[gusty]

At the time of the fall, the contemporaries of that time did not recognize that Rome had fell. The barbarian conquerors saw themselves not replacing Rome, but rising to the leadership of Rome. Roman civilization survived as it was accepted by the kingdoms that supplanted the empire. We have this picture of barbarians with painted faces, running around in animal skins. The truth was quite different. The barbarian tribes had absorbed the culture of Rome into their own for hundreds of years before 476AD. The notion that homosexuality led to the fall of Rome is just silly. At the time of the fall, the Roman Empire was a fully Christian empire since the time of Constantine the Great. More plausible reasons are Rome's constant civil wars. Gibbon in 1776 argued that Christianity itself was the reason Rome fell. He believed that Rome's earlier religion fostered a more martial spirit. Be what it may, lets hope that the United States has the staying power of Rome. We have another 400 years to tie them.

[0beron]

Belloc actually handles that thesis quite handily in his book http://books.google.com/books?id=5ryGAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA21&lpg=PA21&dq=belloc+on+the+roman+church&source=bl&ots=rCbzs8Z0_v&sig=8np-hr2MoW49X_gX5lyyCxcQgWU&hl=en&ei=rUCiTcivE-H30gGJo6ifDQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=5&ved=0CDIQ6AEwBA#v=onepage&q&f=false

The thesis that spiritual and moral generation or exhaustion is what spells the end of civilizations isn’t a new one. It’s very persuasive, and you can see that more than a few influential people believed in it with regard to the Roman State.

What I’m suggesting is that the calamities which followed on the heels of the extreme moral exhaustion of the Roman Empire, which wasn’t entirely Christian at the time you speak, maybe about half, came as a result of the moral decay which negatively effected the fertility of the women and the desire to form families. You can see from contemporaries in the quotes that Sheen is making that the family is under attack and the generality of the population is mercilessly immoral.

I’m actually surprised to see this much resistance to the idea here of all places. After all, this IS a socially conservative site. We do believe, like Richard Nixon, that the State will suffer correspondingly if the people are not moral, and all around us we see these influences destroying the coherence of American Society, not only on an intellectual plane, without which there can be no right actions, but in every aspect of society from folk culture down to the elites themselves who regard those of us who hail morality with contempt, even if they agree with us publicly.