Sexual ethics and society

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If you really cannot stand it, you may want to seek a call to religious, contemplative life, where you can love “worldly” people “from a distance” and pray for them.

Otherwise, if you do feel called to live in the world, pray that God grant you the charity for others that you can appreciate the good in them, and be a good example for them. You can disdain sin, but respect the sinner all the same. Cliche but true.

Yesterday was the memorial of St. Philip Neri, who was a master of this sort of thing. Ask for his intercession, I believe he’s helped me get along with difficult colleagues a lot over the years. You can also read up on the virtue of affability in the Summa SUMMA THEOLOGIAE: The friendliness which is called affability (Secunda Secundae Partis, Q. 114).
 
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With all due respect, the social atmosphere that young people are expected to tolerate in dorms is truly a cesspool. It’s very different from what St. Philip Neri saw in Italy in the 1500s, I think.
If you don’t accept that your roommate is going to want to “hook up” with someone in the room, you are seen as some kind of backward conservative freak.
@Tis_Bearself – what is the most recent decade that you lived in a dorm?
Warning – read the following at your own risk!!

www.theguardian.com

Sex on campus isn't what you think: what 101 student journals taught me

Students can opt out of hooking up, and many do. But my research makes clear that they can’t opt out of hookup culture
www.theguardian.com www.theguardian.com
 
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I lived in a Greek-letter fraternity about 15 years ago, and it was an immoral lifestyle. Still most of us did not actually partake in the worst of it (I thankfully avoided the orgies and drugs). But the way the old alumni talked about the early '70s I don’t think it was any better then. Has it become sheer Sodom and Gomorrah in the last 10 years?
 
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I lived in a dorm in the 80s, also in the late 90s, and in the 00’s, and I have friends who have lived in dorms more recently.
Many of the dorms built during those time periods are like mini apartments where each person has some privacy (although noise can still be an issue), rather than the old-school room with two beds in it.
The sexual behavior of college students hasn’t changed over that time.
Some of them are promiscuous party animals, and some of them aren’t.
Many college students don’t like to live in dorms for a wide variety of reasons, sexual behavior being only one.

I don’t think it helps for you to post all kind of scare articles on dorms and insinuate that someone is going to be an outcast if they don’t drink, party and have sex. Typically if everyone is doing those things then the person who doesn’t isn’t concerned with being socially accepted by them anyway. I lived in one dorm where drug use and lesbianism was rampant and since I did not do either thing, I wasn’t laying awake nights worrying that the lesbians and drug users wouldn’t accept me into their social circle. I socialized with my friends elsewhere and later moved out of that dorm and into another dorm where I roomed with a friend I’d made.

Anyway, a person can choose to get all hysterical about this stuff or they can choose to simply deal with situations in a practical way if and when they come up. Like I said, there are a lot of college students who choose not to live the party life and still have friends, relationships, and fun. Believe it or don’t. I’m signing off now because I think there’s plenty of good practical advice on this thread already.
 
Neithan said:
. But the way the old alumni talked about the early '70s I don’t think it was any better then. Has it become sheer Sodom and Gomorrah in the last 10 years?
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It was probably worse in the 70s and 80s. Over time the universities have become way more concerned with their potential liability and reputational damage for students getting raped, committing suicide, becoming victims of violence etc due to situations that occur in dorms. Hence, when a student has a problematic roommate or some other issue involving the dorm, they’re more likely to address it rather than just pooh-pooh it like they used to do.
 
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I believe that, and I don’t think it was much better in the 1500s either.
 
OP, if their sex talk is making you so uncomfortable that you cannot help but to feel disdain, than that means that you need to stop socializing witht them. Be polite, but do not interact with them any more than you have to. I am sure that there are other people in your program that do not engage in that kind of conversation either, they just keep to themselves and go unnoticed.

If you do not dissassociate with such people, you are going to find it increasingly difficult to study. Better to be a loner than to associate with folks that are a net negative on your life.
 
I’m a non-religious liberal type, who would be massively uncomfortable with people talking about their sex lives, so you don’t need to be “too conservative” to dislike it.

The best advice I got when I went to university was “don’t judge anyone until Christmas, at least, no matter how long you’ve known them for”. This is because generally when people go to new places, they may act differently because they’re trying to project an image they’re still creating. I’d assume that some of the people in your chat won’t have known any bisexual people before, or they might not have felt comfortable to identify with their sexuality before. So probably a lot of chat is being driven by knowing people like them. That obviously doesn’t help you too much, but people are still finding out who they are. As you get to know them better, and they get more comfortable, they’ll probably calm down.

Introduce topics of conversation yourself, that way you’re socialising and not talking about sex. And that’ll encourage other members of the group (who maybe also aren’t comfortable with the sex talk) to come forward and talk themselves. It can be as simple as “did anyone watch X? What did you think?”.

Remember that there’s nothing wrong with bisexuality, and it’s not wrong to socialise with people who are bisexual. Don’t think of them as “these people” - they’re just people, like you and me. Don’t hold them apart from yourself. Every time you have a negative feeling towards someone, change it to something positive about them. Also remember that talking on a group chat isn’t like chatting in real life. I expect when you meet them, you’ll be very surprised. When you do, get to know them over a coffee or bond over a shared activity. At the moment, you really don’t know each other very well at all. When you do, the conversation will pick up and be more interesting to you.
 
Uberdenker said:
Yes, feelings of contempt. Certainly disdain and not distain 😀 Although it could potentially distain my conscience.

