Sunday 31 (A-2005): Pornography

(unabridged version: a shorter version was delivered during Mass)

This coming week is Pornography Awareness Week and His Eminence Cardinal McCarrick, our Archbishop, has asked us priests to talk to you this Sunday about the serious question of pornography.

What is pornography? The Catechism (par. 2354) answers:

 “Pornography consists in removing real or simulated sexual acts from the intimacy of the partners, in order to display them deliberately to third parties.

It offends against chastity because it perverts the conjugal act, the intimate giving of spouses to each other.

It does grave injury to the dignity of its participants (actors, vendors, the public), since each one becomes an object of base pleasure and illicit profit for others.

It immerses all who are involved in the illusion of a fantasy world.

It is a grave offence.

Civil authorities should prevent the production and distribution of pornographic materials.”

This response only covers, of course, that pornography which exhibits what we might call proper heterosexual intercourse. But pornography extends to much more than that, of which I will spare you the details.

Objectively speaking, all of the behaviors seen in pornography are distortions of true, conjugal relations and are therefore serious offenses against marriage and therefore against the Creator.

Pornography is a powerful weapon in the hands of those who wish to destroy marriage and the family. We should not doubt that there are many who wish to see the end of marriage as it has come from the hand of the Creator.

It is only logical that pornography will flourish where God is in fact denied, either in the home or in the public square.

What is worse, if a husband or wife themselves indulge in pornography, individually or together, they introduce profanity into the sacredness of their marital relations.

A pornographic mentality will turn a loving surrender of two persons to one another into a mutual and increasingly anonymous abuse of one another as self-serving objects.

Children will be increasingly regarded as an unfortunate consequence of, or intrusion into, their sexual freedom. The children will feel alienated in their dignity and unloved for their own sakes.

They will begin to think pornographically themselves and could well end up living illusory lives as the fruit of the depraved self-deception of one or other or both parents.

Pornography is thus a particularly dreadful tool of the Destroyer, who seeks to mimic, to caricaturize and to destroy the work of the Creator.

Over time, pornography destroys the freedom of any of its customers. From an occasional encounter with it, it can soon become an obsession, an addiction and, for some, necessary even to survive at all.

It schools its slaves to be incapable of looking at another human being without transferring them into pornographic situations.

It creates a quasi mystical attitude in its adherents whereby they think of themselves as privy to a great, secret power which ordinary mortals do not share.

The porn addict will consider himself privileged to be a member of this exclusive club and think that, outside of it, “you have not lived.”

Thus pornography can subvert a person’s entire outlook on life, on relationships and even on themselves. In such subversion, God as Creator and Redeemer naturally has no place.

Even the humanity of the Lord Jesus has not been spared from attack by the pornographic mindset (just in case anyone might take his divinity seriously).

It should be no surprise, then, that pornography betrays the same characteristics as Satan: sweet lies, sweet seduction and bitter, bitter destruction.

A man is not a “real man” or a woman a “real woman” because they watch pornography. Rather, it is the self-pitying coward within who turns defensively to fantasy instead of facing up to the truth.

Even before speaking of Christ at all, just the willingness and the courage to face up to the truth of one’s life and to accept a morality which leads to sincere self-giving to the other, will bring the porn addict to freedom.

Yet, it is ultimately Christ who offers every man and woman the true fulfillment of their desires and need for love, for belonging, for definitive well-being of mind and body.

Each of us can be his own man, or her own woman, if we show bold and faithful trust in Christ and in his truth which alone can set us eternally free.

Subjectively speaking, i.e. in the mind of the person performing pornographic acts or watching them, pornography can have many other meanings.

At one end of the spectrum, it can be a conscious and deliberate choice to be involved in those acts, or, at the other end, it can be a compulsive need, often rooted in the unconscious.

Whether or not mortal sin is involved in using pornography (by “using” I mean performing in it, buying it, watching it, etc.) will depend on the reason why it is so used.

That reason, of course, is not necessarily what the person says it is. They may say they “just like it”, but the truth may be that they are lonely or feel rejected.

If so, it will not be enough just to stop using it. Indeed, they may only ever be able to stop if they find a solution to their loneliness or sense of rejection.

