Cultural and historical change have led to a "dissolution" of morality in Catholicism, he claims.

As an example, he says despite allegations of clerical sex abuse of children dating back to decades before the 1960s, it was not until the sexual revolution in the 1960s that homosexuality and paedophilia occurred in Catholic establishments.

In particular, he cites the appearance of sex in films in his native Bavaria and the formation of "homosexual cliques" in seminaries "which acted more or less openly and significantly changed the climate."

"Why did pedophilia reach such proportions? Ultimately, the reason is the absence of God," Benedict explains.

This can be resolved only through "obedience and love for our Lord Jesus Christ," he says.

In addition, he claims at a seminary in southern Germany, laymen were accompanied by their wives and children and "on occasion by their girlfriends.

"The climate in this seminary could not provide support for preparation to the priestly vocation.

"The Holy See knew of such problems, without being informed precisely," he says.

At the same time, he says it might be worth mentioning that "in not a few seminaries, students caught reading my books were considered unsuitable for the priesthood.

"My books were hidden away, like bad literature, and only read under the desk."

Benedict's essay also finds fault with church laws that gave undue protection to accused priests.

He notes during the 1980s and 1990s, "the right to a defence (for priests) was so broad as to make a conviction nearly impossible."

As Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, Benedict spearheaded reforms of those laws in 2001 to make it easier to remove priests who abused children.

He also took a hard line against clerical sex abuse as the Vatican's doctrine chief and later as pope, defrocking hundreds of priests accused of raping and molesting children.

Right now, in his opinion, the primary task is "to reassert the joyful truth of God's existence and of the church as holding the true deposit of faith.

"When thinking about what action is required first and foremost, it is rather obvious that we do not need another church of our own design.

"Rather, what is required first and foremost is the renewal of the faith in the reality of Jesus Christ given to us in the Blessed Sacrament," he says.

Benedict's essay has been criticised as "catastrophically irresponsible" as it conflicts with efforts Pope Francis is making to lead the church out of the crisis.

However, following the February Vatican gathering of presidents of the world's bishops' conferences "to discuss the current crisis of faith and of the church," Benedict says he thinks it is appropriate that he should help contribute "to a new beginning".

He also says his involvement is reasonable given his role as pope during "the public outbreak of the crisis".

Source

• Christian Today
• BoingBoing.net
• America Magazine
• Religion News Service
• Image: Catholic News Agency

With all due respect to Herr Doktor, some moments are so transparently situated at a cultural crossroad that they illuminate history even in real time.

Improbably enough, the #MeToo movement seems to be one.

As anyone following events can see, the ongoing sex scandals that gave rise to #MeToo are more than just placeholders in the news cycle.

They reveal a shift in the cultural plates of the last half-century and demonstrate the many ways in which that shift has changed American families, workplaces, romances (and lack thereof), politics, and culture.

Unlike our forerunners in 1968, those of us living today have access to something they didn't: 50 years of sociological, psychological, medical, and other evidence about the sexual revolution and its fallout.

Thanks to the #MeToo movement, the time has come to examine some of that evidence.

Such an examination is not theological or religious or even necessarily philosophical.

It is empirical, based on objectively derived evidence and data.

Over a hundred years ago, a Russian writer was sent to report on the facts of what transpired inside a slaughterhouse.

After setting them down in detail, he added this immortal line: "We cannot pretend that we do not know this." The meaning of what Leo Tolstoy wrote then is plain.

Once the facts of any event are admitted to the record, to pretend we do not see them is to sin by omission and, figuratively speaking, against truth itself.

And so it is with the sexual revolution.

Following are five facts about the revolution's impact that are by now empirically incontestable—five truths that the record of the past half-century has established beyond reasonable doubt.

Artificial contraception

First, the destigmatization and mass adoption of artificial contraception, beginning in the 1960s, followed by widespread legalization of abortion, has radically changed the world in which we now find ourselves.

This is an important countercultural point.

Over the years, a great many people have claimed that sex is merely a private act between individuals.

They've been wrong.

We know now that private acts have cumulative public effects. Individual choices, such as having children out of wedlock, have ended up expanding the modern welfare state, for example, as the government has stepped in to support children who lack fathers.

