Bloody Savagery
In Antiquity, killing was viewed with indifference, as being a natural happening in the life of peoples. The massacre of a population of a city caused neither surprise nor indignation.
The proclivity for bloody sacrifices was linked to various rites of paganism. In Greece, the old religion considered it fitting to offer human holocausts in payment to the gods. These sacrifices, common among the Greeks of distant eras, later decreased, but did not completely disappear. In the second century of the Christian Era, human lives were still sacrificed in Arcadia, in honour of Lyceum Zeus.
In Rome, the spectacle most prized by the people was that of men dying, and the gladiator fights in Rome were occasions of pitiless slaughters. “In the morning, says Seneca, men are thrown to the lions and bears; after mid-day, they are thrown [at will] to the spectators. The end for all fighters had to be death, and they set themselves to work with iron and fire, until the arena was emptied.” In these “sessions” which began at mid-day, those condemned to death were compelled to mutually execute each other until the last one. Both this custom as well as that of feeding beasts with human flesh helps us “to understand the pleasure-seeking ferocity with which the Romans vented themselves in anti-Christian persecutions,” observes Daniel-Rops, and concludes: “As revolting as we find these scenes, in which Christians would also be victims, they were normal in Rome. And rare, very rare, were spectators who manifested their disapproval.”
Panem et circenses became known as the ideal formula to appease the multitude and also feed its growing thirst for blood. It was, equally, one of the causes of its deterioration.
The scourge of paedophilia
What is denominated by today’s press as paedophilia was largely practiced in the ancient world, under the protection of law, through the influence of the pagan religions.
In Greece, the sexual corruption of boys, more precisely called pederasty, was carried out as a legalized practice. Every adult male who was not a slave, had the right to practice it. Such was the custom in Persia and in other places, where it was maintained for centuries. Rome also became contaminated by the Grecian evil, to the point that many emperors procured male adolescents as lovers.
Boys who were considered comely, if they had been made prisoners of war or who had been abducted or sold by their parents, were mutilated for the purpose of feeding the trafficking of eunuchs. Not even sons of the nobility escaped.
In Greece — especially Athens — the victims of pederasty were not only prisoners of war, the abducted, or slaves. Any boy could become the target of the infamous desires of adult men, and the custom was to yield. If a father, endowed with a remnant of moral sensibility, desired to spare his sons this tragedy, he had to act before it happened, employing slaves, who would watch over the son like hawks. But, says Aeschylus, many parents desired to have beautiful sons, even though they knew that this would make them the target of predators.
The schools — the highly acclaimed Academies — were places where students, from the age of 12 or even younger, became the prey of the masters. The Athenian laws went so far as to protect and encourage this practice, even regulating flirtation and “love-making” between men and boys.
Greeks such as Solon, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Xenophon, Thucydides, Aeschines and Aristophanes, famous in the world of literature, the arts, philosophy and politics, practiced and extolled pederasty.
Greek philosophy reached the point of debating this infamous practice, without ever completely condemning it. Even Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle were not exempt from this evil. In Charmides, Plato refers to an adolescent of this name, as a lover praising his beloved, speaking of his attractiveness and of the emotions that he produced. In the Symposium, the character Phaedrus waxes lyrical in describing a happy and successful army, entirely composed of men-lovers and boy-beloveds. Nevertheless, finally attracted by more elevated ideas, Plato progressed from his conditional approval of pederasty in his early dialogues, to the formal condemnation of this vice in his last work, The Laws. In the meantime, his attempts, like those of some stoics, to propose a “chaste” pederasty were received with sarcasm by the people, and remained without result. In effect, “platonic love” is very difficult to practice, since with regard to chastity, man is not able to remain permanently on the middle term.
The Greeks stooped to consider the natural relationship between man and woman as inferior to the relationship between man and boy. In a society in which this type of conduct influenced even the ideal of the State, the woman would have been despised, relegated to the role of mere reproducer.
