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Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Jul 10, 2012 11:57:39 GMT
I've just read the last two posts in this thread and if the one about chastity education were not enough, the one about Evolian thought certainly gives the feeling I imagined if one went down a steep hill on a bike and rode into a pole.
We know Julius Evola was some type of neo-pagan with affection for eastern religions. This was common among fascists and nazis and their successor. But the frightening thing about reading this gnostic message is the knowledge of the impact it has on many traditional Catholics, not all connected with the SSPX. It sees Eve, as temptress rather than as tempted, as the prototype of all women - who appear to be subhuman. The subhuman theme comes through the chastity education - that women are objectified. The chastity of men seems irrelevant - women are either virgins or, if you excuse me, sluts. No middle ground. That sort of reasoning would put anyone off chastity. Need to return to the drawing board on both counts.
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Post by hibernicus on Jul 10, 2012 16:22:05 GMT
There is a grain of truth in the feminist view of how Catholic/Christian teaching on sexuality can be used to despise and degrade women. That doesn't mean we should reject the teaching but we should be aware that Satan can disguise himself as an angel of light- the way in which Bishop Williamson attracts a cult of admirers who see him as a fearless and persecuted Catholic truth-teller is a case in point.
Incidentally, Evolist misogyny I think derives from Hinduism. I remember recently seeing some feminist blogger criticising the fantasy series GAME OF THRONES (set in an imaginary mediaeval society bearing vague resemblances to Western Europe) on the grounds that it described a society which was polytheistic - worshipping both gods and goddesses - but nonetheless highly misogynistic; she claimed that Abrahamic monotheism was exclusively responsible for misogyny. Anyone who thinks the Abrahamic religions (which share, for example, the belief that women have souls) are uniquely misogynous has been reading too many womynist fantasy novels and not enough about the position of women in Hinduism or in other historic polytheist civilisations.
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tobias
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Post by tobias on Jul 18, 2012 22:18:30 GMT
I have (tried) to plough through the very learned discussion above and in other areas of this forum. I would regard myself as a very ordinary person trying to figure out my church as I see it today. I am 42 years married with 7 children all reared and in relationships,some married,some not but all good people doing their best. I have felt for some years that the Church should not get involved in pronouncing on sex or contraception or homosexuality as it is none of their business. Sex has brought about our existence and hopefully it will continue to do so! Equally the obsession with women-how they dress, the roles they play etc, is all wasted effort and does no credit to the Church's real purpose, which is to spread the word of Jesus, who, as far as I can see was far more concerned with highlighting hypocrisy, arrogance and obsession with man-made laws to the neglect of compassion, forgiveness and community and gathered many women about him during his ministry (and I dont think He made any reference to how they dressed either) So perhaps instead of trying to decide how many angels can fit on the head of a pin perhaps the Church should focus on how it can deal with the morality of white collar crime and the associated greed, the massive increase in stabbings and disregard for human life among other things. I realize I have probably gone a little off beam here in relation to the aforementioned heady discussions but I feel this had to be said somewhere on this forum .
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Post by Askel McThurkill on Jul 19, 2012 10:05:38 GMT
I am 90% with Tobias. I disagree with him on sex/contraception/homosexuality. These are all linked to the sacrament of matrimony, which isn't just about sex, it's about justice. I would say that maybe the Church hasn't communicated its message on marriage and its consequences very well, especially not in its fora - school catechism and the pulpit at Mass. The Catholic understanding about marriage isn't just about 'Thou Shalt Nots'.
However, I agree with all the other points - I think in the past some of the Church'es teaching on some of the other commandments relating to crime, whether violence or theft, has been obscured behind a perception that it's all about sex. We should remember some violent crime and some larceny are related to acts of infidelity/unchastity. Other issues - dress, roles are a waste of time.
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Post by hibernicus on Jul 20, 2012 21:16:10 GMT
I would not say I am 90% with Tobias. He does have a point (Christian morality is NOT all about sex) and I have the greatest respect for someone who has raised seven children, but what he is saying is that sex does not raise any moral issues at all, and is not a suitable subject for moral discourse. Nobody can maintain that position seriously, given that the subject involves issues of mutual justice (e.g. is it OK to seduce someone, pretend you want to commit to them and just abandon them? To abandon your children for the sake of another partner?Has it never occurred to Tobias, for example that sexual jealousy combined with fluid sexual mores plays some role in the increased casual violence which he mentions? ) Does he really think that because "sex has brought about our existence" it raises no moral questions (eating, for example, is a natural process necessary for existence but it certainly involves moral questions) or that Christian orthodoxy is that sex in itself is immoral or should not exist?
