For nearly two weeks, many here on the Duke University campus had been aware of a certain senior “thesis” that a recent graduate wrote, apparently as a private joke, about her sexual exploits with 13 student-athletes.
Then the Internet seized on it….
Read it all (noting the content will not be appropriate for certain blog readers).
Posts like this are part of being aware of what is happening in our culture–even though it is very unpleasant.
I am leaving comments open but will change that if responses go off track or in an unhelpful direction.
There is no more “private” anymore. Now any pecadillo, any allegation (truthful or slanderous) can be spread worldwide in nanoseconds and a reputation ruined just as quickly. As usual, technology has raced ahead of any wisdom that might be associated with the using of it.
There has never been any “privacy.” You have to be an idiot not to know this. Twenty years ago when I got my first job with Merrill Lynch, we were told “never put any word down in writing that you would not want to see published on the front page of the N.Y. Times.” You know — those little memos “hey Bob, let’s screw over the customers by doing something unethical and borderline illegal.” “Bill, there are too many women in your department and we need to get rid of some of them.” The ones that are going to fall into the wrong hands and end up supoenaed.
Should you not do bad things in the first place? Yes, you should not do bad things. But if you’re planning to do bad things, do not write about them.
Eliot Spitzer once famously said “don’t write if you can speak, don’t speak if you can nod, don’t nod if you can wink.”
If you can’t be ethical, at least don’t be stupid. Eliot, alas, ended up Exhibit A for making this point.
This story and the Rutgers story are not unrelated. Sex has been so cheapened and trivialized. Cosmo magazines at the grocery store in plain view with articles like “Unleash your inner animal in bed!” The common link is pornography.
Indeed, but I don’t believe that Cosmo publishes this stuff because sex has become cheapened and trivialized. I believe that sex has become cheapened and trivialized because Cosmo (and others) publishes this stuff. My adolescent son, standing in line with me at the check out, said: “Mom, some of the stuff on the covers of these magazines is incredibly inappropriate. Why are they allowed to put it out there where little kids can see it?”
Good question. But even if they found a way that no one over 18 could see this stuff, that wouldn’t make much of a difference because there is a bottomless market for this and it has already been determined that the state can’t interfere in this market. This is where I deviate from the “social conservatives” who are all against the “nanny state” and oppose State interference in the private market, but won’t accept that this “hands off” approach is exactly what has gotten us where we are.
Unfortunately, it isn’t very hard to find the names of the young men, and the woman involved. I smile as I think of how nervous they’re going to be when they see their parents, not to mention other relatives and family friends.
Back in the day, fraternity guys had similar raunchy discussions, and compared notes. I’m sure it went on in the sorority houses, as well.
I wouldn’t be surprised if some score sheets had gotten passed around. Maybe some photos, too. And, as I’ve noted in an earlier post, some tape recordings.
After all, pre-marital sex is nothing new. Nor was it ever right. But it never went public like this, because we didn’t have the technology.
I agree – there’s no privacy in a dorm. But, when it comes to extra-marital sex, there’s really no privacy anywhere.
RE: “I believe that sex has become cheapened and trivialized because Cosmo (and others) publishes this stuff.”
I have been in advertising and marketing for my entire career and I strongly disagree. Though those in the advertising field enjoy perceiving themselves as “cutting edge” and “leading the culture” they are actually followers first.
There are technical and sociographic/demographic reasons why that is so which I won’t go into for now.
But reality is that culture changed, advertising followed and “piled on.”
Truth is, if the State actually were doing its actual job — like, you know, prosecuting to the fullest extent of the law all sex with minors, just to name one small thing — then much of the bad parts of the culture would be driven further underground, which is exactly where crime should be [if not stamped out]. Legal disapproval is one excellent step to *societal shaming and shunning*. And within the limits of our Constitution, there are things that the State has on the books that are appropriate — but which are not enforced at all.
I do suspect that Catholic Mom and I would agree on one thing though. The Church has not done its job.
When I look at culture, I see first the failure of the Church.
And that inevitably leads to contemplating my own failure.
The culture is what we have made it.
And I’m part of the culture.
