Reading through all the Pope stuff last week I came across this slightly jarring observation:

Leading Italian sociologist Professor Franco Ferrarotti doesn’t think the Pope’s influence on the young is deep or will last. ‘My field workers tell me young people don’t really follow his advice,’ he says. ‘They use contraceptives. They cheer him, they love it when he talks to them about chastity, then the next thing they go to bed together. It’s a kind of schizophrenia.’ (James Button ‘How a childless man was Papa to millions’, Melbourne Age, 9 Apr. 2005)

Large numbers of conservative religious youth throughout the world seem to hold similar attitudes. They feel some sort of intellectual loyalty to the teachings of their religion, but many of them don’t let this get in the way of an active pre-marital sex life.

(more…)

Filed in: Fundamentalism, Sexuality