The UK Telegraph is reporting that Catholics just don’t feel guilt anymore.
It states that only about 10 percent of regular mass-going Roman Catholics in Britain feel any guilt about using contraception.
And not only that, Catholics aren’t even troubled by things like adultery, premarital sex or viewing porn. And it’s not even like Catholics are just the same as everyone else. We’re actually worse.
Muslims, Jews and evangelicals all report feeling more guilt over sexual sins.
Only 12 per cent of practising Catholics and nine per cent of nominal Catholics polled said they would feel any guilt about using contraception, despite the Church’s strong stance on the issue. By contrast, a quarter of Muslims said they would feel ashamed of using contraception.
A total of 57 per cent of Catholics said they would feel guilty about having extramarital sex, only one per cent higher than the general population.
By contrast almost nine out of 10 Baptists and Pentecostals said they would feel guilty about adultery as did seven out of 10 Jews and Muslims polled. Anglicans were also slightly more inclined to feel shame about infidelity than Catholics.
Only 19 per cent of Catholics said they would feel guilty about sex before marriage, compared with 50 per cent of Baptists, almost two thirds of Muslims and more than three quarters of Pentecostal protestants.
When asked if they would feel guilty about using pornography the response rate among Catholics, Anglicans and Jews was the same at around 30 per cent but far less than all other religious groups.
Meanwhile only 15 per cent of non-religious people said they would feel guilty about pornography, a figure which is even lower among men.
Prof Woodhead said that while it is known that many Catholics quietly ignore the Church’s teaching on issues such as contraception, it was striking how little “lurking guilt” there was.
“It does show that people have distanced themselves completely from the Catholic Church’s teaching,” she said.
I’m telling you now, when I look around the world I’m feeling that there should be a whole lot of guilt and shame. The world’s all sorts of messed up. We should at least have the common decency to feel bad about it.
The Church has to do a better job about teaching the faith. I understand why priests are reluctant to discuss contraception from the altar with children in the pews but we’re seeing generations that have absolutely no idea of the beautiful teachings of the Church on sexuality. Silence is breeding shamelessness.