Well, I don’t know who you mean by “The Church” but if you mean the Catholic Church I would have to respectfully disagree. I don’t know anybody who has fought harder against pornography or upheld higher standards of sexual behavior. You may say the Church has fallen down in “faith formation” in terms of theology, but one thing they have not failed to do is to make it crystal clear to kids that sex is not a joke.
And I also strongly disagree that the culture somehow just mysteriously changed and then the market (led by the media) came along and exploited it. The market has pushed against the envelope for prurience from the first moment that somebody sold access to a dirty cave drawing. There is, and has always been, a virtully unlimited market for pornography. Just like there is a virtually unlimited market for narcotics. And if the State permits it, there will always be free marketeers ready, willing, and able to supply demand.
As far as being “part of the culture” I don’t buy any magazines, I don’t have cable TV, and I watch maybe six movies a year. And these are typically PG type comedies. My kid are used to this, so they are actually surprised and disturbed (something that’s difficult to achieve with most kids nowdays) when they see something inappropriate. Becaue they DON’T watch blood-and-gore movies, an Alfred Hitchcock movie is scarey to them. Because they AREN’T super-saturated with sexual images and language, a mildly risque joke is funny to them.
BTW, don’t know if you’ve ever seen a little booklet (it’s intended as a joke) called “The Erotic Art of Ireland.” When you open it up, it purports to have the Imprimateur and Nihil Obstat of the Archbishop of Dublin and it says “All offensive photographs have been removed and the originals tracked down and destroyed.” The rest of the book is blank. 🙂
RE: “Well, I don’t know who you mean by “The Church†but if you mean the Catholic Church I would have to respectfully disagree.”
; > )
Er, no, I did not mean the Roman Catholic Church. But I do mean The Church catholic. ; > )
Even were I to have meant — as a Protestant and in a sudden remarkable conversion — the Roman Catholic Church = The Church, I would have to say that the devastation that the surrender to the culture of the RCs in the 60s/70s/80s/and most of the 90s here in the US has wrought has certainly *not* been helpful to the general culture at all.
But again, I wasn’t picking on Rome — but on, again, The Church.
; > )
RE: “And I also strongly disagree that the culture somehow just mysteriously changed and then the market (led by the media) came along and exploited it.”
Now what a lovely attempted shift in rhetoric there. But originally you said the media [Cosmo] had shifted the culture. Now it’s “the market” with the media leading “the market”?
But the market is made up of “people” which makes up “the culture.” So you’ve essentially reversed yourself and said “the people have cheapened sex and trivialized it because the people have done so.”
I accept the revision.
The market has indeed “cheapened” sex. People tend to do that the world and history over.
RE: “As far as being “part of the culture†. . . ”
I’m fine if you don’t wish to consider yourself a part of the culture.
I do.
I accept responsibility for my own failure.
As my old rector used to pray for before Eucharist, “Lord, renew your Church, and let it begin with me.”
Don’t get me wrong; I have much love for the RC Church, but if you want to say that it “upholds higher standards for sexual behaviors”, it must swiftly and publicly root out of the clergy(for starters; not like other church workers don’t count), the pedophiles and other predators, who should be defrocked and given their walking papers. Secular prosecution is not the Church’s job, of course.
Two of our best friends are RC priests and we are happy they have told us the psychiatric requirements/evaluations for ordination have become massively more stringent–good. It’s not foolproof, but that should also be the case in other denominations.
But I’m in full agreement with Sarah and Catholic Mom’s son; free speech and freedom of the press have been taken to an extreme; yet the culture is also off-the-wall and if it stopped buying inappropriate material, supply-and-demand would take over and publishers would stop printing stuff that didn’t sell. They will continue to sell WHATEVER they have a market for. I can only pray that we can get around such things with proper teaching at home. Disturbing…
I agree with Sarah on many counts. The media are not creating the culture, they are reflecting it. After all, they are in business and, to remain in business, they have to be perceived as relevant.
Sarah is also spot-on about the RCC in the ’70s and beyond. There was a huge disconnect between the actual experiences of the Catholic Church in America during this time and what the Vatican pronounced. Clown Masses, hippy priests with psychedelic stoles, “I’m OK — You’re OK hymns” (if you can call them hymns). Been there, done that, chuckle at the memories. As I recall from sometimes attending Protestant services at my friends’ churches, the Catholics were FAR more liberal at that time than the mainline Protestants.
