The Juvenilization of American Christianity by Thomas Bergler

Author:Thomas Bergler [Bergler, Thomas]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2012-05-18T07:45:00+00:00

In some ways, because the Church hated sex across the board, at least it was fairer. To get a message that sex is all right for men but it's not all right for women is more difficult than to get the message that it's not all right for anybody. At least that's more democratic.58

Just how effective was this system in shaping teenage sexual behavior? Compared to later systems, the 1950s Catholic sexual regime did a better job at getting teenagers to profess strict moral beliefs about sex. Only 6 percent of Marquette University students said in 1961 that "heavy necking with a steady date" was morally acceptable; by 1971 the number had jumped to 75 percent.59

On the other hand, many young people spent considerable time and effort figuring out ways to get around the sexual restrictions of their environment. Richard Schwartz remembered trying to find a way to see the racy movie La Dolce Vita, which had been banned by the Legion of Decency and his local archbishop. Schwartz found out that across the Ohio River in Covington, Kentucky, the archbishop had ruled the film acceptable for mature audiences. So he called his friend and former teacher Fr. Stottlemaier and asked him "why the opinion of one archbishop should carry more weight than the opinion of another, and what about the notion of morals changing in the middle of the Broadway Bridge?" "We both knew that we were now talking turf and bureaucracy, not faith and morals, and no one wants to believe in a God who will send you to hell for eternity ... over a jurisdictional distinction," he remembered.60

Young Catholics remained chaste in much larger numbers than today, but they didn't do as well as adults hoped. Mary Gordon remembered that at eighth grade graduation parties, "you would go into these basements and you would neck with ten different boys with the lights out." More seriously, of the two hundred teen weddings approved in the Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend in 1962, 47 percent were motivated by the bride's pregnancy.61

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