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Where Is Religion Leading on Morals?Awake!—1972 | April 22
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The United Presbyterian Church has proposed a new “sex code.” Parade magazine says it is “so liberal that it practically eliminates sin as a major factor in sexual relations.” Among the changes advocated is the “removal of all restrictions against unmarried adults who wish to live together [in fornication].”78
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Where Is Religion Leading on Morals?Awake!—1972 | April 22
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The United Methodist Church’s Committee on Family Life has issued a resolution condoning sexual intercourse for single persons.80 The Lutheran Church has on hand an 85-page booklet written by twenty-one churchmen stating that premarital intercourse is wrong only if engaged in for selfish reasons.81
A clergyman in Denmark wrote in his parish magazine Vedbæk-Gl. Holte Kirkehilsen:
“Nothing is gained by limiting all sex to marriage. . . . It can be correct from an ethical and Christian viewpoint for young people to have sex relations before marriage, and it can be just as correct for married persons . . . to have sexual relations outside of marriage.”82
Then there was W. L. Gustin, as minister of the Morton Methodist Church in Illinois, who said in a sermon before hundreds of people: “I say loudly and I say clearly, there are advantages of adultery.”83
Is there a trend toward permissiveness in sexual morals within the Roman Catholic Church? Time magazine reports:
“A modest liberalization is going on at two levels. First, increasing numbers of pastors are softening their application of the traditional morality, often on the grounds that people who engage in illicit sex may be so immature that their guilt is not always a serious matter.
“Second, some theologians are challenging the ‘natural law’ doctrine that lies behind the church’s moral standards. According to natural law, an act is wrong if it is ‘against nature,’ but the new moralists are skeptical that the church can be certain about what ‘nature’ actually is.”84
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Where Is Religion Leading on Morals?Awake!—1972 | April 22
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Is there a trend toward permissiveness in sexual morals within the Roman Catholic Church? Time magazine reports:
“A modest liberalization is going on at two levels. First, increasing numbers of pastors are softening their application of the traditional morality, often on the grounds that people who engage in illicit sex may be so immature that their guilt is not always a serious matter.
“Second, some theologians are challenging the ‘natural law’ doctrine that lies behind the church’s moral standards. According to natural law, an act is wrong if it is ‘against nature,’ but the new moralists are skeptical that the church can be certain about what ‘nature’ actually is.”84
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Where Is Religion Leading on Morals?Awake!—1972 | April 22
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How Do They Explain It?
How do these clergymen explain their permission of fornication, adultery and homosexuality? They say that God does not condemn such. For instance, concerning premarital sex relations as being a sin clergyman R. E. Taylor says: “To this question the Bible gives no definite, clear-cut answer.”93
Theologian Joseph Fletcher states: “Any claim that the Bible requires that sex be expressed solely within marriage is only an inference. There is nothing explicitly forbidding premarital acts. . . . Sex is not always wrong outside marriage, even for Christians.”94
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