The Catholic perspective on public policy often revolves—in its elemental formations in the United States—around human sexuality, with the continuing prohibition of abortion and same sex marriage, and considering that issues of sexuality lies also at the center of much of public life, that is to be expected.
There is research that contends the Reformation was propelled by the Catholic priest Martin Luther’s desire to engge in sexual relations as he wished and that any attempt to restrict sexual expression was the devil’s work since the sexual drive was unable to be controlled, a belief that also strongly informed the Sixties and has been embraced by many New Age and Protestant groups.
The Catholic Encyclopedia (1910) comments on the book about this that Martin Luther considered his most important work:
“A book that helped to depopulate the sanctuary and monastery in Germany, one that Luther himself confessed to be his most unassailable pronouncement, one that Melancthon hailed as a work of rare learning, and which many Reformation specialists pronounce, both as to contents and results, his most important work, had its origin in the Wartburg. It was his "Opinion on Monastic Orders". Dashed off at white heat and expressed with that whirlwind impetuosity that made him so powerful a leader, it made the bold proclamation of a new code of ethics: that concupiscence is invincible, the sensual instincts irrepressible, the gratification of sexual propensities as natural and inexorable as the performance of any of the physiological necessities of our being. It was a trumpet call to priest, monk, and nun to break their vows of chastity and enter matrimony. The "impossibility" of successful resistance to our natural sensual passions was drawn with such dazzling rhetorical fascination that the salvation of the soul, the health of the body, demanded an instant abrogation of the laws of celibacy. Vows were made to Satan, not to God; the devil's law was absolutely renounced by taking a wife or husband.”
(Catholic Encyclopedia, New Advent, Martin Luther entry, para.60)
Lampstand Foundation website, http://www.lampstandfoundation.org/
"The sinner is at the very heart of Christianity. Nobody is so competent as the sinner in matters of Christianity. Nobody, except the saint." Charles Peguy (1873-1914)
About
- David H. Lukenbill
- I am a California native, married, we have one daughter and live close to the American River with two cats and all the wild critters we can feed. I am a management consultant to nonprofit organizations and have an Associates of Arts degree in Administration of Justice from Sacramento City College, a Bachelor of Science degree in Organizational Behavior from the University of San Francisco and a Master of Public Administration degree, also from the University of San Francisco.