What Tobias's position amounts to is that we should accept the prevalent morality of the Sexual Revolution as "natural" and not bother discussing its implications, its likely consequences etc as these are irrelevant and harmless. This is short-sighted, to put it mildly.
I would also like to point out that this thread was not started to discuss the Church's sexual teachings in general, but precisely to criticise a certain type of ultra-rigorist who uses a distorted version of that teaching to demonise and subjugate women, to present outrageously puritanical dress codes and other examples of puritanism as God's will and therefore beyond question. Tobias is lumping in every application of the Sixth Commandment ("man-made law"?) with this sort of cruel and demented power-fixation and condemning it all out of hand in the name of Jesus, compassion, forgiveness and community, with the implication that anyone who disagrees with him is a pompous intellectual, a hypocrite and a Pharisee. That's a counsel of despair and sadly lacking in the charity which he invokes. If we disagree with one another let us give reasons for our disagreement and argue them with mutual respect.
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tobias
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Post by tobias on Jul 20, 2012 23:31:00 GMT
Hm mm, I feel I have been put rather firmly back in my box! But from the confines of that particular receptacle I will try to enter a defense. As I said, I realize that this may not be the appropriate thread to air this subject and for that I apologize. I would not for one moment suggest that sex does not raise moral issues, of course it does. The point I was clumsily trying to make was that the Church should not try to dictate to couples how they should conduct their sex lives and hold the penalty of sin over them. If they want to use contraception then that is their business, not the Church's. Again, homosexuality should not be anything the Church should get involved with. God created us all with all our differences. Is a gay person a lesser creation? The passage about the woman being stoned for adultery comes to mind- He said " has anyone condemned you? "No one Sir" she replied, " then neither do I" He said " go your way and sin no more". How can God create a person and then not accept them as he created them. There is another passage that I think may be relevant and that is when Jesus is talking about the teachers of the Law and He says, " They tie up heavy burdens and load them on the shoulders of the people". In my view when Jesus brought the Good News to the people what excited them was the simplicity of his message. He Talked of kindness, compassion, generosity and forgiveness mainly, not rules and regulations that the religious elite had constructed over the years to dominate, and that was a massive relief to the people, that they weren't weighed down by all these laws and guilt anymore . I try to respect everyones point of view and would certainly not regard any person on this forum as a "pompous intellectual" or a hypocrite (how would I know?). I cannot find where I used or implied these terms in my initial contribution. I did say that I found some of the posts heavy going but that's more to do with my mental deficiency than anything else.
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Post by hibernicus on Jul 22, 2012 21:13:18 GMT
What if it is not "the Church that holds the penalty of sin over them" which implies the sin would not exist if the Church did not declare it? What if the sin is inherent in the act itself, even if the Church condones it? "Go and sin no more" is about individual liability for punishment, not about the sinfulness of acts (note that "go and sin no more" implies that the person did sin in the past and is capable of responding to the grace given). The point about the doctors of the law loading people with heavy burdens is that they present things which are only minor offences or which are not sinful at all and treat them as if they were serious offences; it does not mean that there are no serious offences at all. If you want to argue that the things you mention are not serious offences, that is another matter but you must do it on the merits, without the snide remarks. Some of Jesus's sayings and actions preach leniency and forgiveness, others are truly terrifying (the barren fig-tree, the camel and the eye of the needle, the prophecies of woe on those who disregard his prophecies) and it's never advisable to concentrate on one and ignore the other; we must reconcile them. If you do not want to present people on this forum as pompous intellectuals I would advise you to avoid remarks about angels dancing on the tip of a needle and comparisons to the Pharisees. I do not claim not to be a sinner, though my sins are for my own conscience and my confessor. I will not discuss my individual sins on this board, but I am not going to deny that they are sins and I am obliged to repent for them and to try to amend my life. Similarly I have friends and relatives who engage in certain sinful actions and omissions but who also have many outstanding virtues, some of which put me to shame, and I do not go round denouncing them or proclaiming myself better than they are or saying that I will be better off on the day of judgement than they will - which would be an extremely foolish and wicked assumption - but that does not mean the actions and omissions are not wrong or that I should express approval for them.