Some of the ideas and things I see going on in parts of TEC now reminds me of the American RCC in the ’70s and ’80s, actually, and it disturbs me. Once the genie leaves the bottle, it’s vey difficult to put her back in. The American Catholic Church descended into relativism in the ’70s, and other sad issues publicized since then have diminished its moral authority and standing in society. The same thing has happened to TEC.
What’s especially sad is that we need credible moral authority now more than ever — ethics haven’t come close to catching up with technology. And these young, savvy consumers of technology ironically don’t have the reasoning and comprehension abilities required to understand how the same technology that can be so helpful can also be a powerful curse.
Sarah,
Cosmos IS the market. You buy Cosmos. It’s a product. They sell what people will buy just like everybody else. If they’re allowed to sell soft-porn at the grocery check out counter, they will. If they were allowed to sell cocaine at the check out counter, they would. Or somebody would.
There has always been a virtually bottomless pit for pornography. This is not because sex was “cheapened and trivialized” by the culture in the last 20 years. This is because (mostly male) humans of all cultures and times have a very large appetite for pornography. The difference is, it used to be illegal to sell it so openly. There used to be “censors” on TV and radio and movies and magazines. So “Playboy” was extreme and daring. Then it was ruled that all censorship of adult material is a violation of the Constitution. You love upholding the freedoms provided by the Constitution and the free market, so you must accept what logically followed: the country became inundated with pornography, on the air, in magazines, at the grocery store.
When sex is on display and on sale everywhere you go, it becomes cheapened and trivialized. I think you can follow the logic here. But just like drugs, pornography has to become more and more extreme to remain titilatating. When what adolescents used to gawk at in a well-thumbed and hidden copy of Playboy can now be seen in ads in mainstream magazines, you’re going to have to find something a lot more exciting to gawk at. And they have. Because the market provides it to them and the State says this is just business and business is protected by the Constitution.
I meant to say “the demand for pornography has always been a virtual bottomless pit.”
What’s changed, obviously, is the legal ability of suppliers to supply it.
I’m grateful I’m not her father.
Re: The Church and the last fifty years. I actually have never seen a clown mass. I have never seen a hippie priest with a psychedlic stole. [ I don’t know what a hippie priest is, by the way. We have one priest at our church who wears sandals and bare feet all the time, but he’s a Franciscan. 🙂 ] However, I actually have zero interest or concern with stole patterns. Or shoes. And I’m not particularly obsessed with hymn lyrics one way or the other. Church is not a performance art for me. It’s the followers of Christ gathered around the holy table. Beautiful vestments and music [bearing in mind that tastes differ widely] are nice but it could just as well be a bunch of people huddling around a rock on the top of a mountain like they used to do in Ireland when celebrating Mass was outlawed.
Furthermore, I have never attended any church whatsoever at any point in the last several decades when anything other than orthodox teaching on sexual matters was proclaimed. And my kids have certainly never been taught by anyone at church in any way shape or form that sex outside of marriage was a good idea. Maybe the people with bad experiences are the ones hanging out on Anglican blogs. [Me, I just come for the sturm und drang.] But, IMHO, you have to go a loooooong long way to blame the coarseness of popular culture on Vatican II. If the Church had “surrendered” to the culture, you would find them permitting divorce, looking the other way at abortion, blessing same sex marriages. Like…I don’t know…somebody else.
#3: Eliot Spitzer once famously said “don’t write if you can speak, don’t speak if you can nod, don’t nod if you can wink” …
I like this quip better when it’s attributed to Tip O’Neill. Wonder who _really_ first came up with it. Mark Twain, maybe?
I’ve been thinking about this and it seems to me that it just might end up being the culture that changes attitudes and behavior in this realm, as well, if just a few secular institutions would step up and be honest.
We’ve seen society go to war against over-indulgence of alcohol, pointing out the dangers and risks on many levels and enacting strict laws and practices. It’s helping. We’re currently working on the obesity problem, as well. Some doctors are refusing to do joint replacement surgery on overweight people unless they lose weight. I know one woman whose docs have pretty much thrown in the towel unless she agrees to gastric surgery. (She is VERY noncompliant with her diet and winds up in the ER frequently because of blood sugar issues.)
