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It's an interesting topic but I also find bizarre the relation with modern policy. I'm both amused and horrified with the idea on the full sentence where your
by licebmi__at__ 8y ago
It's an interesting topic but I also find bizarre the relation with modern policy.
I'm both amused and horrified with the idea on the full sentence where your quote is portrayed:
>Theologians followed the teachings of Saint Augustine, who wrote that it was better for sinful men to frequent brothels than to “corrupt” their wives or other respectable women with nonprocreative sex: “Remove prostitutes from human affairs and you will destroy everything with lust.”
It's kinda silly to imagine a group of "celibate" men suggesting the practicals of prostitution instead of corrupting virtuous women with non procreative sex, and at the same time horrible to consider that in the context of bad contraceptive methods, the advice was to subject some of the women to be second class citizens.
- nine_k 8y agoOK, replace "non-procreative" with "non-consensual".
- azeotropic 8y agoYou have no idea who Augustine is, do you?
- mobilefriendly 8y agoGiven how dangerous child-birth was, there's a something of a tradition going back to at least the Romans of protecting a wife by using prostitutes for base sex
- watwut 8y agoIt was less dangerous for those prostitutes? The chilbirth and childcare was more disastrous and difficult for them as they were single mothers and breadwinners as a result.
- mirimir 8y agoTrue, but they were considered ~disposable.
- watwut 8y agoYes, and that is why the "both amused and horrified" comment makes perfect sense. Other thing that makes perfect sense is the characterization of it all as "the advice was to subject some of the women to be second class citizens" - yes, in exchange of other women being more protected.
- Farradfahren 8y agoThey where implicit expected to murder the newborns/ abort the embryos. That is why it was a "low" profession and those who worked in it where outcasts.
- Spooky23 8y agoSt. Augustine wasn’t a celibate by any means. He struggled with the moral and philosophical nature of things, and certainly got plenty of action during the struggle.
- dmckeon 8y ago> I had entreated chastity of thee and had prayed, "Grant me chastity and continence, but not yet." For I was afraid lest thou shouldst hear me too soon, and too soon cure me of my disease of lust which I desired to have satisfied rather than extinguished. Book 8, Chapter 7, p. 139
- azeotropic 8y agoI was thinking the opening of book three: "TO CARTHAGE I came, where there sang all around me in my ears a cauldron of unholy loves. I loved not yet, yet I loved to love, and out of a deep-seated want, I hated myself for wanting not. I sought what I might love, in love with loving, and safety I hated, and a way without snares. For within me was a famine of that inward food, Thyself, my God; yet, through that famine I was not hungered; but was without all longing for incorruptible sustenance, not because filled therewith, but the more empty, the more I loathed it. For this cause my soul was sickly and full of sores, it miserably cast itself forth, desiring to be scraped by the touch of objects of sense. Yet if these had not a soul, they would not be objects of love. To love then, and to be beloved, was sweet to me; but more, when I obtained to enjoy the person I loved. I defiled, therefore, the spring of friendship with the filth of concupiscense, and I beclouded its brightness with the hell of lustfulness; and thus foul and unseemly, I would fain, through exceeding vanity, be fine and courtly. I fell headlong then into the love wherein I longed to be ensnared. My God, my Mercy, with how much gall didst Thou out of Thy great goodness besprinkle for me that sweetness? For I was both beloved, and secretly arrived at the bond of enjoying; and was with joy fettered with sorrow-bringing bonds, that I might be scourged with the iron burning rods of jealousy, and suspicion, and fears, and angers, and quarrels."