imagine living in 1968. We respected families, we married as we should, we had children. We had a society and media with shared values. Of those who sought to do us harm, we viewed them as minor and odd variations. Our government respected our values and our media did the same. Our society worked. It was functional, polite, decent and civilized.
The changes were made slowly, and we protested. So imagine a society that was functional, where people worked on their relationships with God, their families, their neighbors and even strangers. We respected authority. There was shared trust. There was true, sacrificial love and joy.
But no, at every turn, these small groups demanded “freedom,” including creative people in the media. We were poisoned gradually. The 1970s weren’t too bad, but by the mid-1980s, it was a mix of new and old, and it was clear that the tide was turning in the wrong direction.
Starting in 1973 with legalized abortion, then lawyers turning marriage and divorce into nothing more than a piece paper in the 1980s. And the media, which just kept turning up the volume on more skin and more sin.
By the 1990s. I couldn’t listen to the music on the radio anymore.
And each time things changed for the worse, I felt pain and confusion. Why? Why did some radicals want to destroy the good? Why were the people who once turned the spotlight on the good now turning their spotlight on the bad?
Too many exchanged the truth for a series of lies all wrapped up in the fake freedom that just got worse and worse. Personal pleasure: sex, dope and material possessions became the goal. But we were told that the necessary sacrifices we are called to make, willingly, for God, our families, our friends, our communities, no longer had to be made.
We didn’t have to do anything hard. We were to become beings devoid of any true devotion to anyone except to ourselves.
But have hope. Pope Benedict has clearly described all this, and I firmly believe Pope Francis will continue the new evangelization that will renew our minds and lead us away from the wide road to destruction.
There is still a generation that remembers the way it was and it was clearly better. Now, today, the truth, which is unchanging, will be reaffirmed, and the number of bodies of those killed in the womb will diminish, and a renewal of faith will reform our culture as it has in the past. And there are signs of a sincere, young, truth-seeking generation and more young men entering seminaries that point to a renewal in our midst.
Pope Benedict called us to “radical obedience.” This will bring the good fruit back to our communities, even in the midst of the corruption we see. Each of us should know that the day of salvation is today. That the day of right living is today. That the destruction wrought over the last 40 years has not created happiness or true freedom but misery and bitter and deadly fruit. And slavery to our flesh. Have hope.
Thank you, dear brother, for your charitable words.
God bless,
Ed
As I watched, starting in 1968, there was a gradual series of changes initiated by small groups inside and outside the Church. Deception and outright lies led us to this point. Some we have only recently learned about, others, we had hoped to contain at the time.
Imagine living in 1968. We respected families, we married as we should, we had children. We had a society and media with shared values. Of those who sought to do us harm, we viewed them as minor and odd variations. Our government respected our values and our media did the same. Our society worked. It was functional, polite, decent and civilized.
The changes were made slowly, and we protested. So imagine a society that was functional, where people worked on their relationships with God, their families, their neighbors and even strangers. We respected authority. There was shared trust. There was true, sacrificial love and joy.
But no, at every turn, these small groups demanded “freedom,” including creative people in the media. We were poisoned gradually. The 1970s weren’t too bad, but by the mid-1980s, it was a mix of new and old, and it was clear that the tide was turning in the wrong direction.
Starting in 1973 with legalized abortion, then lawyers turning marriage and divorce into nothing more than a piece paper in the 1980s. And the media, which just kept turning up the volume on more skin and more sin.
By the 1990s. I couldn’t listen to the music on the radio anymore.
And each time things changed for the worse, I felt pain and confusion. Why? Why did some radicals want to destroy the good? Why were the people who once turned the spotlight on the good now turning their spotlight on the bad?
Too many exchanged the truth for a series of lies all wrapped up in the fake freedom that just got worse and worse. Personal pleasure: sex, dope and material possessions became the goal. But we were told that the necessary sacrifices we are called to make, willingly, for God, our families, our friends, our communities, no longer had to be made.
We didn’t have to do anything hard. We were to become beings devoid of any true devotion to anyone except to ourselves.
But have hope. Pope Benedict has clearly described all this, and I firmly believe Pope Francis will continue the new evangelization that will renew our minds and lead us away from the wide road to destruction.
There is still a generation that remembers the way it was and it was clearly better. Now, today, the truth, which is unchanging, will be reaffirmed, and the number of bodies of those killed in the womb will diminish, and a renewal of faith will reform our culture as it has in the past. And there are signs of a sincere, young, truth-seeking generation and more young men entering seminaries that point to a renewal in our midst.
Pope Benedict called us to “radical obedience.” This will bring the good fruit back to our communities, even in the midst of the corruption we see. Each of us should know that the day of salvation is today. That the day of right living is today. That the destruction wrought over the last 40 years has not created happiness or true freedom but misery and bitter and deadly fruit. And slavery to our flesh. Have hope.
Thank you, dear brother, for your charitable words.
God bless,
Ed
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Portrait
Guest
Dear Ed,
Cordial greetings and a very good day. Thankyou for your good words above.