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Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Jul 23, 2012 9:49:49 GMT
I think it is important to remember that there are sexual sins. And that these sins have consequences. There is a hierarchy of these sins - some are worse than others. Obviously, the act of fornication in a one night stand is far, far worse than fornication between an engaged couple within a few weeks of marriage, but the latter remains a sin. I think the problem we are trying to deal with here is hyper-concern at sexual sins.
I heard a story of an elderly lady in Ireland - a nonagenerian - who broke into tears on hearing that the Redemptorists were coming to her rural parish a few years ago. The reason why is that she was bawled out of the confessional by a Redemptorist while in her early twenties for kissing her fiancé. This is disproportionate. I know certain acts incite teh passions more than others, but a confessor needs to differentiate between what is serious and what is not. In this case, the woman carried the memory around for nearly seventy years.
Lack of proportionality is dangerous in another regard. If you see all sexual sin as similarly black and see a kiss as a mortal sin already, there is not much incentive for drawing the line. It is a little commented fact that some young ladies who do the Paris-Chartres walk conceive children on it. The general suspicion is that the principal cause of this is not stopping because of an assumption that they have already sinned in kissing the young man. The point is that there is a Jansenism in circulation in traditional circles which can be counter-productive.
In Ireland up until the 1950s (maybe later in places), company keeping was regarded as sinful. This was a wholly innocent past time, which could lead to strong marriages. This is the sort of thing we are railing against here.
In regard to dress, we are aware that culture defines dress and it is hard to believe that current fashions would have emerged without contraception and the sexual revolution. Nevertheless, dress is neutral in itself and if men believe that women dress provocatively, it is up to them to exercise custordy of the eyes. The approach one hears of in SSPX communities, also evident in some FSSP communities in North America, is to view the woman as being sinful in herself and thus it is necessary for her to cover-up to avoid leading men into sin. The view of the female isn't good. Hibernicus has also highlighted ways in which this exists in married life - and it can be horrific.
In this regard, we can look at the use of artificial contraception in marriage or infringements of marriage (co-habiting - do people living together not realise that they are perhaps denying their partners justice in living with them without a formal legal and sacramental committment?) and see sin. It is not something we concern ourselves greatly with - we are laymen and women by and large here - but we do identify it as sin. But on this thread we are dealing with something which falls far short of that.
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tobias
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Post by tobias on Jul 24, 2012 17:47:13 GMT
I think perhaps Hibernicus has misread what I said in my original post. I was making the point that the Church, not the imminent contributors, were , in my view sometimes getting too bogged down in theology to the detriment of commonsense. I am incredulous at the depth of knowledge and the sheer volume of the contributions of said Hibernicus, Alaisdir and others, I am not making any "snide remarks" about anyone as far as I'm aware and if I have come across like that I am truly sorry. . If the Church is not the arbiter of sin then who is? Who has decided birth control is a sin? If the sin is inherent in the act itself then how or when was it defined as a sin? The thing about "loading with heavy burdens" I'm not sure that Jesus made any reference to minor or major offenses, He seemed to me to be making the point that these people were arrogant hypocrites which annoyed Him greatly. I know the dangers of cherry picking bits out of the Gospels and I realize that the woman was advised to sin no more but if she did sin again I'm absolutely sure that He would forgive her again. I made the point in my original post that perhaps the Church should concern itself with condemning various types of crime and violence and perhaps back off on sexual activity if one sort or another. I have noticed for some time that the portrayal of extreme violence in film and TV raises not a whimper but nudity or sexual content will cause a reaction. I feel that this portrayal of violence has contributed to the increasing disregard for human life and perhaps the Church should be more vocal about this and other forms of crime. I would not like to give the impression that I dont regard myself a sinner, indeed I do and I have to deal with that as best I can. But being a sinner should not mean that one cannot question things, for if that was the case then none of us could debate anything.