All moral arguments aside, promiscuity is a detriment to society. It causes (or reflects) self-esteem issues, depression, many diseases and infertility, as well as unplanned pregnancy, abortion, and other social ills. It needs to be addressed, even if it’s only from a medical standpoint. I find it weird that in this supposedly health conscious age, very few have taken on the problem.
#15 — I guess you grew up in a pristine RC community. Congrats on that. Some of us have other experiences. The “hippie priests” had long shaggy hair and beards, rarely wore clericals, and procured alcohol and pot for the boys at the RC high school I attended. I wasn’t surprised to learn years later that one of them was charged with sexual assault of boys.
We are Anglicans, this is an Anglican blog and a sizable number of Anglicans were once RC. So, it stands to reason that some of us do not have RC experiences akin to yours and that we are dubious about the RCC’s success in this matter when we’ve seen something quite different.
RE: “Cosmos IS the market.”
Cool — you’ve just eliminated the definition of the word “media” — again, I appreciate the change. Media = market = culture = people. ; > )
So I have to wonder why you picked on the “media” in the first place since it’s all one in the same in your worldview.
RE: “You love upholding the freedoms provided by the Constitution and the free market, so you must accept what logically followed: the country became inundated with pornography, on the air, in magazines, at the grocery store.”
And as I pointed out — if the basic Constitutionally protected laws that we actually have were enforced, we wouldn’t have the inundation.
But that’s beyond the subject of this post, and I won’t detail those laws, since you could come up with them yourself.
RE: “Because the market provides it to them and the State says this is just business and business is protected by the Constitution.”
Huh?
Catholic Mom — have you ever actually read the Constitution? Do you know what it says, what it protect, what it limits, what it demands?
I highly commend it to you. It won’t take long to read and digest.
As a parent, it is a teachable moment. My kids (preteen and teen) have learned that a picture/words can end up for the whole world to see. Perhaps, other kids will learn the same and parents will use this as a teachable moment as well. Decisions have consequences. Fox News Live , Kelly and I can’t remember her last name but she made a point at the end of her show to give advice to young girls. Paraphasing – Girls that sleep around are not respected by the guys and are often ridiculed. Perhaps it might make kids think before they do.
“Upheld highest standards of sexual behavior.?” #8, surely you can’t mean this, or has the overwhelming sexual scandal of the last twenty years gone past you. the roman church has permitted and protected homosexuals in the clergy for time out of mind, they filled the seminaries whose members regularly made the rounds of homosexual bars and they generated hundreds of homosexual pederasts. So bad was it in the seminaries that heterosexual postulants complained and complained that they could not survive in that atmosphere. This news was everywhere 20 years ago as the first books came out about the culture of the seminaries. And what do you think Luther was complaining about? Have you read his description of Rome? Sorry #8, but this assertion simply will not stand examination. Larry
Sarah, I think #15 has missed the point. To clarify, I would say that the culture drives both the market and the laws-made-lax so the market is able to be inundated with a lot of stuff many of us find objectionable. The media, Catholic Mom, is not necessarily the cause so much as it is an opportunist. It may not be right, but it’s to be expected when there’s money to be made.
How effective it has been or will be always remains to be seen, but I’ve already said above that the teaching starts within the family.
Over the years I’ve also been clear re: TEC being a corrupt church. But, as Larry says, too, in light of the sexual scandals and the laxity, at times, with which the Church has responded, I don’t think I’d consider the RC Church a paragon of teachings on sexual ethics, at least not at the moment.
Re: this in #17
“We’re currently working on the obesity problem, as well. Some doctors are refusing to do joint replacement surgery on overweight people unless they lose weight. I know one woman whose docs have pretty much thrown in the towel unless she agrees to gastric surgery. (She is VERY noncompliant with her diet and winds up in the ER frequently because of blood sugar issues.)”
Off-topic but I’ll comment on the obesity problem. A lot of surgeons won’t do surgery on the obese because it is/can be a huge safety risk. Those patients are difficult to ventilate, provide even with epidural anesthesia, and are serious clot risks for something like joint replacement surgery, which is largely elective. They can’t pass their cardiac clearances. Out-of-control diabetes does not make for a good surgical risk.
Yet another example that the culture is out of control–there’s a reason why gluttony is a deadly sin; uh, because it’s deadly.
