I do not believe that safety is defined by feelings. I think of my wife’s Italian parents who as children lived for years in the war zone that was World War II. They had all the problems we have, plus invading Nazis, yet they are not shrinking violets afraid of their own feelings. I think the last thing contemporary Americans (or Europeans, or Australians, etc.) need is encouragement to be self-absorbed and touchy. Quite the contrary.
I do not believe that the Church is largely to blame for the sins of those outside the Church. The Church has been saying for ages to live lives of chastity. Those who do not live chastely suffer the ills of promiscuity. This is unavoidably true, even if God did not exist. One who plunges a knife into his arm will bleed, regardless of Calvary. What is the fruit of our society that insists upon sexual degeneracy, and that insists that calls for purity are unloving and wicked? Physical death (especially abortion), divorce, re-marriage, de facto polygamy, broken homes, ubiquitous pornography, heart-broken children, poverty, parents abandoning their calling, abandoned children, sexual abuse, venereal disease, etc. THAT is what breaks my heart. What we call “love and tolerance” is moral laxity, laziness, lack of love, and even contempt. Promiscuity hurts all it touches. It hurts the sinner. It hurts the sinner’s loved ones. It hurts society as a whole. It makes it more likely that children in our society will grow-up to be promiscuous, thus spreading and expanding the cycle of hate. Sex outside of marriage is hatred of both God and man.
Churches that do not stand against the tide of annihilating perversity have simply become “the Church of What’s Happening Now”, aping the secular culture, and they even stand guilty of self-righteousness. (“What wonderful Christians we are to approve of Mike having a live-in girlfriend! Unlike those awful, judgmental Christians over there who say that Mike shouldn’t be doing that.”)
One of the Orthodox Church’s most beloved saints is Saint Mary of Egypt. She lived a life of 17 years of unimaginable sexual perversity before repenting at age 29. She is venerated and glorified because of turning away from sin to holiness. She was never treated with kid gloves, nor did she ever bemoan the fact that somebody hurt her feelings, etc. Nor did she pretend that her life of sin wasn’t thoroughly repugnant and evil. Nor did she ever blame the Church for her prior sinfulness. She placed the blame squarely on herself, and nowhere else. I am guided by her example.