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Post by hibernicus on Jul 24, 2012 18:35:17 GMT
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Post by hibernicus on Jul 24, 2012 19:32:07 GMT
Tobias - it is very difficult to understand what you are saying because you do not express yourself clearly. That is one problem with defining your own views as "commonsense" - you don't really think about them and what they entail, which means you don't really understand them. Here are some answers to the points you are making so far as I can discern them: (1) The objection to highly explicit depictions of sex and violence is in fact exactly the same; that they produce a simulacrum of something which by its nature is intimate, personal and overwhelming in a manner which divorces it from its physical and emotional implications, and thereby encourage the audience to treat the real thing as if it did not possess those implications. It's not a simple matter of "sex on screen good, violence on screen bad". (2) It is God who decrees what is right and wrong by the nature which he gave us at creation, and the Church is supposed to interpret and implement that law. This does not mean that every last regulation is infallible; it does mean that the Church derives its authority from God and is supposed to be guided in vital matters by God. If you want to argue that the predominant view of the Church is mistaken on a particular point, go ahead and argue it and be judged by the quality of your arguments, but declaring in advance that your view is simply "common sense" and everyone who disagrees with you has been "paying too much attention to theology" is simply refusal to argue. HEre is an outline of the concept of natural law, and how it can be used to assess whether a practice distorts the nature of the process it involves: agellius.wordpress.com/2012/05/01/natural-law-praise-the-lord/ being a good triangle means conforming to the nature of triangles; and being a bad triangle means failing to conform to that nature. A triangle may be good in some ways and bad in others, i.e. having very straight sides but leaving one corner slightly open. The point is that you judge how good it is based on the standard, i.e. the nature, of triangularity. I started with a non-living thing because I think it makes the point simpler to grasp. But the principle is the same with regard to living things, in terms of a thing being a better example of its kind the more closely it conforms to its nature. Thus a healthy squirrel with a nice, bushy tail and who scampers up trees and gathers nuts, is a good squirrel by virtue of doing things that conform to its squirrel nature; as compared with a squirrel with a rope-like tail who is too lazy to scamper up trees and gathers bottle caps instead of nuts, and so is not as good a squirrel as the first. This is not to say that he is a deliberately wicked squirrel, just that he is not as good at “squirreling” as the other one. The case of human beings is more complicated (and I welcome correction wherever I get things wrong, since I’m still learning this stuff). This is because we can choose (to an extent) the extent to which we act in conformity with our nature: We are aware of our own nature and can reflect on it, and make deliberate decisions whether to, for example, mutilate our bodies for the purpose of squelching some of its natural functions. It is for this reason that there is a moral dimension to our behavior: We don’t act in accord with our nature necessarily, as animals do, who are unaware what their nature is and that there are alternatives to acting in accord with it. Squirrels can’t choose the extent to which they act in accord with the nature of squirrels, whereas people can choose whether to be good or bad examples of human nature. END OF EXTRACT
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tobias
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Post by tobias on Jul 24, 2012 23:26:35 GMT
Hibernicus, I realize you are having grave difficulty with me. but in some cases I think you are misreading my posts. I did not say the Church was "paying too much attention to theology" I said that I feel that in relation to certain matters to do with sexual behavior they were getting "too bogged down in theology". Secondly, I know that explicit of representations of sex or violence is equally disturbing, that is not the point I was endeavoring,however poorly, to make. What bothers me is what appears to be a preoccupation with the former to the somewhat more muted reaction to the latter. I would have thought that the depiction of people being killed in all sorts of horrific ways and the message of vengeance being the way to solve ones problems is a far more serious problem to be addressed than whether people use contraception in or out of wedlock. As regards the squirrels, evolution or nature would have taken care of the second depending on your point of view! ( I jest, lest I'm misunderstood) As a species we have done quite well on the sexual side but when it comes to violence to our fellow man, the natural world could teach us a thing or two.
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Post by Beinidict Ó Niaidh on Jul 25, 2012 11:38:19 GMT
I just read the four blog posts on modesty and a lot of the comments (I don't have the time to read all of the comments).
First of all, though modesty is not just an American issue, it is an issue that seems to exercise more attention there than elsewhere. The number of comments which combined the issue with homeschooling was striking - almost as if these were things which naturally went together. Secondly, though some posters were able to move beyond their own culture (not always accurately), others just couldn't get the point. Dress can mean a lot of things and goes far beyond sexuality. In the case of two religious groups - the Hasidim and the Amish - dress is one of the things that serve as a marker between themselves and the rest of the world. Though this does encourage some converts, it is not an evangelical act - indeed, if anything, it is not intended to be, quite the contrary. Other denominations, or strains within denominations, have a tradition of marked sartorial style towards modesty - Mennonites in the US and Pietists among German Lutherans are in this category. It seems that SSPX supporters and other trad Catholics are following this trend, but it is no more evangelical in itself than the situation with the Amish or Hasidim.
