Cultural Stagnation

Pope Paul VI claims in his piece Humanae Vitae, in paragraph 10 that, “Responsible parenthood…implies a more profound relationship to the objective moral order established by God, of which a right is conscious the faithful interpreter. The responsible exercise of parenthood implies…that husband and wife recognize fully their own duties towards God, towards themselves, towards the family and towards society, in a correct hierarchy of values.”

He argues that despite the history, and vastly different cultural values regarding marriage, sex, and child-rearing that there is a base, and objective morality that must be exercised in all aspects of marriage, where people are not allowed to exercise their own free will (except in right conscious according to the Church) in regards to how they will deal with the issues, and events surrounding marriage.

He goes on to argue, in the same paragraph, that, “In the task of transmitting life, therefore, they are not free to proceed completely at will.” The parents in this hypothetical marriage are not free to raise their child the way that they want, but must abide by church rules and regulations, most typically of these rules includes probably raising your child as a good Christian, and to raise them holding Christian beliefs as their own and as their first moral compass to follow.

I feel, personally, that this has dire social consequences in regard to any type of choice a child wishes to make on their own regarding religion, as well as confining, and forcing two people to follow a set of rules that they might have been brought up in as well. Therein lies the cycle of brainwashing where the parents, who are brought up according to the doctrine of the church, and having no other options during their childhood or adolescence, continue to follow the dogma of the church and bring it upon themselves to force it onto their children. Not to mention that the dogma presents marriage a means of procreation (in a holy setting), and that the procreation aspect of it is the important aspect of the “sanctity” of marriage.

In the society that we live in today I find this to be a very dangerous cultural practice. Our world is no longer very large in regards to cross-cultural experience. People growing up must be taught to be cosmopolitan, and be able to see things from different perspectives without fear of reprisal from an ancient authority figure with no hard proof to back it’s claims.

The personal consequences are also an important factor in this cycle by which, in my experience, children brought up with a single, overbearing religious viewpoint have a difficult time interacting with others, become extremely judgmental, and seem to have difficulty grasping ideas opposed to theirs: their critical thinking skills are stagnant, if none-existent.

Overall this only fosters a widespread, and deeply rooted cultural ignorance that causes many issues. Our society is thus continually brought back from progress by people who have been taught to believe in things that are contrary to progress, contrary to a cosmopolitan world (unless it means imperializing and committing genocide), and contrary to the movement of humanity into new beliefs, ideas, and eras of thought/creativity.

It also completely disregards the fact that any type of cultural learning is an artificial construction that has no basis in what is “real” in the way that any cultural belief is not objective, but in fact is highly subjective. Christianity is in no way non-applicable to this moral, and cultural constructionist state.

Not only is the idea of the culture and morality constructed, but any individual subject or idea from any doctrine is a construction, including the history of any given religion, but also Christianity, where individuals in power were able to make changes, withhold printings of certain documents, and suppress truth, ideas, and beliefs in a way that creates an artificial historical context; people are misled to believe that this history is objective, and completely holy.