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Post by Clotilde on Jun 7, 2016 16:41:50 GMT -5
Some of this is true and represents a portion of Mohammedean thought. I don't know if you all missed it but I've talked it over with some of them and they are like Pharisees with regards to this stuff. They think that time spent doing their rituals equals a concrete number of minutes in their version of heaven. For example, if I fast for two minutes that's 47 minutes in the heaven bank someday. So yes, some of it is their warped ideas on women, but some of it is also this bizarre phariseeism. This is the motivation for some of them.
The way non-Catholics near virtuous acts and fall short is somewhat of an interest to me. Most especially, the concept of charity towards neighbor and how they perceive it. It is so foreign and very hard to describe.
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Greg
Junior Member
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Post by Greg on Jun 7, 2016 17:29:26 GMT -5
"So yes, some of it is their warped ideas on women, but some of it is also this bizarre phariseeism"
Couldn't the same be justifiably said about Trads who obsess about this topic?
There are objective standards yes, but it appears to me that we are troubled by what we are unfamiliar with, rather than what is objectively troubling.
Our family nanny spent the whole flight to Egypt fearing being blown out of the sky by a terrorist bomb. She had not really thought about the dangers and risks. I didn't worry about it because I knew the risks were vanishingly small. We are back safe and sound.
An occasion of sin for me would be if women approached me seductively and wanted to take me to bed. That's never happened in my life.
A women dressed in a bikini is a pretty common sight and one I've gotten used to seeing whether in local parks or on beaches. Since I know she just wants to read her book or get a tan and not jump into bed with me, ever, I really don't spend much time thinking about how the dirty Jezebel is going to lead me into temptation. Because she isn't. Unless I enable the stupid fantasy in my own mind and dwell on it. That's far more my fault than hers. If I am laying the blame on her state of attire I'll really little different than the Muslim pharisee.
If I think, what a beautiful woman with a great tan and then get back to cutting my toenails or reading my book then there's no real occasion of sin because there is no opportunity to sin with her as such. The "occasion of sin" really comes about due to the observer willfully misinterpreting the outcome and thinking about situations which realistically will never come to pass.
A woman walking in and doing a pole dance in my office would be more at fault than I would for any subsequently sin of lust. But that has never happened and never will. For the sins of lust I've committed in life I was 98% the one at fault.
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Post by Clotilde on Jun 7, 2016 17:45:09 GMT -5
"So yes, some of it is their warped ideas on women, but some of it is also this bizarre phariseeism" Couldn't the same be justifiably said about Trads who obsess about this topic? There are objective standards yes, but it appears to me that we are troubled by what we are unfamiliar with, rather than what is objectively troubling. Yes, but since the topic was about Muslims, I figured I would stick to it because we have our own problems in the trad world with what you just touched upon. I could have started a thread about it but it would have turned into a rant about traditionalists and I'm trying not to think about it right now.
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Post by heinrich on Jun 7, 2016 17:47:40 GMT -5
If they have that little self control then why not force themselves on a clothed woman? Doesn't take much to take the clothes off. It's my contention that people end up behaving according to their beliefs and not the other way around. If you believe that you have little self-control then you have no motivation to learn or develop self-control. Actually, it's not that difficult to sit on a beach and rationalize that just because a woman is wearing a bikini it does not mean that she wants to be pestered by you. She nearly always just wants to get a tan. Admittedly, this is easier to rationalize at 48 years old than 28 and easier at 28 than 18. As the years pass people mature and question their beliefs or at least see the exceptions and parts where they no longer hold. In my 20s I spent a lot of time in Europe (France, Majorca, Italy, Costa Del Sol, and Costa Brava where women walk around topless not just on the beach but even to the shops, bars and restaurants on the other side of the promenade. While for the first few days of your holiday it is somewhat distracting by the second week it's all a bit passé. The novelty of seeing a pair of breasts every 20 seconds quickly wears off and you realise that most humans look pretty much like most other humans. Occasionally you will see a women with a stunning figure, great legs, curves in all the right places and a beautiful face and you'll look and think "what a stunner". But frankly, I'd look at a very attractive woman whatever she was wearing, because attractive women are a pleasure to look at. I subscribe to the idea of appropriate clothing but "modest" clothing I've seen described as everything from a wife beater on the beach to wearing a dark suit and tie to mass on a 90F Sunday. Part of the problem is nearly always the viewer and their idea of what is modest or immodest and then obsessing about something that crosses the line. Greg I agree with you to a point...but there is an objective standard of proper attire. In our day and age with liberalism and feminism and the general sexualization of every thing just assaulting every sensory input it is possible to become desensitized to what it truly means to be human. You may forget that certain fashions and trends are very bad for you and society. Much the same way an addict forgets that heroin is actually killing them. That goes for ALL of us unless we be cloistered nuns or hermits. As for the Muslim "men"...how very convenient dont you think (as jovial points out) that it is women's responsibility to keep from arousing the men? The very essence of justification to rape without remorse or inhibition...after all if the woman dresses like that she obviously should expect to get assaulted. That is the very defense made by these muzzie animals. Exactly. Just ask the women of Cologne.