The explosion of sexual activity thanks to contraception has been accompanied by levels of divorce, cohabitation, and abortion never before seen in history.

And as the #MeToo movement shows, the same shift has contributed to a world in which on-demand sex is assumed to be the norm, to the detriment of those who resist any advance, for any reason.

Sexual revolution consequences

Second, the revolution is having deleterious consequences—and not only on the young—in the form of broken families and the attendant disadvantages conferred by fatherless homes, as has been excruciatingly well-documented by social scientists for many decades.

Over half a century into the sexual revolution, the human damages at the end of life's telescope are now also visible.

Today, for example, one of the most pressing, and growing, issues for researchers is the plight of the elderly, who face the challenges of aging amid shrunken, broken, and truncated families.

Google "loneliness studies" and you will find a sociological cottage industry in every supposedly advanced country in the world—France, Germany, the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, Portugal. Many social scientists now call this phenomenon an "epidemic."

To mention just one example, toward the end of last year, the New York Times published a harrowing story about what the so-called "birth dearth" looks like in old age: "4,000 lonely deaths a week. . . . Each year, some of [Japan's elderly] died without anyone knowing, only to be discovered after their neighbors caught the smell."

It is critical that we not avert our eyes from this tragic picture and what it tells us about the impact of the sexual revolution. Fifty years after the embrace of that revolution's principles—undeniably because of that embrace—atomization and severely reduced human contact is spreading across the planet.

Libertarian conceit

Third, the libertarian conceit often embraced by the sexual revolution's supporters, that pornography is a harmless activity, is no longer viable.

The damages caused by pornography are legion: Pornography use is frequently cited as a factor in divorce cases; therapists report increased demand for treatment for pornography addiction, including for children.

Is it any surprise that many of the stories to emerge from the #MeToo moment seem drawn directly from the narratives of pornography? Continue reading

• Image: Crisis Magazine
• Mary Eberstadt is a senior research fellow at the Faith & Reason Institute.

The NZ premiere of the documentary, sponsored by the Catholic Enquiry Centre, will be shown as part of the Family Banquet Conference next month.

The documentary seeks to explain the fallout of the hippie generation's free-love mindset and the prophetic nature of Humanae Vitae.

Humanae Vitae is Blessed Pope Paul VI's 1968 encyclical on love, sex and marriage.

The director and narrator of the ninety-minute documentary believes the sexual revolution that followed the introduction of artificial contraception in the 1960s may soon give way to a new and "real sexual revolution" that embraces Natural Family Planning.

"I believe with all my heart there is a rediscovery happening right now of Humanae Vitae," said the director, Daniel diSilva.

The fact that young people are increasingly turning to organic food and natural healthcare choices leads diSilva to believe "we're sitting on the cusp of a revolution of natural family planning," in which married couples use neither drugs nor devices but rather fertility awareness to delay or achieve pregnancy.

The documentary examines the history of the parallel developments of the pill and modern natural family planning framed within the dramatic life story of Alana Newman.

A musician and singer, Newman's life story as a donor-conceived individual searching for her biological father frames the film.

There is a focus on Drs John and Evelyn Billings, the pioneers in the Natural Family Planning movement.

The film also features commentary by more than a dozen Catholic experts including Dr Helen Alvare, Dr Peter Kreeft, and Archbishop Charles Chaput, as well as rarely seen video clips of St Mother Teresa.

The Family Banquet Conference will take place on Saturday, 10 November at St Christopher's Church, 167 Main Rd, Tawa in Wellington. Tickets are available at eventbrite or contact patricia@marriageandfamily.org.nz

Source

• Supplied: marriageandfamily.org.nz Patricia Sison
• sexualrevolutionmovie.com
• thecatholicpost.com
• imdb.com
• Image: Supplied

I won't bore you with the details of the innumerable battles, disagreements, and ecclesial crises that followed upon this text.

Suffice it to say that this short, pithily argued letter became a watershed in the post-conciliar Catholic Church and one of the most significant points of contention between liberals and conservatives.

Its fundamental contention is that the moral integrity of the sexual act is a function of the coming together of its "procreative and unitive" dimensions.

