One hears often
that the “liberation” of the human libido began in earnest in the United States
in the “sexual revolution” of the 1960s. Americans, troubled over repressive
attitudes toward human sexuality, hoped for a revolution that would free them
from outdated moral and social constraints. It resulted not in liberation but
in license and a host of societal sexual crises. Since the onset of the sexual
revolution, we have had to face an ever-increasing array of sexual problems. One
has only to think of the tremendous increase in the number of post-1960s
illegitimate births and abortions, sexually transmitted diseases, opposition to
censorship of pornography (especially on the Internet), and the resulting
sexual addiction (in some extreme instances resulting in murder). Consider too
the tremendous blows to marriage and the family done by adultery, the battle
over the homosexual lifestyle in the United States, Canada and Europe (now to
the point of the redefinition of marriage under the law); the increasing incidences
of sexual harassment, child pornography on the Internet, Internet predators,
date rape, and of course, the divorce rate. Recently Anthony Esolen of Firsts Things has written of the victims of this revolution in this sagacious piece....
“ F ive years ago, I would have been afraid of saying anything like what the pope said in his [recent] interview,” the Rev. Tom Reese told Sally Quin . “I’m ecstatic. I haven’t been this hopeful about the church in decades....” “It’s fun to be a religion reporter again. For a while it felt like being on the crime beat. It’s fun to be Catholic again.” George Weigel has raised the question of whether or not Fr. Tom has been paying attention throughout the last quarter of the 20th century and the first decade of the 21st. Among his findings on the legacies of Pope Francis' predecessors: Fr. Thomas Reese, S.J. millions of adults have been baptized as or entered into full communion with the Catholic Church. new forms of campus ministry in the mold of JPII's "New Evangelization" have developed across the United States. Catholic-studies programs have bloomed on genuinely Catholic campuses across the U.S. the Church has produced the most c...
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