Denver, Colo., May 31, 2018 / 03:09 am (CNA).- Earlier this year, a 25-year-old man smashed his rental van into innocent pedestrians in downtown Toronto on a Tuesday, killing 10 and injuring more than a dozen.
The driver was not part of the usually-suspected terrorist networks. Instead, he was found to be part of the “incels” – short for involuntary celibates – an obscure online community of mostly men who blame women and society for their lack of a sex life. They believe the distribution of sex in the world to be unfair – particularly to them.
Their once dark and largely-unknown corner of the internet has since garnered some attention following the attack, prompting New York Times columnist Ross Douthat to posit that sex robots will be society’s answer to the incels – the logical way to pacify their lust before they turn more vans on innocent civilians.
“Whether sex workers and sex robots can actually deliver real fulfillment is another matter,” Douthat wrote. “But that they will eventually be asked to do it, in service to a redistributive goal that for now still seems creepy or misogynist or radical, feels pretty much inevitable.”
A subsequent cover story on sex robots featured in New York Magazine noted that some research has predicted that by 2050, sex robots will not just be for the angry incels, but for society at large. People will have – and possibly prefer – intimate relationships to sex robots than to people, the story predicted.
Are we more than an orgasm?
Sr. Mary Patrice Ahearn is a psychologist and a religious sister with the Religious Sisters of Mercy in Alma, Michigan.
Ahearn said that the rise in communities like incels and the prospect of relationships with sex robots points to the fact that society has forgotten God, or the transcendental aspect of the human experience.
“I think what they’re both pointing to, which nobody talks about, is the transcendental desire or part of each of us,” she said. “(W)hen we take out this transcendental part, or dare I say faith or God, you have to fill that void with something.”
People need to seriously grapple with the transcendental ache and longing that they feel in their lives, and come to terms with what that might mean, rather than looking to fill the void with sex robots or other technology, she said.
“So I would ask the question: Is the deepest desire in your heart to be sexually satisfied, to have an orgasm? Is that the deepest desire of my heart? And people have to seriously ask those questions,” she said.
“Everyone has this desire for sex,” Ahearn said, “but so do the cows we drive by on the road, we all have that.”
Not only is society increasingly irreligious and unwilling to acknowledge the transcendental, but humanity is also losing some of the basic bonds of family and friendship to technology, bonds which used to allow people to experience intimacy outside of sexual relationships, she added.
“We’re more connected than ever if you think of technology and all the ways that we can communicate,” she said. But it doesn’t always lead to deeper human relationships because it’s “this constant checking with their devices, just constant restlessness with it.”
The rise of the incels and the sex robot seem to be indications (albeit extreme ones) of another societal problem – we’re really, deeply lonely.
The loneliness problem
Recent research has shown that Americans are lonelier than ever, and technology may be the biggest culprit. A 2016 study found a strong correlation between amounts of time spent on social media and depression in young adults – the longer one lingered on sites like Facebook and Instagram, the more depressed they were.
Last year, former U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek H. Murthy began warning of a loneliness epidemic, a public health crisis he says has gone largely ignored but that nonetheless has detrimental impacts on people’s physical and emotional well-being.
Just last month, a survey of Americans conducted by Cigna insurance company also found that people are lonelier than ever – especially the young. At least half of the survey respondents identified themselves as lonely, and the average American scored a 44 on the UCLA-created “loneliness” scale, qualifying them as, well, lonely. The Cigna survey also found that how people used social media mattered – those who used it to reach out and make real connections were less lonely than those who just passively scrolled through feeds.
Cristina Barba is the founder and executive director of The Culture Project, an organization which sends teams of young people to high schools and youth groups to “proclaim the dignity of the human person and the richness of living sexual integrity, inviting our culture to become fully alive.”
In their work with young people, Barba said they have found that technology is exacerbating the already-emerging problems of social isolation in American culture to the extreme. Not only are young people more lonely, she said, they often do not know how to make authentic, real-world connections.
“It’s a combination of a lot of things,” Barba told CNA. “The breakdown of family and marriage, families move far apart from each other, people not even having their parish worship communities like they used to…those are all broader societal issues.” “But I think what is most pervasive and most recent is technology,” she added. “Technology has just taken this to the next level, much more quickly.”
Barba’s findings match up with what researcher and psychologist Jean Twenge found among what she calls iGen, the generation after Millennials that grew up never knowing a world without the internet and smartphones.
“Social-networking sites like Facebook promise to connect us to friends. But the portrait of iGen teens emerging from the data is one of a lonely, dislocated generation,” Twenge said in a September 2017 article for The Atlantic. “Teens who visit social-networking sites every day but see their friends in person less frequently are the most likely to agree with the statements ‘A lot of times I feel lonely,’ ‘I often feel left out of things,’ and ‘I often wish I had more good friends.’ Teens’ feelings of loneliness spiked in 2013 and have remained high since,” Twenge said.
