Nuns and Priests Watch Internet Porn, Pope Admits – well, so too do a lot of Protestants and Baptists

Nuns and Priests Watch Internet Porn, Pope Admits – well, so too do a lot of Protestants and Baptists

I grew up Baptist, and a lot of research and studies in the last 20 years have shown that a lot of Baptists and Protestants (mostly men but some women too) view  porn.

(Link): Priests and nuns watch porn online too, says Pope Francis

…Priests and nuns watch pornography online just like everybody else, the pope told aspiring clerics of the Roman Catholic Church this week.

“It is a vice that many people have, many laymen, many laywomen, and also priests and nuns. The Devil gets in that way,” Francis said Monday, according to the European Times.

“And I’m not just talking about criminal pornography like that involving the abuse of children, that is already degeneration. But pornography that is a little ‘normal.’ Dear brothers, be careful about this,” he warned seminarians at a meeting in Rome.

The famously tolerant 85-year-old pope had been asked by a student of the church whether devotees should use the technologies of the modern world, such as cellphones.

(Link): Nuns and Priests Watch Internet Porn, Pope Admits – well, so too do a lot of Protestants and Baptists

Priests and nuns watch internet porn, Pope Francis admitted while speaking with seminarians in Rome on Monday.

Pope Francis said internet porn was a ‘vice’ shared between members of the church.

‘It is a vice that many people have, many laymen, many laywomen, and also priests and nuns,’ said the 85-year-old Pope.

If condoms are OK for Zika, why not Aids, Pope Francis? by B. Ellen

If condoms are OK for Zika, why not Aids, Pope Francis? by B. Ellen

This editorial: “If condoms are OK for Zika, why not Aids, Pope Francis? by B. Ellen is farther down the page.

I have explained before on this blog that I am not Roman Catholic, and that I disagree with their theology (ie, their rejection of sola fide, sola scriptura, etc).

However, I find that Protestant attitudes on topics sometimes parallel what Roman Catholics (specifically, the Pope) says or thinks, so I do occasionally post about sexuality, dating, marriage, etc, as it intersects Roman Catholicism.

There are some Baptists and Protestants who seem to feel that the only purpose for sex is for pro-creation. If I am not mistaken, that is the Roman Catholic position on sex as well – all sex is supposedly meant to create pregnancy, that a person isn’t to have sex just for the sheer enjoyment of the act. I disagree.

Anyway, I found this interesting. Some in the media are framing the current Pope as saying it’s acceptable for women to use birth control rather than risk getting pregnant and having a fetus with Zika.

I find this a bit confusing, as a p_r_o_Life Twitter page I follow, which is Roman Catholic, if I am not mistaken, believes that a celibate woman is just as bad as a woman who gets an abortion.

These types of P_r_o_Life Catholics really feel it is a woman’s DUTY or only value in life to have a baby – it’s absolutely contrary to what the Bible teaches and is incredibly sexist. I have blogged on that before here:

• (Link): Pro-Life, Yet Anti-Celibacy, Anti-Childless Christian Site Tweets Story about Mother Who Slit New Born Infant Son’s Throat to Save Her Sex Life (Christians equating single or childless / childfree women to women who murder their babies)

(Link):  Pope suggests contraceptives could be used to slow spread of Zika

• (CNN) Pope Francis suggested that contraceptives may be used to prevent the spread of the Zika virus, despite the church’s longstanding ban on most forms of birth control.

Remaining childless can be wise and meaningful. The pope should know – by Gaby Hinsliff

Remaining childless can be wise and meaningful. The pope should know Gaby Hinsliff

Yes, the pope was at it again, shaming and criticizing people who are childless or child free. Here are one or two rebuttals.

(Link): Dear Pope Francis: Not having kids IS selfish … and that’s ok.

(Link): Remaining childless can be wise and meaningful. The pope should know by Gaby Hinsliff

Excerpts (if you want to read the entire piece, please use the link above)

• Feb 2015

• Pope Francis’s comments on parenthood show how we struggle to accept those who are baby-free by choice
• Choosing not to have children is selfish, or so says the pope, who is surely something of an expert on this one, being childless himself. Reminiscing this week about his own upbringing as one of five, he told an audience in St Peter’s Square of his fears for a “greedy generation that doesn’t want to surround itself with children, that considers them above all worrisome, a weight, a risk”.
• ….This isn’t just about Catholicism, and its vested (some might even say selfish) interest in church growth by encouraging the faithful to go forth and multiply. We live in an age where one in five women will not have had children by their mid-40s.
• (And no, there’s no equivalent data for men; giving birth to a child being a more unmistakably public event than fathering one). For some that will have been a positive choice, for others painfully not so; and for a third group it’s perhaps somewhere in the middle – a difficult consequence of choices made but not regretted, a fork in the road not taken.
• But although it’s something millions experience, not having children still carries a wholly unfair stigma for both sexes, an unspoken sense that you owe the world an explanation.
• Any woman in the public eye who doesn’t have children can expect endless nosy questions about why it never happened; whether she had to choose between baby and career, or whether perhaps there’s an intimate gynaecological problem that she fancies sharing with the world.
• But increasingly, childless men are viewed with suspicion. Remember that faintly desperate Gordon Brown photo opportunity, arranged in the days before he had children of his own, involving him at the birthday party of a small child of a staff member? Borrowing someone else’s kid was clearly preferable to the risk of being portrayed as a workaholic loner, incapable of sharing his life.
• And the greatest taboo of all remains confessing to being child-free not by accident but by choice. Stories of infertility, miscarriage or just never having found the right person do at least evoke sympathy. The bile heaped on the former Australian prime minister (Link): Julia Gillard for being what her critics called “deliberately barren” is a reminder of how often the mature, considered choice not to have children is portrayed as cold and heartless.
• …But anyone claiming to have given birth for the benefit of a grateful world is either a liar or an ocean-going narcissist. Having children is without doubt the single most selfish thing I’ve ever done: I did it not for the greater good of a planet that is already teeming with more humans than it can sustainably support but frankly because I wanted to, and because it makes me happy.
• There’s precious little evidence that having children makes you a nicer person – arguably in the sleep-deprived years, it just makes you a grumpier one – and certainly no evidence that bludgeoning people into having children they don’t really want helps anyone concerned.

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Related Posts:

(Link):  More Criticisms of the Pope’s Anti Childless Anti Childfree Comments

(Link): Hey, Pope Francis: Some people would rather raise pets than children by C. Hall

(Link): Why all the articles about being Child Free? On Being Childfree or Childless – as a Conservative / Right Wing / Christian

(Link): Pope Francis Is Wrong About My Child-Free Life by Amanda Marcotte

(Link): Pope Francis To Couples: Raise Children, Not Pets

(Link): Parenthood Does Not Make People More Loving Mature Godly Ethical Caring or Responsible (One Stop Thread)

(Link): If the Family Is Central, Christ Isn’t

(Link): Cultural Discrimination Against Childless and Childfree Women – and link to an editorial by a Childless Woman

(Link): Misapplication of Biblical Verses About Fertility (also mentions early marriage) – a paper by J. McKeown

(Link): Site for Parents Who Have Been Dumped By Their Adult Kids