A historical-philosophical work such as Erotes, from the second or third century A.D, attributed by many to Lucian of Samosata presents a dialogue between two Greeks who seriously discuss which type of love is superior…Similarly, Lucian approaches this theme in the tenth Dialogue of the Courtesans. Plutarch, in Erotikus, with all seriousness analyses which attraction — for woman or for boys — is most interesting for an adult man. Fortunately, contrary to Erotes, he concludes that the ideal is truly monogamous marriage.
In Rome, girls could also be the victims of sexual violence. This can be gathered from the words of Saint Justin, in his Apologetics, where he vituperates the custom of rejected children — boys and girls — being made slaves for prostitution: “And as the ancients are said to have reared herds of oxen, or goats, or sheep, or grazing horses, so now we see you rear children only for this shameful use; and for this pollution a multitude of females and hermaphrodites, and those who commit unmentionable iniquities, are found in every nation. [...] And there are some who prostitute even their own children and wives, and some are openly mutilated for the purpose of sodomy.”
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This is the world, without the presence of the holy Church of God. The picture presented here, although incomplete, is sufficiently tragic to expose the maladies of pagan Antiquity and give us a notion of the shock that ensued at the time in which the message of the Gospel began to hold up opposed, well-ordered and holy values.
The shock of Gospel values with worldly counter-values
The message of Jesus Christ threw the worm-eaten ancient world off balance. It censured libertinism and cruelty, and upheld the freedom to practice the good, chastity, virginity, innocence, conjugal fidelity, love of enemies, charity, abnegation, goodness toward the weak, and dignity for all human beings, created in the image and likeness of God.
A particular horror of the sin of paedophilia was instilled in souls by our Divine Master, with words of extreme severity: “If any of you put a stumbling block before one of these little ones who believe in me, it would be better for you if a great millstone were fastened around your neck and you were drowned in the depths of the sea” (Mt 18:6).
Paganism could not remain indifferent in face of the sublimity of the Gospel. Only two reactions remained to it: that of becoming enchanted by and submitting to the gentle yoke of God, or of hating and persecuting. Not a few converted. Many, however, remained stuck in the mire, and in their hatred, brought many millions of Christians to martyrdom.
Nevertheless, the blood of the martyrs began to be the seed of new Christians, according to the celebrated affirmation of Tertullian. The spectacle of men and women, the elderly, adults in the prime of life, vigorous youths, virgins, children — all confessing faith in Jesus Christ and stepping resolutely toward death — drew admiration from many spectators, resulting in an ever-growing number of conversions.
Paganism needed, then, to make use of another weapon to try to reverse the situation: defamation and calumny. As the Christian apologists of those first centuries observe, the pagans began accusing the Christians of the very wrongs committed by paganism.
It is noteworthy that one of the accusations was that of paedophilia aggravated by incest. Saint Justin comments: “The things which you do openly and with applause, […] these you lay to our charge.” And Arnobius upbraids the pagans: “How shameful, how bold it is to censure, in another, that which the accuser himself practices — taking advantage of the occasion to insult and accuse others of things that can be turned back against himself!”
This is to say that those pagans acted like thieves who, in the act of stealing, cry out, “stop thief!” (To be continued ...)
The full document may be found here:
http://www.arautos.org/desagravo/?lang=en
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Msgr. João Scognamiglio Clá Dias, EP, is Honorary Canon of the Papal Basilica Saint Mary Major in Rome, Supernumerary Apostolic Protonotary, Doctor of Canon Law from the Angelicum, Master of Educational Psychology from the Catholic University of Columbia, Doctor Honoris Causa from the Italo-Brazilian University, Member of the Thomas Aquinas International Society (SITA) and of the Pontifical Academy of the Immaculata, Founder and Superior General of three entities of Pontifical Right: International Association of the Faithful, Heralds of the Gospel; Clerical Society of Apostolic Life, Virgo Flos Carmeli; and the Society of Apostolic Life, Regina Virginum.
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