The Inevitable Crimes of Celibacy: The Vices of Convents and Monasteries, Priests and NunsWatson, Thomas E. (Thomas Edward)
Religion
The Inevitable Crimes of Celibacy: The Vices of Convents and Monasteries, Priests and Nuns
Watson, Thomas E. (Thomas Edward)
Catholic Church -- Controversial literature; Celibacy -- Catholic Church
(Doway Bible: Deut. xx:14. I will hereafter use this Roman Catholic
version as the true one, thus avoiding any dispute with papists as to
the accuracy of my quotations.)
In this Doway, or Douay, a version of the Book, we are somewhat patly
told that the first thing which Adam did, after having been dispossessed
of Eden, was to know "Eve his wife, who conceived and brought forth
Cain, saying, I have gotten a man through God."
Then she brought forth Abel; and before six other verses are ended, we
learn that the brothers are at enmity because of religion, and that one
has killed the other.
How Adam and Eve were to have propagated the human race, had Eve not
listened to the snake; or whether they were to have propagated it at
all, is a mystery which our finite minds were evidently not expected to
fathom. Nevertheless, Saint Augustine made a heroic effort to answer
the riddle; and his classic theological work, "The City of God,"
contains his theory, still discreetly veiled in the original Latin,
which, being interpreted, is considerably nastier than any other English
that I ever perused in a classical theological work.
The first occupation of Adam outside of Paradise ought to have some
weight with us, as a time-honored precedent. That wicked mankind, and
Noe came out of the Ark, together with all those animals, birds,
reptiles, &c., the very first command given him was, that he and his
family should increase and multiply. Apparently, their obedience to this
command was so prompt and effective that the Lord never reproached him
or his descendants for any neglect of duty in that particular.
"And God blessed Noe and his sons: and said unto them, Increase and
multiply, and fill the earth."
It is true that Noe got drunk, soon after this; but the diligent
casuists, who follow every perilous passage in the Douay Bible with
their indefatigable notes, tell us that Noe did not commit a sin by
getting drunk, "because he knew not the strength of it," the wine.
(Thus does ignorance excuse the sinner, when the casuists need the
defense.)
And through the Mosaic Code, breathes the same spirit and purpose: it
can fairly be summed up in the phrase, _Thou shalt marry_!
Every encouragement is given to wedlock and to large families: polygamy
itself, had its _reason_, in those hot climates where puberty is reached
at so early an age, and where the child-bearing woman is so quickly aged
into unfitness for mating with the robust husband. It was partly because
the Mosaic law gave so little excuse for immorality, that adultery was
so cruelly punished. And the vigor of the Jewish type, for so many
centuries, amid so many barbarous persecutions, and in spite of such
wide geographical dispersions, is the most splendid monument to the
eternal wisdom of the command--
_Marry! Increase and multiply! Fill the earth with lawfully begotten
children! Honor the Home! Preserve your Race! Do not breed
promiscuously! DO NOT MONGRELIZE!_
In short,
"_Do not commit adultery._"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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