Take religious habits - these quite deliberately serve as a marker between the cloister and the world, the sign of religious consecration. I can recall the abandonment of the cassock by the teaching brothers who taught me in favour of the clerical suit. This resulted in the diminishment in respect for the brothers and this increased further when they adopted a more secular form of dress. More importantly, it clearly impacted on them. It must be remembered that clerical or religious dress is a two-edged sword - it is supposed to be evangelical, but if a religious acts in an unbecoming manner it turns in on itself, so it demands a certain responsibility on the religious - a responsibility to act in an evangelical manner. But the nun's habit shows how beauty and sexual attractiveness are two different things. I have heard the sight of Ingrid Bergman and Audrey Hepburn in habits in The Bells of St Mary's and The Nun's Story respectively increased vocations enquiries in US convents, but it is why the women stayed rather than why they came that marks the vocation.
There is one category in which I say that there is an absolute requirement for modest dress - and that is among people who are consecrated and living in the world, whether through secular institutes or third orders. For this reason, I am opposed to Opus Dei numery members or their analogues wearing lay dress. It sends out the wrong message. The world see a good individual at work and not the church. Also, the evangelical counsels of poverty and chastity demand something different. However, these groups have been set up under the norms under which they operate. This is what I mean by modesty - if a young woman (in particular, but it can work the other way too) takes religious vows and does not have a distinctive habit, she should seek a way of marking out her consecration in dress. If it is of no significant difference (even on the modest side) to the way other women dress, it will send out the wrong message. This may work more clearly the other way (btw, I am speaking with some experience on the last point). Most of the posters regarded modesty in men as a much lesser (though not altogether negligible) issue. I remember hearing from an older woman about her nieces (perhaps niece with her friends) who are perhaps a little older than me. On one occasion, they bumped into a couple of men of similar vintage while on holiday, I think in a hotel lobby or something. The group went on to spend a charming Saturday evening together. Nothing untoward happened, but that's not the point. The next morning the women attended Mass and were shocked to see the men whose company they enjoyed the night before were the concelebrants at the morning Mass. The point was not that the women were suffering unbearable temptations because the priests were inappropriately dressed (there was nothing immodest about their dress; had they been laymen, there would have been no issue). The point was that the women understood them to be laymen and were impressed by their bearing and conversation in the course of the evening. Another corrollary to this is that it is probably important for married men to wear wedding rings too, though it is not the tradition in the English-speaking world. To return to the consecrated young lady I mentioned, I find I can identify with the women who unwittingly dated (I know it wasn't a real date) the priests - you just feel that you have been deceived though this was not the intention of the other person.
The discussion in these blogs go in a different direction - it talks about people like most of us, who are in both the secular and lay state (we are not clerical, religious or consecrated persons in the world). Yes, we are certainly called to be in the world, but not of the world. Yes, we are called to be evangelical and to be holy. This is what we need to consider - but we are not called to live as monks and nuns. The Church holds up many lay saints as models and some (eg St Rita of Cascia; Blessed Edmund Rice) who were married and widowed before entering religious life. The way some of the commentators went on, it was as if practicing Catholics were in some kind of intermediate state. One of the problems of such an intermediate state is that it creates a similar two-edged sword to the religious habit - it may not be very effective as an evangelical tool. Dress has an importance, but I think there was a tendency to see it exclusively as sexual. It's not. I think some posters refer to a sloppiness in dress which is endemic. I agree - I wish people would dress neater, tidier and more formally than they do - I think dress is too casual. But no one is likely to go to hell for being too casual. Some poster expressed the belief that any man would find women in jeans of any cut sexually attractive - I've never found this. The appeal from the less attractive to the more attractive women to dress more modestly could said to be rooted in the sin of envy: looks, like other attributes, are not distributed equally (it's difficult to quantify or qualify, because there is a subjective element here), but one might suggest beauty is a gift and that a woman who conceals it is in effect throwing a gift back in God's face. There are a lot of young men and to a lesser extent, fathers of girls who seem to think the wearing of certain apparel is entirely on the woman's head. Again, if anything this is backwards. If a man knows what he's going to be tempted by or where he is going to be tempted - it is his responsibility to avoid it. If for example, a man cannot handle a beach or a swimming pool - he is under no obligation to go there. This is not to say that woman is devoid of responsibility - certain types of dress send out certain messages, but all is subjective or relative. Nothing is scientific; even the level of exposure. For example, some women look more attractive in one-piece bathing suits than they do in bikinis (the former outlines the female figure better - but the lengths some traditional parents go to cover up their daughters when they swim, while doing nothing about their sons is ridiculous. It's also likely to lead to more of a fascination in the female body rather than the other way round.