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Caillin
Approved Cath Resource contributor
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Post by Caillin on Jun 7, 2016 19:53:36 GMT -5
The "occasion of sin" really comes about due to the observer willfully misinterpreting the outcome and thinking about situations which realistically will never come to pass. Do you believe this is true for the average man? I think what you just defined is the sin itself, not the occasion of sin, and I would say that for the average man, the greater the degree of female bodily accentuation or exposure he is exposed to (at least from neck to knees), the greater the temptations, or possibility of temptations, to impure thoughts. Why? A natural purpose of the appearance of the female body is to effect in men's minds such thoughts directed towards the ultimate procreative end. For reasons that don't need to be stated, the appearance of the male body does not need to have this kind of, or degree of effect on women. And as anyone knows by just assessing and comparing women's reactions and type of interest towards men's physical appearance, it's very different from men's,and it generally doesn't have this same effect, at least hardly in the same way, and certainly not close to the same degree. By exposing the female body in the highest degree possible (apart from half a bikini or full nakedness), the bikini creates the highest degree of likelihood that impure thoughts will be caused in the mind of the man seeing this exposure. Again, that’s what the physical appearance of the female body is naturally directed towards. It’s the goal of the design. It’s what it is supposed to do. If the woman exposed is not the man’s wife, though, such thoughts are sins (at least materially). Any occasion by which there might be cause for such impure thoughts to occur will be, by definition, an occasion of sin. That Muslims take this to extremes and use this to justify their evil beliefs and ways, or that there are exceptions found among men, doesn't nullify what truth there is in it.
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Greg
Junior Member
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Post by Greg on Jun 8, 2016 1:07:03 GMT -5
I think that change in what you are used to and a mind incapable or a will not ready of dealing with that change creates the problem.
Yes humans generally suffer from this. But not just with sex. People are angered, troubled by all sorts of changes many of which turn out to be relatively benign. 24 hour banking, pop tarts, rock and roll, Y2K, the Rubrics of '62.
Tribesmen in Africa and various islands live with semi naked women all the time. They get used to it. For the tourist or explorer it comes as a shock. Doctors see naked and semi naked women everyday as do people working in theatre changing rooms.
Egyptians in Cairo rape a blond TV reporter who is relatively speaking modestly dressed. In the Red Sea hotels however they manage to restrain themselves when women are in bikinis or even thongs. Are they less passionate or more in control in Hurghada than 500 miles to the North? No, of course not. They are just more used to it.
Men used to find that women's ankles aroused their ardour. Find me a man today who on seeing a woman's ankles is consumed with lust. I don't think I've ever looked at any woman's ankle and had a sexual thought. For the simple reason that I see ankles all day long. I'd never get anything done.
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Post by Voxxkowalski on Jun 8, 2016 4:57:21 GMT -5
All of which seems acceptable...EXcept your forgetting the teachings of some very great Saints and Doctors of the Church. And comparing the Catholic cultural norms to aboriginal and primitive feral tribes is a non seqatur. These tribes are animalistic and no sane society can be formed by following their lead. They are LESS human. The full human...that is the being that is striving to live under and follow his creators will as fully as possible...understands not to take the sexual powers to lightly. To grant them full honor and respect they deserve. To trivialize or degrade them is to forget that they are the source of human procreated life. It is an amazing power with tremendous responsabilitys. Contraception and abortions are the toxic waste created when we forget these things.
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Post by mundacormeum on Jun 8, 2016 6:38:51 GMT -5
I think it's also importamt to remember that virtue lies in the balance between two extremes. So, being hyper-sensitive or acutely aware of sexuality and how one dresses all the time is just as wrong as being completely de-sensitized and passe about it. If you see the human body and sexuality for what it really is, as God created it to be, then you will neither be ashamed of it, overly proud of it, nor go around half naked everywhere as if it is not a big deal at all. Obviously, we can't control what other people do, so there's only so much 'avoiding occasions of sin' we can reasonably be expected to do. We can't just stay inside our homes for the rest of our lives. Also, desensitization of something doesn't automatically make it less wrong, or acceptable. Either sometihng is wrong (immodestly walking around in public half naked), or it isn't....being used to it doesn't change that fact. If it did, abortion and homosexuality would be perfectly acceptable in far too many places.