The Culture Project itself started out as a community of friends that came together, bonding over the fact that they had tried the culture’s path to happiness in various ways and had found it wanting, Barba noted.
Instead of “sitting around and moaning” about it, Barba said that group of friends decided to do something to make a difference. They started living in community, and forming the mission of The Culture Project, which gives talks to teens throughout the country about chastity and living lives of sexual integrity.
But while community has been a “key pillar” for The Culture Project, they’ve found that technology has made it so that teens today do not know how to form community or even friendships among themselves, let alone romantic relationships.
“We’ve had parents coming to us and say, ok it’s great that you’re talking about virtue and dating, but my kids don’t even know what it means to have a friend. Can you talk about friendship?”
Today’s teens are a generation that has been raised on the internet and social media, Barba said, which means that their idea of friendship equates to that of a follower.
“It’s like a show that you’re putting on,” she said, “it’s people that follow you and people that you follow. It’s not an interaction, the only interaction is to make others jealous, or to be cooler than or to prove yourself. There isn’t actually a meeting of common interests, or someone you do stuff together with, someone you care about. All of those things are lost through social media at a young age.”
‘Encounter’ as a solution
Culture Project missionaries address the friendship crisis in multiple ways throughout their encounters with teens, Barba said. One of the most effective ways to address this crisis has been simply modeling authentic, healthy friendships among the Culture Project teams.
“It’s actually them seeing the interactions of our missionaries – a couple guys who are normal, fun, attractive young men and women who are a little bit older than them…and they see these people interacting and it’s a beautiful, healthy, normal dynamic of friendship,” she said. “What we model in our interactions is what is profound and shocking to them.”
They also take the time to address social media, and bring to their students’ attention how much time they are probably spending on social media, and how it could be impacting their relationships.
Pornography and sexting – major pitfalls for young adults in a technology driven world – are also important to address.
The idea is not to bash technology, which is a neutral tool, Barba said, but to raise awareness of how addicted they have likely become to their devices, and to offer practical tips to counter that with more human interaction in their lives.
“We just bring to their attention – what are the ways that we use this? And wow, how many hours a day am I really on that?”
The challenge students to do media fasts – whether that’s an hour a day, or even a week, that they don’t use social media, and see how they feel during that time.
They also challenge them to fill that time with real human interaction – and they’ve had to come up with basic friendship guidelines to teach students how to do this.
“We’re literally making suggestions – and I just have to laugh – it’s the way people need dating guides right now, but it’s like friendship guides,” Barba said. “Like what do friends do? You could meet and go to the mall. You could meet and go to the movies. You could meet and go for a walk. I’m not even kidding.”
While the problem is not one that is easily fixed, Barba said she and her missionaries have found that little efforts can make a big difference.
“I think even just providing a space for young people, whether its a physical space or an event, but providing activities they can do together,” she said.
“It’s so basic, just basic human things, like families and parents spending time together. Or basic community, what parish life used to be or should be – people living near each other, that care about each other, that worship together, that have fun together, that have meals together, things like that,” she said.
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Read his marching orders earlier. “Additionally, the document calls for more lay participation in all ecclesiastical decision making. It specifically calls for more women in leadership roles but does not settle the question about a possible women’s diaconate. It also condemns exclusion based on a person’s ‘marital situation, identity, or sexuality’”.
He can’t be serious. A pastor is condemned if he refuses Trans folks to advise how to pastor his parish? But unfortunately he is. Although what right in heaven or hell does a pontiff have to condemn, or even suggest condemnation [by God?] if a priest declines? In an earlier CNA article “Pope cites ‘Amoris laetitia’ on doctrine in synodal implementation note” Pope Francis urged we apply the doctrines layed out in Amoris Laetitia. Those doctrines are primarily the primacy of conscience and mitigation theory. Amoris does not replace the Gospels.
“Alice: Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?
The Cheshire Cat: That depends a good deal on where you want to get to.
Alice: I don’t much care where.
The Cheshire Cat: Then it doesn’t much matter which way you go.
Alice: …So long as I get somewhere.
The Cheshire Cat: Oh, you’re sure to do that, if only you walk long enough.”
“Each country or region, moreover, can seek solutions better suited to its culture and sensitive to its traditions and local needs,”
Unless those traditions and local needs involve attending the TLM, then sorry, no synoding for you.
Also can’t wait for the local LGBTQ crowd to suddenly start demanding changes to the mass to suit their needs.
Looks like “synodality” is synonymous to “Realpolitik”.
DOA as far as I’m concerned.