In relation to the Islamic world - here we see the opposite extreme. But let me make a couple of observations. The west has taken one direction since the sexual revolution; the Islamic world has taken the opposite one. The Christian ought to steer the middle course. Up until the 1960s, older women in Mediterraean Europe, Middle East and Africa dressed much the same way. Your village women in Portugal, Spain or Italy looked much the same as their equivalents in Greece and the Balkans, as in Turkey, Lebannon, Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Algeria or Morocco. Western Europe/North America went one way, perhaps thanks to the pill, but that's irrelevant as current fashions are the way they are and plenty of women who are not sexually active or who are faithful wives are following them. Islam went the otherway - the west said 'liberation', they said 'exploitation'. There was nothing inevitable about this; I heard the appearance of the miniskirt in Tehran in the 1970s raised many eyebrows, but this did not on its own bring the Shah down. Indeed many women who were happy to wear miniskirts in the Tehran night clubs were also happy to see the Shah go - without imagining the ultimate consequences for them.
Another way of looking at this is to ask if purity (which is different from frigidity) is the norm in the Islamic world or among the Hasidim or Amish or Pietists? The answer is no. Adultery, fornication or sacrilegious intercourse with professed religious happened in much more modest times and still does in more modest regions. This is part of human nature. Traditional Catholic dress norms will not eliminate lust nor rape. That doesn't mean there is nothing in them - only that they are not an ultimate solution as many trads imagine them to be.
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Post by Beinidict Ó Niaidh on Jul 25, 2012 11:43:29 GMT
In relation to Tobias (whose user names is suggestive of a splendid model of Christian marriage), I would say we have ten commandments. None are more or less serious than the others. To either elevate the sixth and ninth over the others or to leave them out altogether is a problem.
Yes - sex or nudity in film seem to engage people more than violence, but in Scandanavia, young children can view all sorts of sex, but Tom and Jerry is banned for being too violent. I personally think language should be restrained too in film (some of the people commenting on the blogs Hibernicus quoted ought to watch their own tongues as well as they do other women's clothes). What we need to do is not loose sight of anything serious - sexual or otherwise.
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tobias
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Post by tobias on Jul 25, 2012 22:37:09 GMT
Interesting post on clothing and modesty. I'm not sure that dress has as much influence on sexual attraction as one thinks. The female form is attractive to men but so are all the other attributes that women possess - even the fact that we men will never really understand them is attractive in its own way. I have just been watching women's soccer in one of the opening games of the Olympics ( I'm not really a soccer fan but there's nothing else on) and I find that the players are attractive, not in a sexual way but nonetheless, attractive, although their dress is modest by any standards but its only that they are women and I am a man I suppose. I have absolutely no knowledge of Islamic culture but I would assume that their men find their women attractive even though they are all covered up because their population seems to be thriving! If one thinks back to the Victorian era (no, I'm not that old!) they set great store by modest dress and behavior but I'm not sure there was any corresponding decrease in sexual activity. The point I would make is that women are attractive to men regardless of their attire because that is the way it has to be. It would be unfortunate for the human race if it were otherwise. How men deal with this challenge is for men to figure out, not for women. I agree about clerical dress from the point of view of making a statement but I think it should be understated. I do have a problem with bishops, cardinals and even the Pope overdressing in silk and red robes. I think a more humble dress would be more appropriate In relation to the commandments, I thought the first two were the greatest as they lay the foundations for everything that follows, if one tries to live by those then one wont contravene the others.
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