[blockquote] have you ever actually read the Constitution? Do you know what it says, what it protect, what it limits, what it demands?….. It won’t take long to read and digest. [/blockquote]
Thus the problem with the pseudo constitutional scholar. He picks up the constitution, gives it a quick read and says “Oh it says exactly what I thought it said.” Such confidence. Its like a high school science student. All confident after his A. He truly understands all the laws of nature. Then he reads Einstein and either he remains confident of his understanding or he heaves a sigh realizing how far he has to go just to scratch the surface. His reaction is determinative of whether he will ever be a great scientist.
I’m not a pseudo Constitutional scholar. I’m not any kind of Constitutional scholar. I don’t have to be. The point is very simple — the right to create and purchase pornography is largely constitutionally protected. Attempts to impose standards of decency which are “religiously motivated” have been held to be expressly in violation of the First Amendment. Adults can create and consume pornography with essentially no limitations in this country. And they do. But 100 years ago they couldn’t. That’s what’s changed.
Of course there was a great sexual scandal in the Church. Who is denying that? But it never had any effect on the teaching of the Church with respect to sex which has been crystal clear and consistent. Priests may have been wearing psychedelic stoles in the 60’s and 70’s (gotta Google this as it actually sounds kind of neat) but kids were not coming out of CCD talking about “God’s great gift of sexuality” to mankind which it would be downright ungrateful not to be enjoying at every possible opportunity. We have confession, remember? I guarantee you that priests were not telling teenagers or young adults that having sex with their boy/girl friends was a wonderful physical expression of divine love. So no, I don’t hold the Church responsible for the attitude that having sex is no different from enjoying a good meal.
In this context see also today’s NYT, “Puttenham Journal: Here’s the Pub, Church and Field for Public Sex.” The Duke case is morally repugnant to people who do have morals. Those involved in this mess clearly have none, especially the recent graduate. This should surprise no one. But in the news release posted above, we have the next step after Duke, and it makes “morally repugnant” the equivalent to a smack on the wrists.
We have here on T19 a set of people, many very knowledgeable indeed, talking and walking the walk of thinking people. Meanwhile, the real world is spinning out of control – if having standards is a sign of being under control – all around us, to a degree that makes our cogitations look antediluvian. It is as if we are floating in the air, arguing about the nature of clouds , while the flood is killing all, sans the ark. If we could plot and extrapolate from the progress of moral decay that characterizes our world, what is the next mark on our graph? What is left for the corrupt to undertake and approve?
Clementi is one point, Duke is the next, Puttenham a very big next, and then….? Duke and Puttenham are winning virtually all the innings and we are talking as if we are not going down on strikes.
What comes after public sex with by-standers for audience? What’s after the moral treachery of a Duke “thesis?” Just more of the same, only with a wider distribution? Larry
#21 is a thought-provoking post for various reasons. I am going to skirt round some of its less edifying aspects and pick out the plum.
To begin with, the term “uphold” can, it seems to me, carry two senses. The first sense is to hold up or hold out an example or ideal. The second sense is to enforce or to bring into effect. It is in the second sense, for example, that the Police “uphold the law”. They don’t hold it out as an ideal, they enforce it.
It is generally agreed that moral principles are best taught by example rather than merely by precept. We are familiar with the “mote and beam” (Mt 7:3) passage.
But Christians who dare to witness to their moral convictions in the public square have long been used to a superficially similar taunt from those who find the message uncomfortable. Catholics in particular recently are getting used to questions along the lines of: “doesn’t it undermine the church’s moral authority, though, when we hear revelations that…?” This has been a popular tactic employed by secularists opposed to Christian moral influence in the public square.
The implication seems to be that if you are part of an organization with errant members, you are not entitled to hold up an ideal. You must be silent in the public square. There’s a kind of “put up or shut up” argument here: if an organization cannot enforce its teachings on all its members, then it has no right to uphold them. This conflates the two senses of “uphold”. Is this legitimate? I don’t believe so.