“[The final document] participates in the ordinary magisterium of the successor of Peter, and as such, I ask that it be accepted,” Francis wrote…”
There is a definition of the ordinary magisterium in the CCC (#891 and some other paragraphs). Also I believe in the documents of Vatican II. The teaching magisterium consists of the bishops with the pope. This synod document that the pope signed is not from the bishops, but from a group consisting of bishops, priests, nuns and laity. How could this be part of the magisterium? I don’t believe it can.
Also, the pope asks that it be accepted. If it truly was part of the magisterium I would think that he would state that it must be accepted.
What’s the rush?
The Pachamama Apostasy Cult: “Implement the authoritative indications of the Synod on Synodality document now.”
The Son of the Living God: “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Get thee behind me….”
The “Synod on Synodality document is part of the authentic teaching of the Bishop of Rome.”
The crowning achievement of the career of the Pontiff Francis is that he has communicated that he is a monumental fraud, and as such he adds something without authenticity to library which likewise is devoid of authenticity.
Zero plus Zero = Zero.
And as a reminder about the shelf life of this man’s “teaching,” Archbishop Scicluna of Malta, sycophant of Pontiff Francis, has established that this particular Pontiff’s teaching apparently gets buried with him, since by the rule-of-Scicluna, his cult only regards the teaching of “this current pope, not previous popes.” But I may be mistaken about Scicluna, he may regard the Pontiff Francis as an oracle, in which case, for Scicluna, and other such sycophants, the Pontiff Francis remains pope forever, even in death, and to him they pledge their loyalty…forever and ever.
It matters not at all what a man proclaims regarding his belief about the existence of God and how he tries to convince himself in some abstract way that he does believe in God.
If a man denies the immutability of truth, he is an atheist, even if he denies the implications of his beliefs to himself.
How much dire can the state of the Church be than to have an atheist for a pope and a prevailing episcopate too spineless to challenge him?
True Edward. Unless our faith is in God, whose existence is perfect and unchanging, pure dynamic, our belief is instead conceptual, imperfect, always subject to revision.
And, yet, about “always subject to revision” is not to be misunderstood as by some synodalers:
“The faithful therefore must shun the opinion, first, that dogmatic formulas (or some categories of them) cannot signify truth in a determinate way, but can only offer changeable approximations to it, which to a certain extent distort or alter it; secondly, that these formulas signify truth only in an indeterminate way, this truth being like a goal that is constantly being sought by means of such approximations. Those who hold such an opinion do not avoid dogmatic relativism and they corrupt the concept of the Church’s infallibility relative to the truth to be taught or held in a determinate way” (“Mysterium Ecclesia: Declaration in Defense of the Catholic Doctrine on the Church Against Certain Errors of the Day,” Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, June 24, 1973).
With St. Augustine: “We can say things differently, but we can’t say different things.”
As was the case of what was “believed” by Mary reported at Lk 1:45 as in uncertainty (cf. Lk 1:29, 34).
What do you call a shepherd with no place guide his sheep? Or, put another way, with no clear preference where his sheep end up?
Lately I have been studying Henri de Lubac and how he navigated the period where his theology was scrutinized by the Pope Pius XII. One of my questions is were Jesuits more learned then? Jesuits of today seem to “clot up” on major points of Tradition/Doctrine, if not create new doctrine out of whole cloth.
I want to be loyal to Mother Church and never found to be throwing a rock at the artwork – even when it belongs to Rupnik.
Every time I turn around this trial becomes more challenging, more difficult, if not impossible.
Fuzziness, that is also the Anglican solution to things; and just look where they are!
Ornery wideloopers I’ll say!
Here for once we are not speaking of orientation, but disorientation.
In Francis’ Magisterially Synodal Church: The synodally dialogic church will participate in pagan tradition, and pagan tradition will participate in Francis’ church.
Roman Catholics will continue in the unity of such a church under such a pontiff, but Christ will remain as the Triumphally Suffering Head. Roman Catholics will continue to hold the faith and hope of knowing that Christ our Head lives through, survives, and overcomes death.
Let us make jest of the lazy, ridiculous, the glaringly sad stupidity of any vatican-led holes to hell.
If you do not feel righteous anger over the reign of Jorge Bergoglio, your love for Mother Church is seriously deficient.
Please speak with accurate language. We’re told the document comes from the magisterium of the Bishop of Rome, then Francis tells us it’s of a pontifical magisterium, your commentary says it’s from the magisterium of the Church. What level will the next commentator reach? Will he consider the document as divinely revealed?
I know that a good writer always tries to avoid repetition when writing, but inasmuch as in temporal affairs you can use equivalent terms such as “Biden has decided X” , “Washington has decided X”, and “the United States has decided X”, that’s not how it works in ecclesiastical affairs. The qualifiers of magisterium between the Bishopric of Rome, the Papal office and the Church are not interchangeable just like that. This sort of spurious and deceptive language paves the way for novel doctrines on papal infallibility, and ought to thus utterly be rejected.