That is to say, sexual intercourse is ethically upright only in the measure that it is expressive of love between married partners and remains open to the conception of a child.

When, through a conscious choice, the partners introduce an artificial block to procreation—when, in a word, they separate the unitive and procreative finalities of the sexual act—they do something which is contrary to God's will.

Again, within the context of this brief article I won't detail the arguments for and against this position.

But I would like to draw particular attention to a remarkable passage in Humanae Vitae, namely section 17, in which Paul VI plays the prophet and lays out, clearly and succinctly, what he foresees as consequences of turning away from the Church's classic teaching on sex.

Though he is convinced that artificial contraception is morally bad in itself, he's also persuaded that it would, in the long run, adversely affect general societal attitudes regarding sex.

Here is a first observation:

"Let them consider how easily this course of action could open wide the way for marital infidelity and a general lowering of moral standards.

"Not much experience is needed to be fully aware of human weakness and to understand that human beings—and especially the young, who are so exposed to temptation—need incentives to keep the moral law, and it is an evil thing to make it easy for them to break that law." Continue reading

Sources

• The Catholic World Report, article by Bishop Robert Barron, an auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles.
• Image:

She was there, at the Free University of Berlin, studying sociology and gung-ho with the anti-authoritarianism of the era.

There has been a revolution in her own life since then and she now devotes her public work to raising consciousness about the cultural devastation being wrought by the ongoing sexual revolution.

In the following Q&A she talks about her book on the subject, an English edition of which was published last December.

Q. In your book, The Global Sexual Revolution - Destruction of Freedom in the Name of Freedom, you report and warn about the destruction of freedom and culture through the global sexual revolution. Why is this so?

A. As sex goes, so goes the family. As the family goes, so goes society. Sexual norms have a decisive influence on the whole cultural edifice. The anthropolgist J.D. Unwin, an Oxford scholar of the 1930s, showed in his book Sex and Culture that high culture can only exist with strict sexual norms.

Christian European culture rests on the ideal of monogamy. We are now in a cultural revolution that overthrows sexual morality. The severe consequences are obvious: The destruction of the family and the demographic crisis. But the powers of this world continue to force the sexual revolution on every nation.

Q. Does moral deregulation lead to sexual liberation?

A. To throw off any moral restraint to sexual activity is wrapped in the temptation of "sexual liberation". Everybody knows from experience that the urges and drives of the body need to be controlled, be it sex or food or drink, otherwise they will control us. Therefore temperance is one of the cardinal virtues.

The explosion of pornography through the internet creates millions of sexually addicted people, tragically more and more youth are among them. Marriage and families break up if husband and wife are driven into unfaithfulness by their sexual desires, because they have not learnt to make them a servant of the expression of love. Continue reading

Sources

• MercatorNet
• Image: Active News

During her visit to Brno, I had a chance to interview Kuby about her book and ask how her Catholic perspective helps her understand one of the most important issues of our time: the continuing sexual revolution that is leading not only to private lifestyle changes but a new legal understanding of sexuality and the family.

Kuby warns that the global trend of "gender mainstreaming" threatens the fundamental understanding of our very human nature, with dire consequences for children, families, and society as a whole.

For example, until 2014 users of Facebook had to indicate their sex - whether they are a man or a woman.

But now the popular internet social network gives users 58 different options to indicate their gender.

Also in 2014, the winner of the popular "Eurovision" song contest was an Austrian man named Thomas Neuwirth, known by his stage name Conchita Wurst, who attracts curiosity by cross-dressing in women's clothing while wearing a thick beard.

Kuby points out that these kinds of situations create confusion and real psychological and spiritual harms for individuals and society.

CWR: For the benefit of our readers, would you please summarize the main thesis of your new book?

Gabriele Kuby: After my conversion to the Catholic faith, and given my background in the study of sociology and interest in political and social developments, I began to realize that sexuality is the issue of our time.

We live in a time when sexual norms are being turned completely upside down, which is unique in human history.

No society does has done this. No society has ever said, "Live out your sexual drive any way you like," but our society does. Continue reading

Sources

• The Catholic World Report
• Image: Gloria.tv