Catholicism broke up the Western Family

According to this news article scholars have put forth the argument that 5he policies of the early church set the stage for the relative separation and independence of Western families through their anti-incest polucies.

https://www.sciencenews.org/article...h-may-have-helped-spark-western-individualism

For me this goes to show how we do not fully understand the long-term outcomes of our short-term decisions where complex, adaptive systems are involved.

sealchan said:

According to this news article scholars have put forth the argument that 5he policies of the early church set the stage for the relative separation and independence of Western families through their anti-incest polucies.

https://www.sciencenews.org/article...h-may-have-helped-spark-western-individualism

For me this goes to show how we do not fully understand the long-term outcomes of our short-term decisions where complex, adaptive systems are involved.

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Its defiantly an interesting article but needs further validation yet has a feel of truth to it. IMO it is also saying that it lead to an increase in Atheism as atheism is naturally more individualistic and non-conformist.

bobhikes said:

Its defiantly an interesting article but needs further validation yet has a feel of truth to it. IMO it is also saying that it lead to an increase in Atheism as atheism is naturally more individualistic and non-conformist.

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More like an improved acknowledgement of atheism's existence and an increased need for dealing with its existence, IMO.

Catholicism, being as it is at once deeply proselitist and holder of universalistic ambitions, has to deal with the conflict between those two goals in some way. That involves a measure of self-deception, an actual decision to treat people who they know to be atheists as if they were theists, in an attempt to reconcile the integrity of the doctrine with the practical need of avoiding disrupting families too much.

When extended families became less prevalent, there was better room to fully express atheism when it was present.

Or so I would assume, anyway.

sealchan said:

According to this news article

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• Trivia: The OP echoes another post based on the same study.
  • How the early Christian church gave birth to today’s WEIRD Europeans
• From the original Source article: "The Church, intensive kinship, and global psychological variation" by
  1. Jonathan F. Schulz,
  2. Duman Bahrami-Rad,
  3. Jonathan P. Beauchamp,
  4. Joseph Henrich.
• Proposed impact consequences of "Catholic meddling" in pre-existant, non-Christian societies:
  • Decreased cousin marriages. Promoted marriages between unrelated or distantly related people.
    • "Greater cousin marriage inhibits the formation of extensive ties among previously unconnected or distant families and clans, encourages the creation of additional family ties, and generates greater genetic relatedness among already related families and households.which inhibit the formation of extensive ties among previously unconnected or distant families and clans, encourages the creation of additional family ties, and generates greater genetic relatedness among already related families and households."
  • Decreased polygynous sexual coupling. Promoted "one husband-one wife" sexual coupling.
    • "Polygynous marriage norms permit men to have multiple wives. This results in larger and more extended households while introducing social and economic interdependence among co-wives and half-siblings. At a societal level, polygynous marriage norms result in fewer fathers, larger reproductive skews (inequality), and greater genetic relatedness."
  • Decreased co-residence of extended families. Promoted "time to move out" decisions.
    • "Co-residence of extended families captures the degree to which several generations of a family, each with their own spouses and children, co-reside. Such residential norms create stronger bonds and economic interdependence among co-residents. This contrasts with the neo-local nuclear family, where only the conjugal couple and their children live together."
  • Decreased unilineal descent societies. Promoted bilateral descent societies.
    • "Lineage organization captures the norms for assigning descent and personal identity. In unilineal societies, descent is traced either primarily through the mother’s or the father’s side; stronger membership on one side determines social identity, increases cohesion, and tightens interdependence within the lineage. This contrasts with bilateral descent, where membership is nonexclusive and everyone has a unique combination of relatives, resulting in more diverse and diffuse kin networks and lower kinship intensity."
  • Decreased endogamous communities. Promoted exogamous marriages. i.e. "to outsiders".
    • "Community organization captures whether clans and extended family members reside in a localized area (e.g., a neighborhood) within a settlement and whether there is communal-level endogamy (e.g., people can only marry co-villagers). Localization decreases the interaction with outsiders while endogamous communities form denser clusters (no outsiders can join the community through marriage), thereby increasing kinship intensity."
  • Psychological outcomes of "Catholic meddling":
    • Increased individualism and independence;
    • Decreased conformity and obedience; and
      
    • Increased impersonal pro-sociality.

