That seems pretty innocuous, right? It's voluntary and porn isn't exactly pro-woman, you know. Who could object to that?
It blew up. Watching the replies on his videos and tweets, the majority of responses were highly negative. He was attacked for all kinds of things. Dig his video response which includes several examples.
Note: It's NSFW. I removed the embed from the post because I don't like that sort of thing on my blog, but it's still illustrative.What on Earth was that? Why would voluntarily abstaining from porn cause such outrage?
It's because Paul was trying to redraw the borders of the Empire back to Italia, leaving lots of people outside the boundaries of acceptable behavior.
It didn't matter that it was voluntary. It didn't matter that it showed respect for women. It didn't matter that it was an act of self-control. It only mattered that it reflected badly on the behaviors of the people objecting. It implicitly passed judgment on them, suggesting that there was an objective standard for behavior and porn was outside the boundaries.
- Rome is all acts acceptable to the Catholic Church.
- Italia is all acts acceptable in America, circa, say, 2000 AD.
- You, a person who likes to watch abusive threesomes online, are somewhere in Aquitania.
- Epstein is just barely beyond the border of Dacia. When ABC spiked the Epstein story three years ago, that was an attempt to conquer that territory and make Epstein acceptable.
- Trannies in the library are Brittania.
- Desmond is Amazing, the 11-year-old who dresses in drag and performs in gay bars, is Mauretania.
- Allowing children to choose their gender is Assyria.
The mere suggestion of any objective standards for sexual relations was unacceptable. That's why Paul and everyone choosing to participate in No Nut November were attacked.
The war that American Christians face, probably that Christians in the West as a whole face, is against moral relativism. Moral relativism dissolves the Christian faith since it makes Jesus' sacrifice on the cross pointless. I can't speak for my protestant and Jewish comrades, but as far as I can tell, the Catholic Church is completely unaware that this war is even happening.
It's kind of hard to win under those conditions.
"as far as I can tell, the Catholic Church is completely unaware that this war is even happening."
ReplyDeleteLooking from outside, I think the Catholic Church's main problem is that they are unaware of many things. They appear to be unaware of the cause of the injuries to the church, or of who their enemies are. There is a strong tendency to blame their problems on unspecified "secularists" outside of the church, and to frame their problems in such a way that the church leaders can claim that none of their problems are their fault. But, I think that the church's life-threatening wounds are mostly self-inflicted, and that the people threatening their existence are inside, not outside.
Oh, sure, there are plenty of non-Catholics who wish the church ill and wouldn't mind carving out a piece of the corpse if it died, but they are neither numerous enough, dedicated enough, nor powerful enough to accomplish this on their own. They can only act because the church has already damaged itself, is continuing to damage itself while denying that it is doing so, and may in fact be well on the way to committing suicide.
The thing is, in the face of declining membership, all they can think to ask is "why are people leaving?" Which is trivially easy to answer. People are leaving because going to church makes them unhappy. Just look around the next time you are at church. How many of those people truly look like they want to be there? Compare this with how cheerful they look after the priest says "Mass is ended, go in peace to love and serve the Lord", and they give a heartfelt "Thanks be to God!" and bolt for the doors.
No, the real question they should be asking is, "Why did people ever come to church in the first place?" Followed closely by, "And is that something that they still want, or that the church is even able to provide?"
It didn't even have to make folks look bad-- they felt shamed by the idea that someone didn't agree with their behavior...which is a pretty traditional defensive move.
ReplyDeleteGiven that even proponents recognize it makes folks feel dirty, not surprising. Brave folks to attempt it, anyways.
Tim, I agree with you completely. I know that plenty of smart people have researched the things you bring up, but I'll admit I haven't read through their findings. Instead, I've been trying to blog my blundering way to the Truth.
ReplyDeleteOne of my current hypotheses is that the Church doesn't really understand what it means to be Catholic, as strange as that may sound.
Does this post address some of what you say when you mention how church makes them unhappy?
Hmm, I think it is as you commented positively on it. :-)
Foxie, you're right on target. Even the implication that someone, somewhere thinks porn is bad is too much.
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