These excerpts are from “Sacra Virginitas,” Pius XII, 1954, at the Vatican Web site. This sort of thing could happen to anyone – my worst fear is that I’ll accidentally put a link to my students’ grades or the abbey budget – so I’m quite sympathetic to those who moderate the Vatican website. At least it suggests that Rome’s teachings on sacred virginity are suited to these new times, not just the old times.
“Indeed, right from Apostolic Times New Roman this virtue has been thriving and flourishing in the garden of the Church.” (3)
“This truth, so full of encouragement, We recall to those also whose will has been weakened by upset nerves and whom some doctors, someTimes New Roman even Catholic doctors, are too quick to persuade that they should be freed from such an obligation, advancing the specious reason that they cannot preserve their chastity without suffering some harm to their mental balance.” (51)
“All holy men and women have most carefully guarded the movements of their senses and their passions, and at Times New Roman have very harshly crushed them.” (53)
“All the more reason why the young clergy, because they are to be trained in the spiritual life, in sacerdotal and religious perfection, must be separated from the tumult of the world before entering the lists of combat; for long years they must remain in a Seminary or Scholasticate where they receive a sound and careful education which provides them with a gradual approach to and a prudent knowledge of those problems which our Times New Roman have brought to the fore.” (57)
“In modern Times New Roman however there are some teachers and educators who too frequently think it their duty to initiate innocent boys and girls into the secrets of human generation in such a way as to offend their sense of shame.” (59)
*Cicero, very loosely, “O the times! O the morals!”
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