Now I accept, for the sake of argument, that the members of Larry Morse’s denomination [i]are[/i] morally perfect, that his denomination does not “permit” those afflicted by a homosexual orientation to enter the ranks of its clergy, nor “fill” its seminaries with degenerate rakes, nor “protect” them once it has done so. But even if it did, on rare occasions, (mind, I would not be so grossly untruthful or hurtful as to imply that it did), surely Larry Morse would be equally justified in upbraiding and shaming the Whore of Rome as he does, with such magnificent invective. For if ([i]per impossibile[/i]) I were to find an Anglican seminary (I’m assuming for the sake of argument that Larry Morse is Anglican) that was populated by sexual delinquents, would it detract in the least from Larry’s righteous condemnation? Of course not. His upholding of a moral principle is his right irrespective of his ability or inclination to enforce it upon everyone in his denomination. He doesn’t have to be a moral policeman to make moral judgments.
What was condemned in Mt 7:3 was passing judgment on other people (Mt 7:1). What Our Lord said to those condemning the woman taken in adultery was, “let him who is without sin cast the first stone”. He didn’t say “let him who is with sin forbear from expressing moral judgments”.
The problem is that when you uphold moral principles, those who perceive themselves as violating those principles [i]feel[/i] as if they are being judged. It’s a natural human reaction. Upholders (in the first sense) of moral principles are very unpopular people. Those courageous Anglicans who stand up for the right to life of the unborn (there are many here, I know, and I salute you) will be aware of the hostility engendered by their stance. But is their moral right (and duty!) to bear witness to the rights of the unborn in any way diminished by the fact that many Anglicans not only have and perform abortions, but actually advocate, facilitate and encourage abortion? Should they first be made to police the errant members of their own congregations, and until then remain shamed and silent because of their denomination’s confused witness? Of course not! Nor should they be made to feel ashamed by members of other denominations saying the equivalent of “hypocrites! set your own house in order first!” I repeat, Christians of all denominations should applaud the many courageous Anglican witnesses to the right to life of the unborn.
Therefore I say, many Anglicans [i]do[/i] “uphold” the right to life of the unborn, and that they do so has nothing to do with the fact that they do not “police” other, pro-abortion, Anglicans.
In the same way, the teaching office of the Catholic Church, and a vast number of its clergy and laity, do indeed “uphold” high standards of sexual behaviour, as correctly stated in #8 above. The fact that (to our intense sorrow) some deviants within the clergy, and many, many others within the married laity, have failed to live up to these standards is a cause of enormous shame and sorrow, and terribly wounds the flock; but it does nothing to deprive the Church of its right and duty to uphold high standards of sexual behaviour, both to its own members and to the rest of the world.
If this is correct, then perhaps I might be permitted to ask a question of those who introduced into this topic the issue of paedophile Catholic priests, which was not I think on topic. Why did you do it?
Because I don’t think it’s the best idea to invoke a Church that has diminished its moral authority by failing to deal with its own sexual scandals. What’s worse is, a great many of those scandals involve children.
At this point I think the Church is trying to deal with its issue. I believe the culture needs the Church’s teachings and example, but neither will hold much weight with the general population unless the Church roots out its own problem.
For the record, I believe TEC’s teachings on sexuality to be even more incoherent.
Two things are being confused here as CPKS pointed out: 1) the Church’s “teachings” in the area of sexuality and 2) its ability to enforce those teachings in its own ranks. Yes, the failures in the second category certainly do diminish its moral authority to procalaim the first. Of course, people are going to say “physician heal theyself” etc.
But I was only trying to make one point. Twenty or thirty years ago, notwithstanding that there may have been pedophile priests preying on innocent children, the average Catholic was not aware of it and the average Catholic was NOT hearing an “incoherent” message from the pulpit.
The argument here was something along the lines of “Catholics were being taught by a bunch of sexual deviants so they got confused and compromised by the culture and that’s been a major factor in the moral decline of America.” I don’t believe this is true in the slightest. I would even go so far as to say that priests with “long shaggy hair and beards” (I once heard an Orthodox Jew refer to Jesus as “everybody’s favorite hippie” by the way) procuring alcohol and pot for high school kids in the 60’s or 70’s or whenever it was, reprehensible as that may be, is still no evidence whatsoever that the moral teachings of the Church with respect to sexuality were “incoherent” or “confused” during this period. Now if the long-haired priest had been going to beach parties with the teens accompanied by his girlfriend and they had all sat together on the beach making out, I would agree that the teens were getting a seriously mixed message. But I have heard of NO cases where this happened whatsoever. The pedophile priests were not saying “hey, I have a girlfriend and we sleep together so why shouldn’t you?” They were hiding what they were doing behind a mask of hypocrisy. It is exactly for this reason that so many parishes ended up badly hurt and torn with parishioners saying “I don’t believe Father Bob ever did anything like this. He was such a wonderful priest.” Obviously if Father Bob had been an open degenerate, parishioners would have been saying “we were wondering when the police were finally going to show up at Father Bob’s door.”
