Col Rouge,
I've been around for 66 years and in the past 28 years our company has employed hundreds of young men. These young men have no resemblence in creative or work application to the young men I went to school with.

Many are drug additcts, alcholics, into free love and sex with perversions. They live for the present, have babies to unmarried mothers, abusive to their girlfriends children. Their total conversation is about the performance of their car or its sound system or their own sexual performance on the weekend. They are irregular at work, tired and easily distracted.

I can tell you my father employed 16 - 17 year boys during the war because his work force had joined the army. They had to start at six in the morning and were never late and were responsible workers. They had no drugs, no condoms, no unwanted pregnancies, did not touch alcohol, had no fast and powerful cars. They were boys any mother could be proud to say he is my son. Yes! These boys attended Church each Sunday with their parents, and made eyes at the girls they would ask in marriage.

Philo, you're living in a dream world. It never ceases to amaze me how intelligent, well educated people who achieve success in various fields [like you perhaps have] can be utterly illogical when researched facts come into conflict with their unsubstantiated religious beliefs.

It seems to me that you choose to ignore the researched facts outlined in the website I posted, presumably because the facts don't suit your preconceived religious beliefs. Well, am I correct?

Rex,

I suppose I do mix in a world of extremities. I assist each friday night a programme we run for kids on the street where condoms have been distributed. We no longer distribute them to boys, but to girls as this makes them responsible if they say yes/no. We found the boys made water bombs of them, and the older ones said sex did not feel the same and beside the girlfriend wanted to become pregnant.

Over 50% of these young people are sexually active, use drugs and drink alcohol too excess. Over 40% of these young women will fall pregnant outside of marriage with many opting for an abortion, or finish up in a relationship with someone not the father of their child.

I mix in Christian Churches among young dedicated people who most have made a vow of chastity before marriage. They see condoms and the pill offers them temptation to violate their vow. They are doing higher school certificate or university degrees, though 50% might drink alcohol responsibly less than 1/100 violate their vow, or become pregnant to someone they will not marry. There is over 140,000 young people in Australia who have taken the vow of chastity. They desire a pure and wholesome life that marriage is sacred to one partner as an example to their future children. They treat their body as sacred and dedicated to their vows.

"In fact, 88 percent of students who pledged virginity in middle school and high school still engage in premarital sex."

http://www.plannedparenthood.org/pp2/portal/medicalinfo/teensexualhealth/fact-abstinence-education.xml

Philo, methinks you are suffering from genertion gap, perhaps also
not fully aware what is going on out there :) I doubt if Aussie
teenagers are wearing your claimed halo, compared to American
teenagers.

The last teenage fundie who worked for me, told me that oral sex was fine, as you did not lose your virginity that way :)

Philo the world has changed since you were young. Forget turning the clock back, it won't happen. Kids are informed today, they can google, so won't accept as gospel, some of the rubbish that their elders tell them.

But all is not lost lol. My generation were the hippies, 70s kids who smoked the odd joint, rebelled againt the old farts, learnt to enjoy their sexuality, loved their Rolling Stones etc and were told
how the world would end because of the way we were.

Today what were so called long haired louts are successfull businessmen, usually with a family, doing their share for society.
The world has not ended, people have not become less creative, in fact the opposite actually, the big change is that society has become more tolerant. I welcome all these changes, but I am aware that some of the older generation have a problem with that change.

Thats why we need the cycle of birth and death, so that old minds can be put to rest and young minds can take a step further.
Its all part of natures cycle and if you want to think of a god,
just look at nature itself. So enjoy your heaven here on earth
whilst it lasts, every day is precious Philo! The worms will get us all in the end, that I know.

I don't think that the Vatican is changing its opinion based on the bickerings between those who blame Catholics for the spread of HIV in poorer countries, and those that say that the Church has the only answer to the spread of AIDS. I think pragmatism is finally reaching the Pope, that is all.

I think this is Philo's real clanger: "The spread of AIDS is caused by persons not following the Catholic doctrine, of chastity and purity".

Oh goody! Lets all go Catholic and we won't get AIDS! We really believe you Philo. Are chastity belts on sale at K-Mart, or are they still at the kinky shops in the Cross?

Don't forget, the whole Catholic church is far from agreement on this. The nuns in South America radically oppose the views on contraception imposed by the Pope. The nuns have to work with the consequences. And Philo, Brazil and South America are the same post-columbian vintage as the USA. Your theory that only the Catholic church can make a country first world didn't do them much justice at all. Per capital, they are more Catholic than the USA. And far more than New Zealand and Australia, yet our countries became first world, their countries didn't.

We are talking about a deadly virus that knows no religion, and I don't think the virus knows the Da Vinci Code, and I don't think a virus knows what promiscuous is, and it certainly doesn't know what Opus Dei is, or the knights of the Templar. Put your susperstitions aside and take another look. It is a virus. Not some entity in scripture. For the love of God, can't you see such a simple thing as a condom can save millions of lives? To only put the responsibility of holding the condom on the female partner is sexist, and misses the point in developing male responsibility.

I'm glad the Vatican is looking more pragmatically. There is hope yet. But p-lease, no more old superstitions from the Spanish Inquisition.

Philo,”I have been around for 66 years”

And I have been around for 56 years.

The “Perceptions” of most people are formulated around the fact that they remember only the sunny days of their youth and forget the rainy ones.

Nostalgia is a poor scribe for recording the real events of history.

What you thought about the stout and warm hearted lads your father inspired to work for him is, in reality, the exact same people who populate our society today. If someone were to study individually held values of any given society, I doubt you would find much difference in the numbers of baddies and the numbers of ultra-goodies across generations.

You might find “clusters” of goodies and baddies (as seems to be the case of brain tumour victims in some Victorian education campuses) but such “clusters” are a statistical aberrations and not representative of real change.

Ask yourself why anti Drug laws were enacted over 100 years ago?

Because drug addicts etc. were as big a problem and burden on the rest of society as much then as they are today.

Well Said Yabby and Rex

Finally, the difference which makes this society more vibrant and creative than those of the past is where the real revolution has occured. We have cast off the shackles of social, class and religious orthodoxy.
Everyone is less likely to be the victim of the prejudices of the class, social or religious zealots and power groups.

That is the best thing, where people are free to choose, to take responsibility for themselves and tell the Church oligarchs where to stick their dogmatic prejudices.