I suppose I’m struggling to understand society’s mentality. I feel like I don’t belong. I’m aware what the Catechism says about the human person, but this is a struggle with my own morals and being a member of that society.
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I too have often had the feeling of not belonging.

One issue that becomes a struggle in social contact is being complicit in sin. It is important to not praise or approve sin.

Catechism
1868 Sin is a personal act. Moreover, we have a responsibility for the sins committed by others when we cooperate in them:
- by participating directly and voluntarily in them;
- by ordering, advising, praising, or approving them;
- by not disclosing or not hindering them when we have an obligation to do so;
- by protecting evil-doers.
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Yes, man. They were also having a lot more casual murder in front of each other than we do today. The world is and always has been a very sinful place. If there is something really new today it’s the isolation and pandemic of instant-access pornography.
 
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Thank God for each person, by name, once each day. Pray that they be blessed.
 
Neithan said:
Yes, man. They were also having a lot more casual murder in front of each other than we do today. The world is and always has been a very sinful place. If there is something really new today it’s the isolation and pandemic of instant-access pornography.
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Well, I suppose duelling was commonly accepted, but I refuse to believe that well-brought-up young people were openly having casual sex in a voyeuristic way in 1500s Italy. Maybe I’m wrong – do you have sources? And that this would have been considered normal behavior?
 
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Some of them undoubtedly were. You can dig through the research; there are some great books on Renaissance Italy out there. Try the Cohens’ Daily Life in Renaissance Italy for a general overview or try Alexander Lee’s The Ugly Renaissance for an idea of real life as opposed to the noble ideals.
 
Uberdenker said:
This presents two problems for me:
  1. I’m dealing with intense distain for my fellow human beings, which is a challenge in itself of my Christianity; and
  2. These are people with whom I’m going to be “socialising” and studying. If I don’t socialise with them, then I’m being intolerable. If I do socialise then I’m a traitor to my own code of ethics and a hypocrite.
What am I supposed to do? Is society becoming increasingly immoral, or am I just too conservative?
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You are having difficulty solving your problem because you are looking in the wrong place. You are focusing your attention on your friends, when the root of your problem is inside.

It is almost always true that the things we hate most in other people are the things we hate the most in ourselves. We project our (often-subconscious) self-hatred onto other people.

If you are experiencing feelings of disdain for these individuals, it is likely because you have the same elements in your psyche that cause them to behave in the way you dislike, and your disdain and repression of those elements in yourself is manifesting as disdain for your fellow man.

You even acknowledged this yourself, even if you didn’t realize it. You said:
Uberdenker said:
I might as well join them if nobody’s going to judge me.
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If you were truly free of the sins you disdain them for, such a thought would not even occur to you, because that lifestyle would have no temptation or appeal at all. The fact that it presents a temptation means that sin is present in your mind, even if you are not aware of it, and do not (physically or consciously) indulge in it.

It is good that you are, for practical purposes, forced to interact with these people, because otherwise you may have remained blissfully unaware of the presence of this sin within your mind. Attempting to avoid them is simply running away from your problem.

It is also good that you were able to recognize that something was disordered about your disdain for them, and that something must be done to remedy that affliction. Many people would simply feel that disdain without questioning or examining it.

Now, to address the disdain, you must eliminate it at its source, which is in you. Do not waste any more time or energy focusing your attention on those people towards whom you feel the disdain. They are merely a distraction from the true source of your problems.

Come to a conscious understanding of the sin as it exists in you. Eliminate even the temptation for that sin from your own mind. Recognize that if you have that sin inside you (which you do), then you should be merciful to those who also have it inside of them, for as the Lord tells us, “Judge not, lest ye be judged” and “The measure that you measure with shall be measured unto you” (Matthew 7:1-2).

When you eliminate these causes of the disdain, the disdain will go away. But as long as the causes remain, the effect will continue to manifest in your life, whether it be with these people or others you may encounter along the way.
 
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I don’t see how you can say some of that regarding someone you don’t know (presumably; the OP).
 
Buks said:
I don’t see how you can say some of that regarding someone you don’t know (presumably; the OP).
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I do not need to know the OP in order to apply universal principles to a very standard problem.

St. Paul tells us:
You are without excuse, every one of you who passes judgment. For by the standard by which you judge another you condemn yourself, since you, the judge, do the very same things. – Romans 2:1
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If you are condemning someone, it is because you have the thing for which you condemn them in your own heart. You may not be aware of it. It may manifest in a form that you do not understand, and which you are unable to recognize as being equivalent to the thing for which you are condemning others, but it is there whether you realize it or not.
 
The difference is that in St. Paul’s time, sexual immorality and promiscuity were not promoted as normal behavior. In this case, these kids think it is, and the OP has to work his way around their talking about their promiscuity in a group chat situation, and potentially study / live with these folks.
 
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27lw said:
The difference is that in St. Paul’s time, sexual immorality and promiscuity were not promoted as normal behavior.
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After studying Renaissance Italy you may want to study ancient Rome and Greece. As weird as things have become, we still shun what they “normally” did and promoted back then, and let’s pray the culture never gets as bad as it was.
 
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If you are talking to them for academic reasons, then keep the conversation academic. If the subject becomes unwholesome, the withdraw from the conversations. Also, being bisexual does not require promiscuity, nor does it require telling anyone who doesn’t run away about your sexual desires, experiences, etc, especially in an academic setting. You are not being “intolerant” by not wanting to discuss other people’s “sexcapades”.
 
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