The new acceptance of sodomy

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Believe it or not it was even more acceptable in the early Church among gentiles. Remember ancient Rome had no issue at all with homosexual behavior.
 
Just long enough to do justice to the subject matter, primarily covering the events of the last half of the 20th century with particular attention to contraception and sexual morality, and the dissent over Humanae Vitae.
 
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Awesome.What else shall we uncover was ‘nonsense’ ? A lot of traditional Christianity and Catholicism seem ‘restrictive’ . I guess we should redefine it.
 
From the article:

“ The first huge question is this : How did priests who took a promise of chaste celibacy come to think that it was now morally acceptable for them to engage in sodomy with consenting adults and even with minors — whether under the legal age of consent or psychological minors, such as seminarians under their influence? I am assuming that they did not engage in these behaviors thinking, I know this is a mortal sin but I am going to do it anyway. So my assumption is that somehow they rationalized their thinking so that they could call it acceptable. Another way of phrasing this question is this: how did they come to think they could accept the revised cultural practices as morally normative? My assumption here is that they were very much influenced by changes both in Western culture and also within the Church.”

The writer tracks those changes.
 
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JSAD said:
Awesome.What else shall we uncover was ‘nonsense’ ? A lot of traditional Christianity and Catholicism seem ‘restrictive’ . I guess we should redefine it.
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Who is ‘we’? Can’t be specifically Catholics. You’re not allowed. You must mean society in general. In which case I can give you hand bolting the stable door if you like. We can look for the horse later.
 
I’ve had various non-religious people realize that sexual morality wasn’t exactly “nonsense” when they got burned really bad by a breakup, a divorce, a bad STD, or just realizing that sex as they were having it was empty and boring.

One such person who is not Joe Churchgoer said to me a few weeks back, “Ever think life was a lot better before all this sexual freedom came in?” His parents divorced and his own wife walked out on him.
 
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Yes, sodomy is becoming accepted and this is influencing priests in their thinking. It is wrong whether heterosexual or homosexual, whether married or unmarried, whether or not you intend to commit onanism (by spilling the seed) in addition to the sodomy, in all cases it is an intrinsically evil act that Cries Out To Heaven For Vengence.

It is also, in general, grave depravity.
 
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Wozza said:
Nobody is suggesting that if alcohol is freely available then you should drink.yourself into a stupor. Nobody is suggesting that is Mary Jane becomes legal you should become a stoner. Nobody is suggesting that if having sex with someone when you are not married is ok then it’s is an open invitation to have sex with anyone who has a pulse.
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Nobody is perhaps a larger fraction of the respondents than is fair.
Wozza said:
Don’t restrict your children from what they can do. Just teach them responsibility so that whatever they do is done responsibly.
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There are certain behaviors for which there is no responsible level. What’s the “responsible level” of cheating on your spouse? That list could go on and on…

More to the point, there are many things that can be done responsibly by an adult that no minors ought to be doing at all, ever.
 
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Yes, I wonder about this too.

Obviously, even secular society hates sodomistic abuse, by using the wicked principle of “consent.” If priests had chosen not to abuse children, but instead had done it consensually with adults, through fornication, sodomy, and masturbation, then only conservatives would be outraged by their behavior. Secular society would not be outraged. If priest abusers did not care about the morals of the Catholic Faith, or about their salvation and the Catholic Church’s reputation, then why on earth would a priest also attracted to adults choose to do a sin that is thought of as a crime by society? Do you think:
  1. Society is caring more about children now than it did in the 1950-1980s (a ‘me too’ movement type of a thing).
  2. Priest abusers thought they could get away with it because of their status?
  3. Priest abusers are not attracted to adults, but rather to children or to “abusive sex regardless of the person.”
  4. The rate appears so high because few priests are chaste. It’s just the non-chaste sins that are being uncovered because secular society also hates these non-consensual sins.
  5. More non-chaste men were admitted into the priesthood between 1950-1980. The abuse is related to homosexuality only due to it being correlated with not living chastity (which explains why a large chunk of the victims are males past puberty but not yet 18). If (big if) homosexuality is correlated with abuse as Fr. Sullins thinks, then homosexual men are more likely to be abusers just because they are more likely to not be chaste in the first place. This is because heterosexuals become priests by throwing off their carnal desires when they could have gotten married. Heterosexuals in crass economic terms, pay a higher “price” to be a priest. Therefore, straight priests are more likely to be further along on their journey of chastity than a homosexual is. The homosexual just became a priests because he had “no other options.”
This is all speculation. I question number one somewhat because I think child abuse was still despised in the 1980s, it is just ‘really despised’ now. I question number two because why would priest abusers not also think they could “get away with it” by just doing the immoral acts with adults? And this would eliminate the risk of getting caught and disliked by the Church and society. If number three is correct, then why blame homosexuals that are only attracted to adults and were also living chastity before seminary?

