The Internet has made pornography available on a massive scale. Data released by “Pornhub” the world’s most popular Internet porn site, reveal that in 2019 alone, there were over 42 billion visits to ...its website, which in itself is an incredible waste of time and energy, which could be more fruitfully employed. Pornography viewing is poisonous for the conscience and commodifies the human body, reducing it to an object of abusive pleasure. Its negative effects can be broadly seen in three overlapping categories: personal, psychological, and social. The antidote is a renewed call to chastity, that self-mastery that can help direct one’s passions in a more fruitful way. Without prayer, we cannot live chastely as “the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak” (Matthew 26:41). There is an urgency for the new evangelization to help recapture the dignity of the body and counter the lie of pornography, and to ensure that in the digital world, the face of Christ needs to be seen and his voice heard.
Summary:
The first part of this essay outlines some personal, psychological, and social dangers of pornography. Viewing of pornography is harmful, as it objectifies the human body and distorts one’s vision of sexuality. The second part of the essay gives some practical advice concerning how to ideally halt or reverse the epidemic of porn viewing, emphasizing the dignity of each person as subject, and reminding us of how a chaste gaze helps one rediscover the real beauty and value of the human body.
In late modernity both religion and sexuality are being elaborated in terms of reflexivity. In this article, we present findings from our research on the topic of constructions of gender, intimacy ...and sexuality by sisters and brothers in Catholic monasteries in Poland. The findings are based on the mixed-method transformative connection between qualitative (n = 92) and representative sample quantitative research (n = 1543) conducted in 2020. We studied reflexivity on gender, intimacy and sexuality within Catholic religious communities in Poland in order to understand how gender, intimacy and sexuality are presented in the institutionalized framework of religious life. Our study demonstrates that reflexivity on gender, intimacy and sexuality is highly institutionalised and deeply privatized within Catholic religious communities. The article shows that reflexivity of consecrated persons in Poland on gender, intimacy and sexuality is strongly shaped by religious norms (chastity) and subordinated to their religious roles.
Este estudio de los discursos de la viudez en Pepita Jiménez (1874) señala la confluencia de estereotipos provenientes de textos medievales y tratados morales de los siglos XVI y XVII con el discurso ...decimonónico de la domesticidad. Se examinan las recurrentes categorías de viudas malas madres y viudas fraudulentas que encubren la ansiedad que provoca su autonomía. La transgresión de Pepita confirma las advertencias sobre la peligrosa libido de estas mujeres y la flora exótica con la que concluye la novela apunta a la posibilidad de que, a pesar de la aparente contención, su amenaza no haya sido neutralizada.
The Unifying Moral Dyad Schein, Chelsea; Gray, Kurt
Personality & social psychology bulletin,
08/2015, Letnik:
41, Številka:
8
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Do moral disagreements regarding specific issues (e.g., patriotism, chastity) reflect deep cognitive differences (i.e., distinct cognitive mechanisms) between liberals and conservatives? Dyadic ...morality suggests that the answer is "no." Despite moral diversity, we reveal that moral cognition--in both liberals and conservatives--is rooted in a harm-based template. A dyadic template suggests that harm should be central within moral cognition, an idea tested--and confirmed--through six specific hypotheses. Studies suggest that moral judgment occurs via dyadic comparison , in which counter-normative acts are compared with a prototype of harm. Dyadic comparison explains why harm is the most accessible and important of moral content, why harm organizes--and overlaps with--diverse moral content, and why harm best translates across moral content. Dyadic morality suggests that various moral content (e.g., loyalty, purity) are varieties of perceived harm and that past research has substantially exaggerated moral differences between liberals and conservatives.
En la España de la Restauración, la novela naturalista y la prensa anticlerical insistían en que la causa principal de la depravación sexual de los sacerdotes era el voto de castidad. ¿En qué medida ...las tecnologías de saber y de poder médicos de la época permitían defender esa tesis? Este es el asunto abordado en el artículo. En primer lugar se examinan los antecedentes ilustrados de la ofensiva higienista contra el celibato sexual. En segundo lugar se analiza la controversia suscitada por Monlau con su defensa higiénica de la castidad sexual. Los argumentos de Monlau tienen lugar en un contexto de propaganda a favor del celibato suscitada por la Iglesia Católica. En tercer lugar se exploran los argumentos médicos que conectaban causalmente la continencia absoluta con las desviaciones sexuales, en particular la pederastia. Por último se indican las circunstancias que, a comienzos del siglo XX, llevaron a reactivar la defensa médica de la abstinencia sexual entre los jóvenes, anunciando un nuevo prototipo de masculinidad.
