5 ms·

I don't know about Shakers, but dragging Catholic religious into this is laughable. > Breaking away from families of origin and remaking them into families of

I don't know about Shakers, but dragging Catholic religious into this is laughable. > Breaking away from families of origin and remaking them into families of choice were not incidental for ... Catholic men and women, but should be understood as a deeply political act. The alternative structures of ... monastic family life and the intimacies they created without sex built an explicit, nonnormative sexual culture in a society that rigidly presented heterosexual love and family as the only legitimate and legal option. Catholic religious will be happy to tell you that "heterosexual love and family" is the only moral option.

dragonwriter 5y ago
> Catholic religious will be happy to tell you that “heterosexual love and family” is the only moral option. The Catholic heirarchy will be happy to tell you that consistently. Catholic religious are…not the same thing, and substantially more diverse. (Source: been Catholic approximately my whole life, and known quite a few religious, having spent a long time in a parish run by an order, and some more time regularly attending and volunteering in a retreat center run by a different order.)
- aeneasmackenzie 5y ago
  Can you be specific? I anticipate that the people you are thinking of are heretics. I mean specifically that they deviate from dogmas of the church, not any colloquial definition.
  - ijasidfjiajsdf 5y ago
    Some Catholic priests and parishes are considerably more "progressive" than others. Every major city has at least one progressive parish, often it can be the Jesuit parish. Catholic teaching is quite strict that the purpose of sex is "bonding and babies." (More formally, sex is "unitive, marital, and procreative.") The progressive priests and bishops don't blatantly contradict this, but they do stress how "welcoming and inclusive" they are to practitioners of sexual acts that are neither unitive, marital, nor procreative, while never choosing to preach any homilies about God creating sex for the purpose of strengthening the bond between husband and wife and to enable the two to "be fruitful and multiply."
    - trasz 5y ago
      This is true in certain places, but far from universal. I'd be quite surprised if you found such progressive priests in Poland, for example. The official Catholic stance - essentially "teaching" people are no different from cattle, sexuality-wise - seems to be enforced very heavily there.
      - mensetmanusman 5y ago
        “The official Catholic stance - essentially "teaching" people are no different from cattle, sexuality-wise - seems to be enforced very heavily there.” This is a straw man assertion…
      - bobthechef 5y ago
        What's with your condescension? It's horrible. The Catholic position is grounded in natural law theory. The telos of the sexual organs is essentially procreative; deny the procreative end and sex becomes incomprehensible. To use sexual organs in a manner that _intentionally_ works against their end is to intentionally frustrate their end. To intentionally thwart the operation of your faculties and misuse them is immoral and therefore contradicts one's fulfillment and actualization as a human being. Calling people cattle for living in accordance with the procreative end of sexual intercourse, which is the ultimate end of sexual intercourse, is nasty, if not irrational. Before you do so, I suggest you acquaint yourself[0] with the actual position held and defended by the Catholic Church. [0] https://www.catholic.com/magazine/print-edition/lets-think-about-sex https://www.catholic.com/magazine/print-edition/lets-think-a...
        gammarator 5y ago
        This is the naturalistic fallacy.
      - javagram 5y ago
        > The official Catholic stance - essentially "teaching" people are no different from cattle, sexuality-wise The church is perfectly fine with promiscuity, artificial insemination, sterilization etc. among cattle or pets. The same behaviors they tell humans are immoral, because they think humans aren’t just cattle.
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  > The Catholic heirarchy will be happy to tell you that consistently. To correct myself, actually, relevant to the instant article, no, even they won't. Because choosing neither heterosexual love nor family in the usual sense (or, for that matter, even the sense that religious communities are a kind of family, as both lay committed celibacy and eremetic life, both private and consecrated, are recognized vocations) is very much an option, even to the heirarchy. They hierarchy is fairly certain to say romantic love and family are a moral option only within a committed, exclusive, heterosexual context, though.
mustafa_pasi 5y ago
The "nonnormative sexual culture" they are referring to is celibacy. Besides monks and nuns there are also hundreds of lay Catholic organizations that require members to remain celibate.
pessimizer 5y ago
Early Christianity had indifference bordering on disdain for marriage, and there's no record of a Christian rite for marriage until the 9th century. Celibacy was considered the ideal. Same for the Shakers, which is why they died out.
- iammisc 5y ago
  Catholicism taught that celibacy is ideal until vatican II. Nominally, it still does. That being said, marriage is still the only appropriate place for sex, and then only heterosexual sex, by church teaching. So both you and the one you replied to are correct.
- bobthechef 5y ago
  Not really.[0] This sounds like one of those bizarre confections that occasionally surface among progressive Protestants et al. [0] https://www.catholic.com/tract/the-permanence-of-matrimony https://www.catholic.com/tract/the-permanence-of-matrimony
- lebuffon 5y ago
  I think that's because in the early decades Paul had the impression that the messiah was coming back any time now. Who needs children. If you read his letters in chronological order (not bible order) you can see the wind come out those sails. :)
mensetmanusman 5y ago
Maybe Protestant Catholics, but that hasn’t been true since 34 AD :)

dragonwriter 5y ago

> Catholic religious will be happy to tell you that “heterosexual love and family” is the only moral option. The Catholic heirarchy will be happy to tell you that consistently. Catholic religious are…not the same thing, and substantially more diverse. (Source: been Catholic approximately my whole life, and known quite a few religious, having spent a long time in a parish run by an order, and some more time regularly attending and volunteering in a retreat center run by a different order.)