If number four is correct, and given that surveys show large number of priests are homosexual, can you imagine the rate of sodomy that just went under the radar because society only cared about child abuse (so the Church pays no cost to cover up adult sodomy)?

If activists are right that the Church wasn’t tough enough on child rape, then they would be even less tough on “consensual” sodomy! So if one in fifty priests is a pedophile/ child abuser, what on earth is the rate of adult sodomy in the Catholic Church?
 
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Tis_Bearself said:
One such person who is not Joe Churchgoer said to me a few weeks back, “Ever think life was a lot better before all this sexual freedom came in?” His parents divorced and his own wife walked out on him.
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I can see why he’d come to that conclusion… he’s not wrong. I believe the further we go as a sexually “free” society, the more we’ll realize we’re slaves to our own passions more than anything else, and not the infallible gods we’ve propped ourselves up to be over the last 50+ years (particularly in America).

I just can’t be convinced that legal fornication, adultery, pornography, etc. is good. Why would any Christian welcome sin with open arms?
 
My theory is that priest hear a lot in confessionals and some get to thinking I might as well. Not all priest. The good ones dedicate themselves to holiness.
We have to be careful because our sins may be just as bad because we know better.
 
alphonsus1 said:
If priests had chosen not to abuse children, but instead had done it consensually with adults, through fornication, sodomy, and masturbation, then only conservatives would be outraged by their behavior.
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I’m not sure that your comments and questions are directed toward the content of the linked article, or simply to child sexual abuse generally. The question that Mr. Kippley explores is the question of why a priest formally trained in Catholic moral theology, would go so far off the rails as to think that sodomy is acceptable behavior whether with adults or minors. He traces it to cultural changes both in the general culture and in the Church. He notes that in the vatican studies on artificial contraception, it was noted that if contraception is approved for married couples, the marital act is essentially dissolved of meaning, and not only is contraception thereby allowed, but other sexual practices as well, including sodomy. The fact that there was dissent from Humanae Vitae meant that those possibilities came to pass. That made sexual abuse more likely.

You also mentioned Fr. Sullins. He was not mentioned in the linked HPR article, but he was a recent, and interesting, guest on an episode of Patrick Coffin’s podcast / videocast. He has done quite a detailed study of the John Jay reports.

As to the quote above, I don’t quite agree. I think that Catholics would expect chastity of their priests in any case.
 
I meant: church-goers would not be outraged by consensual actions to the same degree that they are outraged by child abuse (at least that’s true today, idk about in 1970). Sorry, the article was so long haha that I didn’t read it. Thanks for the summary. Two points though.

Why would someone who is also sexually attracted to adults choose to abuse kids (given secular society thinks child abuse is a crime, but has no problem when there is ‘consent’)? Because you have to have sexual desires that are way out of the norm to even be physically capable of abusing a child.

Do you think child abusers rationalized it to themselves as moral? Or do you think they just had sexual desires and urges way different than what is typical, which led them to choose children?

I was a kid in the 1990s, so all I have as a reference point is our culture today. At least today, society thinks consensual sodomy is perfectly moral. But I know that sodomy was frowned upon to a greater degree between 1980-2000.

So here is my last question: was child abuse hated way more than “consensual sodomy” in 1980? Or has this gap of disliking non-consensual sodomy more than consensual sodomy only came about from a massive societal shift in values in the last 20 years?
 
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