The relevance of the RC and its sexual problems: Are the members of a seminary protected by privacy standards? For clearly their misbehavior, like that of the priests, has been covered up and the miscreants protected. Are they like Clementi, victims of an invasion of their privacy? Or is this now a meaningless phrase?
By the bye, I wasn’t aware that my “sect” was morally perfect. This is gratifying to discover. I sort of like being morally perfect. It has a certain cachet, no? My “sect” (the ACA) will also be pleased to know it is morally perfect.
I dunno. I have this problem with the woman taken in adultery and its common application as above. If only those without sin can cast a judgment, then why is CPKS able to make a whole series of judgments unless he is without sin? So it turns out he is morally perfect too. This is a tad spooky.
But CPKS has not addressed my question, unless he is of the opinion that the Duke and the Putterham reports are not morally repugnant. If they are though, then my question remains: Given such flagrant violations of behavior, what comes next? What must we next be asked to “tolerate,” meaning accept, for clearly we are being forced by increasingly common practice to tolerate, as in the Duke case, what would have been unthinkable. (And if public sex, with spectators is not a flagrant violation -and a mockery of privacy and intimacy – I shall be most interested to hear CPKS’s defense thereof.) The issue here began as a question of privacy, what it is and who has it, but the context of these questions make a far-reaching issue of moral and ethical standards.
These issues cannot be skirted; and, crucial to this debate, is the making of judgments, for this process, in spite of CPKS, cannot be dodged or obfuscated by appeals to a gospel story which is taken literally only by those who wish to dodge judgments they do not like. I might add that I am hardly alone in my concern for what this “tip of the iceberg” tells us about society as a whole, and the privacy issues
are now entirely in the context of what an entire society holds as its standards. Larry
Flor whatever it’s worth Catholic Mom, I come from a small town in Mass which used to be largely Catholic, Irish and French Canadian. I heard many many times that the priests -nice enough guys in public – had unsavory sexual tastes, and everyone seemed to take it for granted that one did not question too closely such matters because the priesthood was a protected category, their privacy being surrounded with religion’s sanctity. And this has been the RC church’s posture for literally centuries. Is there a privacy issue here? Does the church stand in a special place in real life? ( I don’t question the church’s teaching. I DO question its life as it has been lived.) Larry
#30 purports to address #27, but displays a bewildering number of misunderstandings. It seems to be assuming that para. 7 of #27 is saying the precise opposite of what it does in fact say. It would be good to have more comprehension and less invective.
Quoting #31: “I heard many many times that the priests… had unsavory sexual tastes… everyone seemed to take it for granted that one did not question too closely…”
Perhaps people showed their unquestioning respect for priestly mystique by repeating scurrilous gossip about the clergy rather than by seeking to substantiate it.
As to the Church’s “posture for literally centuries”: at Mass the priest would adopt a kneeling posture in front of the congregation and confess his sins whilst the congregation remained standing. At the end of his [i]confiteor[/i], the congregation would pray for his absolution. (Much of the ritual that stressed the unworthiness of the priest and the loftiness of his calling was excised from the post-1968 Mass.)
The Roman digression is interesting. Perhaps a seminary clip will be the next viral video.
Having had a chance to see the infamous PowerPoint, I grade it a C-. While she must be commended for the relatively large sample size of the study, as well as for the repeated measures design (albeit with missing data), I lament that she presented the results only descriptively. There was a clear opportunity to generate and test hypotheses, e.g., there is “no difference” between baseball and lacrosse players. One must wonder who served as her faculty adviser on the project.
Additionally, she places too many words on each slide.
My, doesn’t she have some ‘splaining to do! The guys, too. How would you talk to your little brother about this? Your little sister? Your mom and dad? Your clergy? God?
