He is right, but before we tackle chastity, we will need to restore belief in Christ and the Christian religion in the west. Without that foundation, you have no basis for demands that are unpopular.
I would gently disagree. My read on what His Holiness is saying is “Lets get our own house in order.”
Get back to a Church that practices what it preaches, with members that don’t just cherry pick but who live their faith.
The popularity or not of a demand is not the point. It isn’t even a demand - just a call to get back to considering sex as a sacred act and trust, not a light snack available from the nearest vending machine.
I grew up in the 60s and 70s - sex was literally downgraded to the level of grabbing an apple from the fridge. There are some encouraging signs that this idea is being rejected (FReepmail me if you want to know) but HH is right.
We need to push it more. Make chastity fashionable, if you like.
I just don’t think a secular society will go along with chastity. So, in order to restore some semblance of morality, we need to restore the basis for morality, which was religion. There are non-religious arguments for our moral values, but it’s an uphill value to win that argument without some religious beliefs underlying them. That’s what I’m saying, not that we can’t overcome a popular social behavior.
> Make chastity fashionable,
I don’t know... sex is very, very popular.
The practical benefits of chastity were obvious to many of the pagans. A father doesn’t want his daughters producing children without an economic foundation. A man wants to know his children are his own.
Dr. Elizabeth Vandiver, presenter on “The Great Courses” set on The Odyssey, observed that Penelope had to be chaste through all the years of Odysseus’s absence, or the paternity of Telemachus would have been called into question, because her character would be proven untrustworthy.