Sociology
By exiting from the portal of civic and political rights His Beatitude leads us into the realm of society and marriage. For this diatribe he chooses the title “harlotry.”
In his expose His Beatitude constructs the longing of the society to religion when he says:
“Marriage is a divine condition whose aim is to bring males and females together to protect the continuity of the human race.”
After this His Beatitude makes the following absolute declaration:
“Census data show us that there are almost equal percentages of males and females, even though it is also accepted that males outnumber females by about ten percent. This leads us to the conclusion that each male can only have one female companion and vice-versa.”
He says this by totally ignoring what he said about males being ten percent more then their counterparts.
It becomes very easy to speak about issues if we start with absolutes and generalities. Moreover, finding solutions- i.e. superficial ones-become much easier. However, this solution finding process turns upside down when we leave the realm of generalities and step once again on the solid ground of the status quo.
If we totally accept the census results His Beatitude provides and we don't take into consideration the statistical differences between different countries and states and take 110 men for 100 women and marry them we will still end up with ten men who will not have a sole mate. How can this simple arithmetical question be solved then?
Even though in our age and time the issue of marriage is not regarded as an issue of males vs. females, but rather a more complex problem that contain many psychological, economic, and social issues, we still want to argue about numbers only. Statistical surveys completed after the war show that there is a big gap between male and female percentages. Thus the simple mathematical theory that there is a man for each woman and a woman for each man can't be accepted as such. This definitely leads to a disturbance within the divine condition and divine intervention and thus creates fissures within the normal state of human affairs.
It would have been wiser for His Beatitude to not enter the realm of statistics and thus to encourage marriage over whoredom.
If His Beatitude only spoke about the physical and material damages that prostitution entails and he supplemented that with the benefits that a married life and a family brings, he would have said the best and the most logical in this regard. He would not have opened the wormhole of personal issues and the bigger and more complex issue of marriage that we encounter in our country. We dare even say that we are creating more problems because of our dogmatic social traditions, frozen political activism, and desperate economic condition which lead to secondary issues like immigration, deprivation of social freedoms, as well as archaic marriage rules like dowries.
We agree with His Beatitude that prostitution and any other form of harlotry id bad and damaging for society. However, we don't agree with the cure that he is prescribing for it... Doing away with and cleansing from whoredom can't be achieved by just forbidding it. It can happen if we take a closer look at our social traditions and amending them and our economic woes and by educating the people with the right social and especially nation education so that members of society will work toward bettering and elevating their social status and virtues. These are only some aspects of personal education that enriches the real national education and which the SSNP did bring to the light through its ideology.
National Education
In the eighth part of his speech His Beatitude speaks about showing special attention to education. He titles this section “National Education.” Once again he starts with an absolute basis when he says:
“A child is born devoid of any knowledge about anything.”
He borrows from St. Erma the Syrian his thanks to God that he was born a Christian in a Christian house and from Christian parents. He uses this example to stress the importance of education and its positive results. His Beatitude's saying that whoever was born and raised in a Christian family remains a Christian and whoever was born and raised in a Muslim family remains a Muslim leads us to the words of the Syrian eternal poet
Al Maary:
Each of our children is raised with what his father teaches him
Thus the son of Persian parents is raised on being a charlatan
His Beatitude wants national education to be divided among the different religions. He also says that the government can't open or encourage the opening of non-religious public schools. This means that His Beatitude is against secular schools and secular education. Thus, His Beatitude advocates that the government must leave the issue of education to the clergy and religious, sectarian institutions, rather than the national ones that are built on the notions of secularism. This is another way of making certain that we will never become a one and united nation and our faith will always be in the hands of the foreigner who knows well how to play on our religious and other divisions.