Her “friends” who put it on the Internet have some ‘splaining to do, also.
Well a day, CPKS. I reread paragraph and I fail to see how the two phrases are not saying essentially the same thing. Does anyone else see his distinction. As to the scurrilous gossip, you may be right in some cases, but the evidence so far is that, as a statistical matter, there was more truth there than parishioners wanted to know. And you have not addressed the issue of privacy.
Your misunderstanding of my use of “posture” suggests that there is no common ground here. Your last paragraph in #33 indicates that you have not paid attention to the actual history of the RC church. Accordingly, you may write what you will. I promise I will respond no more to your postings. Larry
RE: “The point is very simple—the right to create and purchase pornography is largely constitutionally protected.”
Well — so the Federal courts have deemed. ; > )
But *actually* standards of decency are to be decided by as local a community as possible, not the Federal courts. And such decisions are *perfectly* Constitutional — except they were ruled not to be allowed by the Federal courts — you know, the Democrats favorite recourse when things don’t go their way.
RE: “But 100 years ago they couldn’t.”
Right — because 100 years ago they understood that the Constitution allowed local standards and laws about such things.
If you want to blame *anything* “political* for the current rate of pornography consumption, Catholic Mom [and again, I am loathe to do so, since I’ve been pointing out that it’s the *people* and the underlying *culture*, not “the media” or “mean Constitutionalists”], then blame your precious political liberals.
Sarah’s point is fundamental – if I understand her correctly – that culture is a law of its own, powerful and pursuasive. Americans pay little attention to this because they have acquired a “religious belief” in the Constitution, that is, they take it to be a moral standard setter and hold this position as an act of faith. But culture has its own rules quite separate from civil law and the courts and furry lawcats.
The power rises from below, on the one hand, (see the Tea Party) and, with celebrity adulation and imitation, from “above” as well. These two are often in head to head conflict, and in a country like ours, wherein inclusivity and diversity have fragmented a common culture, the Constitution rules by default. But it was not meant to take the place of a common culture and so fails desperately to do its job. The Clementi affair is simply one more testimony to an apparently irresolvable contradiction – beyond resolution, that is, in the absence of genuine leadership. Larry
Sarah’s point is not fundamental. In fact it is another misstatement of the Constitutional law she says is so easily understood; and another undeserved swipe a the judiciary.
The Constitution prohibits prior restraint, it does not protect pornography. I.E. you cannot prevent someone from saying or printing anything, but you may prosecute them thereafter; depending on what was said or printed, where it was said or printed, or why it was said or printed.
In regard to pornography, you have no constitutional right to sell, purchase, or own obscene material. Obscene material is any material which appeals to prurient interests and is patently offensiveness by contemporary community standards.
The cause of the spread of pornography is the Internet. Most things people in conservative parts of America would consider obscene is not produced there. It is produced in places like Hollywood, Las Vegas, and in other countries. Their contemporary community standards may differ significantly from community standards in say rural America. That means you would typically need to prosecute the user of pornography for possession, not the seller of pornography for distribution. The seller typically never left his local community. Pornography stores are a thing of the past. We had a pornography store owner prosecuted and convicted of owning obscene material in our town a few years ago. The Constitution did not protect him. Prosecutors simply do not have the time and money to go after every person who downloads pornography over the Internet and search through it to determine what is obscene and what is not obscene by their community standards. Unless of course you want to create a new government bureaucracy charged with searching individual computers for incidents of obscene material.
As far as what happened 100 years ago, I assure you there was plenty of pornography sold. In fact one of the early obscenity cases was the 1897 case of Dunlop v. US where the court upheld a conviction for mailing and delivery of a newspaper called the ‘Chicago Dispatch,’ which the prosecutor alleged contained obscene, lewd, lascivious, and indecent matter. If you want to go further back to Europe, there was plenty of pornography in both Victorian and Pre Victorian time. The difference from today is the distribution method was not nearly as efficient, and you had to interact with other people to obtain the product. The bottom line is sex sells because people are interested in sex, and they always have been. Its not the fault of some mythical liberal. If you want your local prosecutor to prosecute people for downloading things you consider obscene, then campaign for someone who is willing to try to do that; but don’t lie to make political points.