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Post by Pacelli on Jun 9, 2016 13:30:42 GMT -5
It seems to me that separate issues are being conflated here. How we define immodesty in a particular area or age is a distinct matter from where Catholics may go where there is immodestly dressed persons. Both of these are separate issues from our obligation to have custody over our eyes when confronted with immodestly dressed persons. There are a lot of issues at play here that need to be defined and separately dealt with.
I will try to dig up some teachings of the moralists that will address some of the specific questions raised in this thread and post them in the resourse thread.
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Post by chestertonian on Jun 9, 2016 21:39:25 GMT -5
Much like other middle eastern food. Local dishes worth eating. The other stuff a poor facsimile of food. Yogurts, ice cream, tomatoes are all tasty. Cheese is processed rubbish apart from cream cheese which is nice. Food in Israel is the best. Only meat here worth eating is lamb or chicken. Yes.. Went to usrael on my bar mitzvah..the food was somethingslecual
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Post by chestertonian on Jun 9, 2016 21:43:28 GMT -5
Unfortunately diving/swimming in the Red Sea requires (practically speaking) one to see bikini clad women. I don't think diving in Saudi Arabia is an option for a family holiday. Besides that my children will see bikini clad women in the local park of any English market town during the summer months and, perhaps worst still, canoodling homosexuals during the summer months. This is now a frequent sight in the UK and most of Western Europe. An occasion of sin is an occasion you can avoid. They can't avoid going to the park and everywhere else life requires one to go during the summer months. Going to the beach in Egypt is probably less of an occasion of sin that going to Hyde Park or Central Park during May to September. If one can't avoid it then what does one do? Stay inside like a recluse? On the positive side, at least they saw modestly dressed Islamic women too in both Egypt and Istanbul. They are not all in full niqabs. Many of the Arabic tourists had full length Adidas neck to ankle swimming wear. Gives them something to think about and makes them realize that their culture is not a universal one. Other places do things differently; for better or worse. Thinking about the comments on various Trad Catholic forums I don't see a large problem with voyeuristic men. Sure men are prone to lust as they've always been but Trad women aren't complaining that Trad men are all running after bikini models but rather that there seem to be rather a lot of homos in Traditional circles, as well as men who have decided that marriage is not for them at least this side of 40 or given up trying to chase after women. For at least some of the first group, swimming with bikini clad women would be less of an occasion of sin than drinking in the pub with tweed clad men discussing Tolkien. wgats canoodling are they canudisys we used to go canoeing wgev i was in college and occasionally youd see the odd naked guy on a canoe my wife once yelled atim "you're going to give yourself a melanoma!!!!!!!!!
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Post by annamack on Mar 9, 2017 15:40:30 GMT -5
A nun that gives up all her physical beauty by covering herself from head to toe is like a man who decides to never drink alcohol, not because he thinks it's immoral to do so, but because it's a perfectly good thing to drink, which makes it a true sacrifice, just like the nun sacrificing all her physical beauty. Muslims are teetotalers in both respects. They don't cover themselves out of the notion of sacrificing something good, but out of the notion that that good thing is evil; like Manicheism and Albigensienism. On the other hand, no man should be at a beach with bikini clad women, barring some necessity. If a man finds himself to be the exception to which this is not a grave occasion of sin, at the very least he should recognize that it is a grave occasion of sin for men in general, and treat it in this regard in public and around others. All joking aside, it does seem rather an odd holiday for a traditional Catholic...
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Post by annamack on Mar 9, 2017 15:47:38 GMT -5
Some of this is true and represents a portion of Mohammedean thought. I don't know if you all missed it but I've talked it over with some of them and they are like Pharisees with regards to this stuff. They think that time spent doing their rituals equals a concrete number of minutes in their version of heaven. For example, if I fast for two minutes that's 47 minutes in the heaven bank someday. So yes, some of it is their warped ideas on women, but some of it is also this bizarre phariseeism. This is the motivation for some of them. The way non-Catholics near virtuous acts and fall short is somewhat of an interest to me. Most especially, the concept of charity towards neighbor and how they perceive it. It is so foreign and very hard to describe. What's most warped is that, if you read the koran (not to mention what mohammed had to say for himself), it's clear that the god they worship is actually Satan.
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