tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11838465.post5246102750103421680..comments2024-02-24T18:30:26.749-07:00Comments on prairiemary: HISTORY & CONSEQUENCESUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11838465.post-89584719445909608502013-01-25T18:58:33.008-07:002013-01-25T18:58:33.008-07:00Although there may be some truth in this post rega...Although there may be some truth in this post regarding recent psychological and social trends in perception, so much of the post shows a lack of familiarity with the Church of the 50s-70s, that the whole post is called into question. Specifically:<br />(1) Altar boys are "putting clothes on and off in a private space." If you count taking off hats and coats in cold weather, I suppose that is true. Quickly donning a cassock over everyday clothes, and a surplice over that, doesn't really count as putting clothes on and off. Further, in most urban parish churches (possibly not small rural churches) the priest donned vestments (over everyday clothes) in a separate room on the other side of the altar. I don't recall priests and altar boys vesting themselves in the same room.<br />(2) "Confession is also a point of vulnerability, although much lessened by getting rid of the wooden "box" and speaking to the priest in plain sight but out of earshot." In the traditional "box" there is only a small screen between the priest and penitent, with only the most shadowy visibility and no possibility of physical contact. It is not that quiet, since many times a person on the other side of the priest (most were two-sided) could be heard, and neither priest nor penitent could tell when someone would enter in the middle of things. Getting rid of the box insures MORE verbal privacy.<br />(3) Anyone who thinks our culture defines sex purely as nubile girls having full-frontal intercourse is completely ignoring both the Catholic and (even more) the Protestant/YMCA emphasis on avoiding "self-abuse" during the late 19th and the first 60% or so othe 20th century. It received more time and attention by far than attention to females, since a far more frequent and accessible temptation was involved.<br />(4) The Lives of the Saints and (I presume) Fox's Book of Martyrs appealed to very young boys (don't know about girls) who have a taste for the grotesque and morbid, who liked to sing "the worms go in, the worms go out, the worms play pinochle on your snout," etc Flamboyant martyrdoms were an equal opportunity affair, and any suggested erotic component is a modern conceit derived from Freud. Which is not to say that violence in, say, comic books cannot have an erotic component. But in truth the Lives of the Saints for the young have been replaced by books on dinosaurs, equally grotesque and equally violent, and I am not aware of any erotic components of an addiction to dinosaur stories...Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com