How much sex can get crammed into society? Will the sexual revolution last indefinitely, or is there optimism that it will give way to some other vice or perhaps even virtue. I personally believe that spiritual rewards are going to tame the sexual revolution, and provide much more pleasure than the lowly and primitive orgasm.
I was there at the start and aside from orgasms. illegal drugs, and temporary or meaningless relationships, there was the beginning of “radical individualism.” Or “I’ll do what I want and nobody can tell me what to do.” Throw in abortion and No-Fault Divorce, and what is the result?
Men and women who are now in their late 50’s and early 60’s can look back and see what was called Freedom with a capital F meant for them. Today, we have people of all ages looking around at the world and they are hungry for something better. Atheists, former employees of abortion clinics, Anglicans - all seeking a life, and a belief system, that is better than what we have now. They are finding the truth in the Catholic Church. The same truth that was ignored for 40 years because other people told them they had something better. Something they kept calling freedom or liberation. They know, deep in their hearts, that they were lied to.
So, all the marijuana, all the hash, all the sex, booze and multiple divorces got them where?
In the 1950s and 1960s, our Federal government’s biggest concern was the Communists, meaning the former Soviet Union. They had nuclear missiles and we had nuclear missiles. No one else did at the time. But our government made it a point to tell us on a regular basis that we were in a struggle with “Godless Communism.” Religion was referred to as “the opiate of the masses,” meaning that it was just a bunch of rituals and fairy tales that made us feel good. It wasn’t real. So, starting in the late 1960s and with the opening of the first Adult Bookstore, porn became the new opiate of the masses, along with illegal drugs. That was going to replace religion in our lives and make us feel good.
That was all temporary, and the end result was a life that was good for no one, or society in general. They tried this, done that, bought the T-shirt and they wasted their time.
There will be a return to real caring and commitment, to what love really means. And to what it means to be a member of a society that works. Where we are and have real neighbors, not a community of strangers. Pope Benedict has given us the real answers regarding where we should be heading by telling us how our current society is not working and what needs to change.
"The Holy Father says:
Code:
"If we cannot have common values, common truths, sufficient communication on the essentials of human life–how to live, how to respond to the great challenges of human life–then true society becomes impossible."
Source: Practical Catholic, which explains further:
"How true this is. Where there is no communication, no culture, no shared experience, there is no society; because there is no people. There remains only a vast and foreboding, unforgiving sea of individuals ready to crash upon each other and the world with the slightest wind. Without a common basis, we have not the vaulted pluralism we’re taught to embrace, but Babel, in all the confusion and madness of a society with no binding forces. Already we are seeing the tensions of this fragmentation breaking out across cultures.
“Without common values and truths, such as in the societies we find ourselves in, we find the fabric of society torn like Joseph’s cloak, by a great many tribes which would like to lay claim to the title of favored. Leftists, conservatives, anarchists, nihilists, secularists, objectivists, the shallow, the entertainers, the entertained, all vying for control against each other. Tribalism can indeed spawn differentiation, but without some common ground, and in the face of increasing jargon not only in the academies but in the cultures; we shall be left with madness. In the end this tribalism can only result in the decline of all their claims, and the alienation of one from the other. Babel is the happenstance when society tries to become God.”
Change is happening right now. We are today’s counterculture, regardless of age. We are and will continue to see good fruit when God is seen as God, the truth-giver, and His Church on earth, guided by the Holy Spirit, helping to guide us as we move into the future.
Sex will be replaced with real love and real commitment.
Peace,
Ed