This article reads exemplary biographies of chaste widows and women who committed suicide to preserve their chastity in the 1656
御定内則衍義 (Imperially Commissioned Expanded Meaning of the “Inner ...Standards”) by Fu Yijian 傅以漸 (1609–1665,
1646). In this anthology commissioned by the Shunzhi emperor on behalf of his mother, Fu's commentary emphasizes both the agency of individual women and the mutual resonance of personal virtue and political order. He not only praises the exemplars' virtue but also their agency, intelligence, and strategy. He explicitly acknowledges the different factors that could make chastity more difficult and states that in some situations, multiple courses of action were possible. He comments both on his heroines' political ability and on the political importance of recognizing chastity. Finally, in a context where women's chastity was often linked to political loyalism to the fallen Ming, Fu uses these biographies in a very different way: he presents chastity exemplars of conquered dynasties as foils to the decadent society around them. His commentary is thus recognizably tailored to his audience's circumstances as Manchu and Mongolian imperial women and his own as a Chinese male scholar at the beginning of the Qing.
The historical practice of widow chastity in China is regarded as an outcome of traditional Confucian thought. This study examines how economic factors played key roles in the formation of this ...cultural tradition by studying the causality between technological progress in the cotton textile sector and the increase in the number of widow chastity cases between the Ming and Qing Dynasties. We find that the incidence of widow chastity increased significantly with rapid technological change in the cotton textile sector and increased demands for female labor. This result remains robust when the issues of widow chastity selection and alternative economic and cultural channels are addressed.
There is an ignored, misunderstood, and complex reality within the broader clergy sexual abuse scandal within the Roman Catholic Church (RCC)—that of clergy sexual misconduct against adults (CSMAA). ...Estimates and calculations of numbers of victims/survivors over the last half-century reach into the early millions. Furthermore, evidence reveals that CSMAA does produce many serious personal, relational, and practical harms. This article presents and discusses the many expressions of such harms. However, even with the evidence of such harms CSMAA events are, for the most part, still generally perceived as consensual affairs. Such a perception is challenged when CSMAA is contextualised within a professional misconduct framework, and even more so, when survivors thereof participate in the research. Furthermore, CSMAA is clearly not just one type of event. Accordingly, this article also presents a continuum of expressions of CSMAA to assist with perceptual accuracy of this issue along with an unambiguous definition of CSMAA.
Previous studies suggest that the practice of female child and adolescent prostitution can be attributed to various personal and social risk factors. However, cultural beliefs shared in specific ...societies may also determine prostitution involvement. We qualitatively explored the risk factors associated with prostitution in a rarely investigated Indonesian society. We interviewed eight female participants who were involved in adolescent prostitution. The findings suggest that prostitution involvement is not only attributed to the common personal and social risk factors, but also to cultural beliefs of chastity preservation. We argue that such beliefs may be rooted in gender inequality.
This paper focuses on the life of Liu Shu (1520–1657), a woman warrior who lived through the social and political turmoil of the violent dynastic transition from the Ming (1368–1644) dynasty to the ...Qing (1636–1911) dynasty. Drawing on the writings of Liu Shu and on different versions of accounts of her life written by male literati in different time periods, this paper intends to reveal the multiplicity and complexity of how a woman could exert her agency and interact with the dominant structure. Commonly, women’s agency has been understood as resistance against the male-dominant patriarchal system. However, recently, scholars such as Saba Mahmood have problematized universalizing overtly resistant acts against the patriarchal society to bring radical changes as demonstrations of women’s agency. These scholars argue that this approach fails to recognize that through their autonomy and while living a life of self-fulfillment, women have the capacity to reproduce, sustain, or subtly change the social norms and views of values that justify and support the patriarchal structure. In light of these scholars’ studies, this paper explores Liu Shu’s engagement in political and military activities and her Buddhist practices to analyze how she transgressed established gender norms in order to uphold rather than reject the virtues promoted by patriarchal ideology. The paper also discusses how conflicting demands on women by a male-centered society in the drastic dynastic transition enabled her to negotiate with or challenge the dominant structure. It also considers how her disobedient acts were accepted and applauded by some male literati to address their own agenda in different cultural, historical, and political contexts.
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