Yes, dear brother, the rot really set in during the Seventies and sadly things have waxed increasingly worse since then. Owing to worldly conformity even professing Catholics have become much more tolerant and accepting of lewdness and profanity, especially in film and television. There is tendency nowadays to opt for a minimum level of self-denial and acesis, so as to be able to cling on to as many unwholesome worldly pleasures and pastimes as possible. Those who dare insist that the faithful should strive to live up to the arduous demands of their most holy religion are accused of overscrupulosity or of having a superior judgmental attitude. All of this, I submit, is sadly indicative of a refusal by many modern Catholics to face up to challenge of living a pure and holy life. Why, if you talk of sanctity and separation from the godless world and of abstaining from that which is distracting and demoralizing you will probably be branded a ‘Puritan’ or a joyless prigg. However, all the Catholic faithful are called to the pursuit of holiness and this will necessarily entail a renunciation of those things that are contrary to a profession of godliness. How, for example, can a man cultivate an intimate union with Christ if he is watching culturally unhealthy media with bawdy content, graphically dramatised violence and profanity? Does not St. Paul bid us to think on those things that are ‘pure’ and ‘lovely’ (cf. Phillip. 4: 8)? - in other words all that is noble and virtuous and which will enable our minds to soar upwards to Heaven and away from the corrupting influences of this world. How can we be lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God and still be devout and thoroughgoing Catholics?
What is so deeply saddening, dear brother, is that many contemporary Catholics are virtually indistiguishable from their pagan neighbours. True, they fulfill their Sunday obligation, give to some charitable causes etc. but there is an abscence of vital holiness and no separation from the world. They watch the same unwholesome films/TV; listen to the same debased sensory material (e.g. rock/pop music), read the same bawdy books and wear the same immodest attire. Now this sort of hand in hand with the world type of religion would have been inconceivable to a Catholic living in the 1950’s and even the 1960’s. Yes, standards have drastically declined and many Catholics content themselves with a Laodicean lukewarmness - a shameful half-heartedness that is limp and always wanting to compromise with the world. ‘Catholicism Lite’ aptly describes this tepid religous practice.
Therefore, dear brother, in light the above it is hardly surprising that many Catholics have fallen into the relativistic thinking of our times and are always desperately trying to make Christ’s religion less demanding and more attractive to the world. However, did not our dear Lord say: “strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it” and “Strive to enter in at the strait gate: for many, I say unto you, will seek to enter in, and shall not be able”? (S. Matt. 7: 14; S. Lk. 13:24).
God bless.
Warmest good wishes,
Portrait
Pax
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hsmomforlife
Guest
George Stegmeir;10472023 said:Ahhh, but leave a man with a picture of a scantily clad beauty from his Brazilian vacation on his computer and the ‘scandal’ of being PUBLICLY sexually aroused at the beach is removed…enter sin here…
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Portrait
Guest
Dear George Stegmeir,
Cordial greetings and a very good day.
Given man’s fallen estate, dear brother, situations which lend themselves to a want of control surely ought to be prevented. Moreover, given the reality of concupiscence or evil desire obscene publications present a very real danger, for they are unquestionably an inducement to sin. It is all very well to speak of ‘mature’ people being above ordinary temptations (cf. I Cor. 10: 12), but methinks that you are probably refering to those who are either presumptious or who have become desensitized to purience over a period of time, possibly both. In any event, nudity is a violation of modesty because it unveils “what should remain hidden” and fails to protect “the intimate centre of the person”. Incontrovertably, lewd material is a voyeuristic exploration of the human body that “goes to far in the exhibition of intimate things” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, paras. 251,252 and 2523).
Whilst, dear brother, our modern hypersexualised Western culture is given over to sins of impurity, impurity is by no means a modern inovation. Personally speaking, I do not think that the mural’s in the Sistine Chapel are appropriate, and I am given to understand that this has been the position of many of the Popes as well. The Renaissance certainly resulted in many good things, however, along with the Protestant revolt, it was also in many respects a revival of paganism and the beginning of the sexual revolution, which really took off proper in the late 1960’s.
It is quite true, dear friend, that fallen man must strive to keep his baser passions in check, but others also have a responsibility to not incite evil desire by any form of indecency, including obscene publications and ‘artistic’ nudity. Since man is a fallen being we must reckon with the universal presence of concupiscence and do all we can to minimise its unhappy effects, including the inducement to sin. Woe unto those who are the occasion of temptation in others.
God bless.
Warmest good wishes,
Portrait
Pax
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twoshoes
Guest
I’m sorry if this seems mean spirited but you actual belief that if I have a conservative attitude on nake or scanly dressed women, posing provocativey that I’m to blame for another persons sinful thoughts, that is very convoluted, and actually you are not taking responsibility for your own sinful thoughts and desires.
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billcu1
Guest
Thanks for the replies but there seems to be something in us. Animal perhaps that is sexual attraction. The build of the wo/man does illect an excitement. If this is beauty or not I do not know that is what I’m trying to figure out. Beauty consists of wholeness, radiance and harmony. I believe it might entice the intellect. Sexual arousal and pictures that do this do not stir the intellect. Beauty you have to be trained to see. I want to be trained to see beauty wherever it is. The body has a beauty but I don’t believe it is sexual arousal that comes from the animal in us. For example no mammals other than human females keep their breasts if not using them. Only us. We are made that way. If you start following lust it leads down hill and to trouble I understand. You become like a dog and that degrads the god in us all. hope I’m clear here.
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