The directives are sufficiently vague, and thus can be safely ignored, given that most parishes already have healthy lay participation and are already in obedience to the *magisterial* intent of the document. The intent of the malcontents who were trying to use the synod as a way to democratize the Church is another question, but thankfully their intent doesn’t have to be considered.
Left-leaning bishops will use this as an excuse to make their untenable parishes even more untenable, but overall the effect will be negligible. Carry on.
The Synod was simply a thin cover for normalizing more garbage into the church. I cannot see myself cooperating with a woman deacon nor will I be interacting in a church setting with anyone who is “trans”. Ever. No thanks. I will quit my church ministry first.This Pope has been a complete disaster.
Your report misrepresents the Synodal document on the subject of sexuality when it says: “It also condemns exclusion based on a person’s “marital situation, identity, or sexuality.” The Synodal document does not do that. It only uses the word “sexuality” once, when it says: “Many participants were delighted and surprised to be asked to share their thoughts and to be given the opportunity to have their voices heard in the community. Others continued to express the pain of feeling excluded or judged because of their marital status, identity or sexuality.” That is not a condemnation of exclusion on the basis of “sexuality”. A homosexual, for example, may feel excluded because the Church treats the acts involved in any active homosexual relationship as sinful and does not accord their relationship the same status as a heterosexual relationship. That will and must, of course, continue.
Stephen, given that “ecumenical new church” has ordered the Catholic world to bless gay couples – in the style of James Martin – your final statement only holds true for disobedient Traditionalists whom Bergolio labels “rigid” and is actively persecuting from underground China to downtown Chicago.
“A homosexual, for example, may feel excluded because the Church treats the acts involved in any active homosexual relationship as sinful and does not accord their relationship the same status as a heterosexual relationship. That will and must, of course, continue.”
This is because these demeaning sexual acts, deny the Sanctity of the marital act, within The Sacrament of Holy Matrimony, which is Life-affirming and Life-sustaining and can only be consummated between a man and woman united in marriage as husband and wife. While it is true that some marriages deny the Sanctity of the marital act within The Sacrament of Holy Matrimony, resulting in the engaging in of demeaning sexual acts which are sinful because they deny the inherent Dignity of the human person, all same-sex sexual relationships deny the Sanctity of the marital act within The Sacrament Of Holy Matrimony, and thus demean the inherent Dignity of the human person, and are thus sinful.
I pray that the next Pope will take this document, and along with Amoral Leticia, Traditiones Custodes and Tutti Frutti, toss it on the bonfire. I’m sick and tired of this Synodal garbage which has obsessed this Pontificate even though it’s a colossal waste of time, especially since there are more urgent matters for the Church to be concerned with, like persecution of Christians in China, Nicaragua and Africa, Gender Ideology in the West, and the war in Ukraine.
👉👈
We are all Protestants now PF
In the Church of What’s Happening Now
I reject that PF.
I repeat with apology:
PF is obviously a disciple of the Jesuit hairy tick Teihard de Chardin.
See excellent new book “Theistic Evolution” in which Wolfgang Smith disembowels his multiple anti Christian fantasies. This is what infects our Jesuit pontiff.
Listen to the advice given to St Augustine “ Take and read”.
Hat tip to William Briggs.
“…Jesuit hairy tick…”
Delightful!
A hearty and Happy Thanksgiving to all my fellow Catholic Americans!
Last Saturday, November 23, Gerhard Cardinal Muller provided his personal rejection of the Francis’ Synodal Church Model. His rejection was printed in the First Things Catholic website and is entitled, “The 7 Sins Against the Holy Spirit; A Synodal Tragedy.” That’s right, finally a true “Catholic” Prince of the Church has condemned Francis’ Synod in simple and powerful TRUTHS of the One True Catholic Apostolic Tradition. Cardinal Muller, the former Head of the Congregation of the Faith in Rome, demolishes this new false model with great words of wisdom. He does so in a way that is incisive, precise, and Heavenly! And now that he has officially and publicly pointed out the fact that serious apostasy is at the doorstep of Francis’ Pontificate, then how soon will this heroic and holy prelate suffer white martyrdom, just as Vigano, Strickland and many other holy priest have been. Yes, in a sense it can be said that these souls, orthodox Catholic souls, are now living martyrs for the Catholic Faith.
I strongly encourage Mr. Olson, CWR Editor, an all on this site to read what the Cardinal writes in a five minute read. I can assure you that you will be very hopeful after having read what this saintly man of Christ writes as he truly speaks TRUTH to evil power.
Viva La Christo! and JCALAS Forever!
Presto, Change-O!
Come quickly, Lord Jesus!