Writing at โThe Week,โ Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry explains, โToday it is simply taken for granted that the innocence and vulnerability of children makes them beings of particular value, and entitled to particular careโฆ[but] this view of children is a historical oddity.โ
Gobry points to the work of historian O. M. Bakke, whose book โWhen Children Became Peopleโ documents how radically Christianity altered the practices of ancient Greece and Rome, and what the world before Christ looked like.
Children, he says, were considered nonpersons. In the cultures of Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, and Pliny the Elder, society was organized in โconcentric circles,โ with the most valuable (freeborn, adult males) in the center, and the least valuable (women, slaves, and children) on the fringes.
From the moment of birth, a child in ancient Rome was as likely as not to die. If disease or injury didnโt end a young life, very frequently the parents themselves did, โexposingโ any infants deemed inconvenient. Such children usually fell prey to wild animals or the elements. But as Gobry points out, a few were rescued only to be raised in one of the ancient worldโs most lucrative industries: sex slavery.
Today, sexually abusing a child is a serious crime. Not so in the pre-Christian world, writes Gobry. During that time it was legal, and even considered good form, for a married Patrician to keep childrenโparticularly young boysโto exploit sexually in his free time. โ[M]ost sexual acts were permissible,โ Gobry explains, โas long as they involved a person of higher status being active against or dominating a person of lower status. This meant that, according to all the evidence we have, the sexual abuse of childrenโฆwas rife.โ
Into this world came Christianity, with its condemnation of abortion, infanticide and child abuse, its glorification of faithful marriage, and its teaching that children come first in the Kingdom of Heaven. โWhoever causes one of these little ones to stumble,โ said Jesus, โit would be better for him to have a millstone tied around his neck and to be thrown into the sea.โ
This ethic, which the Western world takes for granted today, is a direct heritage of Christianity. It rests on the very same beliefs as traditional marriage, chastity, and the sanctity of all life. And secularists who want nothing more than a world free from these constraints of Christian morality, warns Gobry, had better considerโor rather rememberโwhat that world looks like.
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