Acts 15: 'A lawful marriage'

There are several interesting things about the Gospel passage from Acts 15 this last Sunday. The first is that there was the question of the possible necessity of becoming a Jew before, or as part of, becoming a Christian. The Jews are seen as an arrogant, insular people but this implies it was quite accepted by them to become one which kind of dilutes the characterization. Another is the idea that, to be a Christian, you had to abstain from eating idol blood sacrifices and 'have a lawful marriage.' So the Catholic Church 'obsession' with sexual sin happened at the time things changed from purely the teachings of Jesus/ relationship to him to a religion. Freud said that Christianity is the 'religion of the son.' The Pope in his recent trip was wont to define what portion of sexuality the sons/daughters were now due, to me analogously to how the poor, deprived of oral satisfaction, were to be given a portion with the killing/subjugation of the producers/ owners. The degree of repression his superego representation demanded however seemed out of step with what the Brazilians seem to have needed.