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Location: By the sea, by the sea, by the beautiful sea
68,329 posts, read 54,400,252 times
Reputation: 40736
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mattie Jo
The Jehovah's Witnesses are not open minded. I used to be one. We went door to door to con people into joining. We used brainwashing techniques.
I have no idea what the entire group is like but the two I have contact with are very open-minded, otherwise I would have only talked with them once. My only other experience with them was being given a tour of an old movie theater they restored in Jersey City NJ, they did a beautiful job with the restoration and not one word was said about their particular beliefs during the tour.
You have no idea of the impact you have left or failed to leave. Which is even more sad.
It was a joke. Seriously, though, I have many devout friends of various faiths, from Jewish to Catholic to Evangelical Christian to Buddhist. Our families are remarkably similar in outlook and lifestyle. Long married, monogamous, responsible, hard-working, modest in dress, and community-minded. Our kids are mostly doing fine. A few have struggled with common issues (grades, etc.), but they're making their way. The non-church going are not a disaster nor are we responsible for any perceived downfall of western culture. Other than perhaps that we're just so bloody boring.
Last edited by randomparent; 01-18-2017 at 08:17 AM..
Location: By the sea, by the sea, by the beautiful sea
68,329 posts, read 54,400,252 times
Reputation: 40736
Quote:
Originally Posted by Oldglory
I agree. Not everything was better back in the 50's but as the OP said we are suffering from culture rot today brought about by the so-called progressives.
And in the '50s people talked of the culture rot of Rock 'n Roll, the Beats, and the COMMIE-PINKO! threat among other things. To talk of 'culture rot' as something new is silly, every generation seems to have its own 'rot', real or imagined.
And in the '50s people talked of the culture rot of Rock 'n Roll, the Beats, and the COMMIE-PINKO! threat among other things. To talk of 'culture rot' as something new is silly, every generation seems to have its own 'rot', real or imagined.
People been saying it for thousands of years. It is the end product of getting so old that you forget how much of an a$$hole you were when you were a kid.
People been saying it for thousands of years. It is the end product of getting so old that you forget how much of an a$$hole you were when you were a kid.
I'm 30 years old. I wasn't alive in the 50s. Based on what I've read in history books, I'm glad I wasn't.
And in the '50s people talked of the culture rot of Rock 'n Roll, the Beats, and the COMMIE-PINKO! threat among other things. To talk of 'culture rot' as something new is silly, every generation seems to have its own 'rot', real or imagined.
This generation is better than that one...this generation is better than this one and so forth.
And there's never been a shortage of people who do go to church who also happily lie, cheat and steal during the week.
The 1950's were not perfect nor as idealistic as the media of that area portrayed. And there were cruel people, psychopaths, serial killers, child abusers, drug addiction problems, broken homes then too. On top of that Jim Crow racial segregation still existed in the US then even though it existed long before the 1950's. Some of the small Southern town then were pretty thuggish with some of the rural whites and white cops.
That said... I'm persuaded that in general the 1950's was one of the better times in US history. For blacks too. In terms of black neighborhoods being self sufficient with black businesses and blacks for the most part treating each other pretty neighborly. Black-Americans in Milwaukee from those days talk about a time when they used to go to be at night leaving their doors unlocked.
The 1920's and 1930's I believe were rougher periods in the US than the 1950's with the 1920's and 1930's being more comparable to the early 1990's and even today.
Actually, I think all of the 1900's prior to the 1950's were rougher periods of the USA than the 1950's.
The late 1800's is a period of US history that stands unique I think. It was perhaps the closest to a libertarian society the US has ever had I think. Well... in terms of urban America. There remained conservative social mores yet at the same time the cities were pretty "wide open." Opium dens, cocaine being sold freely for recreational use, gambling parlors, brothels operating openly, completely corrupt city governments, rows of stalls set up on bars that for a small price men could bring a woman into to have sex with. And violence was common with no forensic science and inferior policing to combat much of it. Corpses of men frequently floated up in the Milwaukee River during the late 1800's. In once case the corpse of a man tied in a sack up to his neck, with his legs cut off, hands tied, and large axe wound in his skull, was retrieved from the Milwaukee River. The identity of the man was never discovered by the local police.
But the 1960's and 1970's ushered in a different period--influenced by communism--attacking all traditions and mores of the United States. Of the Christian United States that is. Homosexuality had always existed before but the gay male bathhouses exploded in sexual decadence with a single gay man sometimes having sex with 20 or more men in a single 24 hour period. And he would go back another day, and another day, and another day. Imagine the number of sexual partners--often unprotected--in years time? And the spread of HIV moved rapidly through the gay community.
The gay male community has sense restrained its sexual practice much more.
The gay culture infiltrated the Catholic Church in particular during the 1960's too. It was not a matter merely of gay men being priest, but rather homosexuality among the men took on an ideological kind of identity akin to communism or right-wing conservativism and they sought to shun out of seminaries and the Church ranks anyone that was not disposed to approving of and promoting the advancement of that sexual lifestyle.
So, you had openly gay priests like this fellow who would eventually bring reputational damage upon the priesthood of the Church.
Some of the priestly sex abusers abused both young children and adolescents, and may also have had relations with adults. There was crossover — most notably in the case of Fr. Paul Shanley, one of the most notorious names in the Boston sex abuse cover-up. According to Eberstadt, Shanley was not a pedophile, but "a sexually active gay man with a taste for children and adolescents." Not only was he an active member of the gay community, often giving talks to Dignity USA as well as speaking on homosexuality in various seminaries, he and a gay priest co-owned a gay resort. Shanley was a homosexual before he was a pedophile.
This movie which was originally a play written by a Catholic layman that came up through that cultural transitional period of the Church, captures the tension between the "old way" of the head nun and the "new way" of the priest. Like Fr. Shanley he was "cool" like every liberal or Democrat would want.
The play and film masterfully provides the dilemma of never truly knowing as no admittance is made and no one actually sees any sexual scene. You don't know if the priest is innocent and the nun unfair, paranoid, and too attached to old ways which bias her, or if the priest is guilty and if guilty to that of what?
I was in about the last generation of grade school kids during the early 1980's to be educated by nuns. And still when Catholic nuns looked like nuns. Not walking around with these feminist lesbian haircuts as they do now.
The transition period of old nuns retiring and lay women and men replacing them took part when I was in grade school. The male lay principal we would get was nothing of the nun principal we all feared. When she walked into the room we all--boys and girls alike--straightened up. I used to be terrified getting sent to her office.
I would not find out until I was an adult the reason she left the school was because some woman complained to her superiors that we children were terrified of her (the principal). Which was true of course. But times were changing and that was no longer as acceptable. But I and I think all my former classmates look back fondly on that respect and fear of our nun principal we had. She kept us in line. And I think it made us better children.
While we did not snap to military attention, standing on our feet, when she walked in a class like the kids in this film did, we did straighten up in our seats and did not goof around.
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threat among other things. To talk of 'culture rot' as something new is silly, every generation seems to have its own 'rot', real or imagined.
