Thought_Officer:
We’re all intelligent adults here (I suppose); I really shouldn’t have to preface with a caveat on not boiling kittens alive or enslaving children. I’m sure you know that’s not what I’m referring to.
Suppose you knew 70 years ago that smoking would cause lung cancer. Or suppose you knew centuries ago that rodents would carry pathogens that would bring a plague and wipe out countless lives. You also knew that rodents lived in the straw roofing material that covered everyone’s home. Make up any danger to people, your friends, family, neighbors, kids. There is a threat that will destroy your society that does not even know microorganisms, the cause of disease, exist.
Everyone should stop smoking, get rid of their straw roofing and let the rain come in to avoid the evil. People did figure out that the rodents were the problem without knowing anything about bacteria and tore off their roofing in some areas.
But suppose someone raises an alarm that something people are doing is going to cause great harm to many. Everyone needs to stop this behavior or the consequences will be severe. You are that someone. Some people believe you and others do not. You are telling people that they have to change their personal behavior and they do not understand why.
Stop drinking cider stored in lead containers or you will be poisoned. If I do not believe you I will not listen and be poisoned. I only hurt myself, or if many people will not listen and many become poisoned everyone suffers.
The debate on fluoride in water for kids teeth is a similar issue. What right does anyone have to tell us everyone should drink it, to impose their will on everyone for some supposed good we all do not see?
There is an objective moral order as there are physical laws. We all live in the same reality and the physical and spiritual order applies to us all whether or not we know what they are or agree how they work.
I am old enough to remember when almost everyone smoked and the ongoing persistent arguments about whether or not smoking caused cancer, if the cause and effect connection was demonstrated. The lung cancer rte skyrocketed 20 or 25 years after cigarettes became popular. The effect was removed from the cause by time. It was not like putting your hand on a hot stove and screaming in pain that instant. That is how public morals work. Violating objective moral laws often do not have immediate consequences and the cause and effect are not immediately clear.
If we all knew a century ago the harm cigarettes would cause, the addiction and disease, we probably would have banned them. Some people back then would have been in favor of a ban as a public health issue. They had enough evidence or intuition to try to derail the train before so many would die.
What happens in the privacy of someone’s home, or many homes, can cause irrepairable harm to individuals and society as well. There is a reason there is an epidemic of divorce and kids are traumatized by it. There is a cause. No one gets married intending to go through the pain of failure, but they do things that cause the failure that they do not see or they would likely as not do them.
People do very deviant harmful things with sex in privacy and sometimes not. If we know what those are and the social harm they will cause there should be social restraints imposed on them. Every society that ever existed recognizes this.
The Catholic woman who posted here looking for advice is looking for advice from Catholics, from a Catholic perspective. It is interesting that someone who is not Catholic, rejects Catholic morals, would respond to try to influence the woman’s thinking, in other words, impose his views on morals and spiritual matters.
No, Lily was scolding her. Lets move on to helping her with what advice she needs to help her back to the faith.