"This is the Holy Church, the One Church, the True Church, the Catholic Church, fighting against all heresies! He will not have God for his Father who refuses the Church for his Mother. No one can find salvation except in the Catholic Church. Outside the Church, you can find everything except salvation. You can have dignities, you can have Sacraments, you can sing "Alleluia," answer "Amen," have the Gospels, have faith and preach it, too. But never can you find salvation except in the Catholic Church." -- St. Augustine
Keep in mind that she comes from a culture that is more attuned to the natural world, whereas in the West, corruption and luxury and decadence have set deep roots for many generations. In Islam, with harems and the various hadiths and so forth, all kinds of filthiness are allowed, but the complicated laws excuse even the most unspeakable crimes against nature, whether between a man and his concubines or between husband and wife. In Christianity (I exclude Protestantism from this category), the morals are actually much stricter than in Islam or Hinduism, but therefore they are harder to keep without grace. In a society where people are starved from all spiritual knowledge and inspiration, where people habitually reject the graces that Our Lord sends to them because they allow themselves to become too distracted by the world, they are not equipped with the spiritual weapons to resist sin. Nor are they of the proper disposition to call on God's help to resist sin. They form bad habits and fall into confusion, they have no support or advice, and they allow their weakness to get the best of them, so they fall. We must not forget that decadence and luxury are attended by mediocrity on all levels, since they put everything into disorder -- spiritual mediocrity, physical mediocrity, mental mediocrity. Everything is a mess, because nothing is in its place.
A woman in a more traditional society, or in a tribal or nomadic situation, typically lives closer to the natural order. The sobriety and austerity of her upbringing strengthen her mind against sin -- and what could be tempting about the prospect of being a prostitute ? A woman from such a background would likely be shocked by such a suggestion. The only thing that would tempt her to sin would be the fear she would have of her relatives and their threats and torture.
Anyway, people are complicated, but you can see why there would be such a difficulty for people who grow up in the degenerate West to identify sin and disorder, much less heroically resist it, as opposed to those who grow up in the less decadent and ordered East, where the natural law is still widely feared for the most part.
In the Middle Ages, it was not this way. We need to remember that there have been times, many centuries even, when most Christians lived rather clean and decent lives, praying often, fearing the natural law, and with mostly honest minds, good morals, and upright customs. But we took these precious gifts for granted, and God punished us terribly by giving us over to the evil we desired, such that once we reached the maximum blackness, He could demonstrate the fullness of His justice by sweeping it away and replacing it with the grace of Our Lord Jesus Christ. Then the folly of the great Revolutions will be clear for all to see, and nobody will be able to deny the beauty and majesty of God. The physical punishments that we deserve but haven't received yet will have far less moral consequences than the spiritual punishments that have already been sent to us. But they will have the virtue of clarifying the reality of sin, the preciousness of virtue, and the seriousness of judgment -- apparently, great physical chastisements are what people need to be woken up. Then, finally, we will have societies of just, honest men and chaste, upright women again; and we will finally be fit to accomplish the great work of God : the delivery of the Holy Places and the conversion of the Mohammedans to Christ.
But please, do not do our beautiful religion the disservice of comparing its teachings to this wicked generation or the wicked generations that have preceded us. It does not deserve to be associated with those who have neglected God during the times of His visitation, and who have been ungrateful for the great gifts they have been given.
It reminds me of one of the stories from
The Sayings of the Desert Fathers. This is, I think, good for meditation during Lent, especially during our evil days :
'A brother asked an old man saying, "Father, give me some word." The old man said to him, "When God struck Egypt, there was no house that had not mourning."' (pg. 95)
Topic: she didnt need a HailMary (Read 769 times)