Hell's bells, ... them darn Catholics. If they hadn't meddled, .... hmmm: Trump wouldn't be president!

Terry Sampson said:

Hell's bells, ... them darn Catholics. If they hadn't meddled, .... hmmm: Trump wouldn't be president!

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I can't be bothered reading yet another professional article about how the RCC is evil. Been there, done that, bought the T-shirt, burned it....

So will somebody explain to me why squelching incest and promoting human rights is a problem?
I don't think it much happened myself. But I'm curious about the reasoning behind the OP of this thread.
Tom

columbus said:

I'm curious about the reasoning behind the OP of this thread.

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I won't venture beyond quoting sealchan's statement: "this goes to show how we do not fully understand the long-term outcomes of our short-term decisions where complex, adaptive systems are involved.

columbus said:

I can't be bothered reading yet another professional article about how the RCC is evil. Been there, done that, bought the T-shirt, burned it....

So will somebody explain to me why squelching incest and promoting human rights is a problem?
I don't think it much happened myself. But I'm curious about the reasoning behind the OP of this thread.
Tom

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The main point I came away with is that of irony and how seemingly straight-forward solutions may have unintended long term consequences...in this case eroding the stability of traditional values by creating a quicker speed of change in values per generation. I agree it is a sort of progress and an interesting measure of the progress of values being bolstered even as it resisted the values of the institution in control that made policy that caused that progress.

I don't fault the church necessarily for wanting to correct issues of incest. It is just that there may very well be consequences which the church, in hindsight, might have thought twice about the policies they laid out...then again maybe not.

Terry Sampson said:

I won't venture beyond quoting sealchan's statement: "this goes to show how we do not fully understand the long-term outcomes of our short-term decisions where complex, adaptive systems are involved.

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For me this is implicit in the Bible and is explicit in the teaching of Hinduism.

sealchan said:

I don't fault the church necessarily for wanting to correct issues of incest. It is just that there may very well be consequences which the church, in hindsight, might have thought twice about the policies they laid out...then again maybe not.

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Maybe the problem is that I saw that as so obvious it's hardly worth writing articles about.
Let's face it, creating a priesthood of men willing to swear off adult, committed, relationships with women?
What could go wrong?
Tom

columbus said:

Maybe the problem is that I saw that as so obvious it's hardly worth writing articles about.
Let's face it, creating a priesthood of men willing to swear off adult, committed, relationships with women?
What could go wrong?
Tom

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Perhaps overdoing the appearance of having transcended physical appetites for the sake of creating a false certainty that such individuals were more wise and Godly?

The more I think about the natural appetite for sexual gratification the more problematic I find it that celibacy was a personally physically or psychologically healthy thing to pursue.

sealchan said:

According to this news article scholars have put forth the argument that 5he policies of the early church set the stage for the relative separation and independence of Western families through their anti-incest polucies.

https://www.sciencenews.org/article...h-may-have-helped-spark-western-individualism

For me this goes to show how we do not fully understand the long-term outcomes of our short-term decisions where complex, adaptive systems are involved.

Click to expand...

Well, slaves had been considered a part of the household under the Greco-Roman hegemony. So the changes to the traditional family can't be all bad.

Seriously though, I don't think the article makes a heck of a lot of sense. For one thing, the meaning of the term incestum actually covered a much more limited range of crimes in the Christian era, as in former times each temple and cult had its own, often complicated rules about what made one ritually impure, and though sex with siblings was almost universally frowned upon, they were usually more concerned about the conduct of their priestesses and virgins than unconnected families.

I'm also baffled by the claim that the Eastern Orthodox churches are more accepting of incestuous relationships than the Roman church. Er, did they think to actually ask anyone about this...?