Sexual Sanity on the Dark Continent
It is reported that in the early years of the twentieth century the Blessed Virgin Mary told the adolescent visionaries at Fatima that “more souls go to Hell because of the sins of the flesh than for any other reason.” Over the course of that century, in the Western world at least, the incidence — and approval — of sexual deviancy shot through the roof. As a result of the cultural upheavals that climaxed in the sexual revolution of the late 1960s and early 1970s, Western societies have been plagued by seemingly numberless sex-related pathologies: teen pregnancy, child sexual abuse, a billion-dollar porn industry, rampant promiscuity, the normalization of homosexual activity, human trafficking, rape, AIDS and other STDs, abortion, you name it. It seems that whatever type of deviancy man can think up is being practiced somewhere in Europe and America.
Do we have any reason not to believe that Our Lady of Fatima’s observation is truer now than when she first uttered it?
As international commerce and ever-improving communications technology accelerate the Americanization of the globe, both the blessings and the blight of our Western lifestyles are altering — irrevocably, perhaps — the contours of the cultures they confront. Wi-Fi and Wal-Mart, ballot boxes and body art, Coca-Cola, condoms, and crystal meth: Peoples of the world, we give you democratic capitalism!
Is there no remote corner of the world unperturbed by our benevolence?
Why yes, it seems there is.
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The mark of Christians is to stay recollected in faith, hope, and charity, and in the knowledge that there are things worse than death, such as sin.
Author’s Note: Recently a panel discussion was held at Weston School of Theology in Cambridge,…