Guilt and Shame – do we need them?

Hi, Pajamas Readers, the piece you’re looking for is here. Hopefully the PJM link will soon be fixed.

As for the rest of you…

Julie at Happy Catholic took the stuff Dr. Sanity wrote here, and the stuff I wrote here and took them places a lesser mind might never go!

You have to read the those two posts in order to fairly read and understand what Julie has written here, and you really do want to read her thoughts. An excerpt:

It can be difficult to disassociate shame and guilt, especially when dealing with a hot button topic like homosexuality. However, as my correspondent points out with his examples, we do seem to be able to do it.

To carry the concept further, we seem to be able to do this also with alcoholics and others with addictive personalities. We can and do enact legislation, put into place support programs, and publicly condemn the behavior while supporting the individual in rehabilitation. Where our society becomes disfunctional is about anything sexual which does not show something which we can prove is physical harm. Somehow, even though it can be widely acknowledged that divorce, sexual addition, pornography, and other such behavior is harmful to the individual and their families, it doesn’t carry the same social weight of other aforementioned problems. However, these problems and the resultant fallout for the family members are some of the unspoken things that everyone knows. When one gets to bigger issues such as homosexuality and abortion it as if society itself has gone blind, wanting proof, proof, and more proof. And the proof is never good enough.

We Catholic girls seem to be having some trouble, lately…we’re not meaning to cause discomfort, but I can just see you over there, wriggling in your seat and saying…”arghgh…don’t lets discuss this…don’t you know any good jokes?”

Why, yes, in fact, Julie knows lots of them. But sometimes you have to eat the spinach before you can have the dessert. :-)