aeneasmackenzie 5y ago
Can you be specific? I anticipate that the people you are thinking of are heretics. I mean specifically that they deviate from dogmas of the church, not any colloquial definition.
- ijasidfjiajsdf 5y ago
  Some Catholic priests and parishes are considerably more "progressive" than others. Every major city has at least one progressive parish, often it can be the Jesuit parish. Catholic teaching is quite strict that the purpose of sex is "bonding and babies." (More formally, sex is "unitive, marital, and procreative.") The progressive priests and bishops don't blatantly contradict this, but they do stress how "welcoming and inclusive" they are to practitioners of sexual acts that are neither unitive, marital, nor procreative, while never choosing to preach any homilies about God creating sex for the purpose of strengthening the bond between husband and wife and to enable the two to "be fruitful and multiply."
  - trasz 5y ago
    This is true in certain places, but far from universal. I'd be quite surprised if you found such progressive priests in Poland, for example. The official Catholic stance - essentially "teaching" people are no different from cattle, sexuality-wise - seems to be enforced very heavily there.
    - mensetmanusman 5y ago
      “The official Catholic stance - essentially "teaching" people are no different from cattle, sexuality-wise - seems to be enforced very heavily there.” This is a straw man assertion…
    - bobthechef 5y ago
      What's with your condescension? It's horrible. The Catholic position is grounded in natural law theory. The telos of the sexual organs is essentially procreative; deny the procreative end and sex becomes incomprehensible. To use sexual organs in a manner that _intentionally_ works against their end is to intentionally frustrate their end. To intentionally thwart the operation of your faculties and misuse them is immoral and therefore contradicts one's fulfillment and actualization as a human being. Calling people cattle for living in accordance with the procreative end of sexual intercourse, which is the ultimate end of sexual intercourse, is nasty, if not irrational. Before you do so, I suggest you acquaint yourself[0] with the actual position held and defended by the Catholic Church. [0] https://www.catholic.com/magazine/print-edition/lets-think-about-sex https://www.catholic.com/magazine/print-edition/lets-think-a...
      - gammarator 5y ago
        This is the naturalistic fallacy.
    - javagram 5y ago
      > The official Catholic stance - essentially "teaching" people are no different from cattle, sexuality-wise The church is perfectly fine with promiscuity, artificial insemination, sterilization etc. among cattle or pets. The same behaviors they tell humans are immoral, because they think humans aren’t just cattle.
dragonwriter 5y ago
> The Catholic heirarchy will be happy to tell you that consistently. To correct myself, actually, relevant to the instant article, no, even they won't. Because choosing neither heterosexual love nor family in the usual sense (or, for that matter, even the sense that religious communities are a kind of family, as both lay committed celibacy and eremetic life, both private and consecrated, are recognized vocations) is very much an option, even to the heirarchy. They hierarchy is fairly certain to say romantic love and family are a moral option only within a committed, exclusive, heterosexual context, though.

mustafa_pasi 5y ago

The "nonnormative sexual culture" they are referring to is celibacy. Besides monks and nuns there are also hundreds of lay Catholic organizations that require members to remain celibate.

pessimizer 5y ago

Early Christianity had indifference bordering on disdain for marriage, and there's no record of a Christian rite for marriage until the 9th century. Celibacy was considered the ideal. Same for the Shakers, which is why they died out.

iammisc 5y ago
Catholicism taught that celibacy is ideal until vatican II. Nominally, it still does. That being said, marriage is still the only appropriate place for sex, and then only heterosexual sex, by church teaching. So both you and the one you replied to are correct.
bobthechef 5y ago
Not really.[0] This sounds like one of those bizarre confections that occasionally surface among progressive Protestants et al. [0] https://www.catholic.com/tract/the-permanence-of-matrimony https://www.catholic.com/tract/the-permanence-of-matrimony
lebuffon 5y ago
I think that's because in the early decades Paul had the impression that the messiah was coming back any time now. Who needs children. If you read his letters in chronological order (not bible order) you can see the wind come out those sails. :)

mensetmanusman 5y ago

Maybe Protestant Catholics, but that hasn’t been true since 34 AD :)