This is why pornography is so pernicious. It seems to offer an easy solution to deeper needs of the affections or the heart. In doing so, it traps someone into addiction and into the illusion that their problem will melt away by looking at sexual images while, at the same time, preventing them from facing the real truth about themselves.

Of course, there are those who may well use pornography for pornography’s sake, and not because they have any deeper problem to resolve.

Such people are in very great danger, because the degree of freedom with which they use it is greater and so, therefore, is their moral responsibility.

Still others may fall in between free usage and compulsive usage of pornography.

They may indeed have some freedom in using it but they may also be motivated by some other problem they have. Their moral responsibility may well be reduced, but getting hooked on pornography will still humiliate them and is likely to consume what little freedom they had left.

A person who is in the habit of using pornography should be brought to ask themselves: why am I doing this? In other words, they need to be brought to a sincere and open dialogue with the truth of their own soul.

That truth may indeed be very painful and very complex but, without  accepting it and working it through, the person will live in perpetual alienation from themselves and will always look for acceptance elsewhere, be it in the fantasy of pornography or in something else.

That fantasy may satisfy for a brief moment, but in doing so, it will actually draw the person further and further away from themselves in a spiral of ever-increasing perversity and the desperate search for an elusive love.

The greater tragedy, then, is not just the sinful behavior of the actors, vendors and users of pornography: it is the gradual loss of the truth of oneself and the reduction of oneself to a caricature of the fantasy one is watching.

If, on the other hand, someone stuck on porn finds the courage to ask, “why am I doing this?”, even if it is just because they are sick of themselves, then there is hope.

The hope will be even brighter if they recognize that they cannot cope with it alone. Although pornography is shameful, someone in its grasp need not be ashamed of asking for help.

There are good programs and help networks available. Finding help is a big step towards freedom. Sure, there will be many steps to follow, and sometimes one might step back a little or fall, but since one is on the journey to finding one’s own truth and loving oneself truly, these mishaps will be taken in their stride.

The person lost in pornography needs great compassion, love and encouragement from each one of us.

They need to know that Christ waits to be gracious to them and to fulfill beyond their wildest fantasies the love and deep sense of longing within them.

They also need society to dismantle effectively the pornography “industry”.

Public morality should be defended by strong laws, firm judicial sentences and courageous executive leadership in education, social assistance and rehabilitation.

Legal and executive measures must be taken to defend and promote marriage as a unique public institution between one man and one woman.

Likewise, the wholesome education of children in civic and moral values must be forthcoming, and initiatives which seek to introduce deformation of those values need to be restrained.

Freedom of expression, in any form, must not be allowed to mean that the moral soul of a nation be contaminated or consumed, by any plague of deceit, corruption or prevarication.

Hard-core pornography is illegal and obscenity is not protected by the First Amendment. Encourage your elected officials to act accordingly. Join organizations to fight pornography, to fight, that is, for the moral soul of America.

Pornography desensitizes people to true moral values, and those who try to uphold those values are deemed neanderthal or obstacles to freedom of expression.

Young people are targeted by the multi-billion porn industry which is literally buying and selling their dignity, their morality, their future and their souls.

Fantasies are soon acted out and, with that, come crime and personal degradation and humiliation.

Pornography kills hope and replaces the desire for the transcendent and imprisons people literally within their own skins.

It creates schizophrenia in many who, while wanting and trying to remain faithful to moral standards, find their weaknesses played upon so mightily by pornography, that they live one life by day and another by night.

Pornography destroys true love and can erode even the capacity for it. Pornography is the champion of freedom run riot in reducing everything to the self: the other is only any use insofar as they fit in with my own pleasure.

But where the other is not respected as the other, the basis for love has gone.

In the context of the Christian community, we need to speak clearly about what is wrong and what is right in the eyes of God.

Sin must be called for what it is, but so must forgiveness. The cry of doom is only helpful if it is followed by the cry of salvation.

Pornography is a grave sin and must be confessed, especially before receiving Holy Communion. How can we abuse the bodies of others and our own body and then receive sincerely the sacred Body of Christ?

But the repentant sinner must be welcomed, loved, practically helped and reassured.

We need also to reclaim for our generation the sanctity of marriage, the sacred character of the home, the dignity and holiness of the marriage bed.

Our young people need leadership from all of us to challenge them to reach for the highest ideals of truly human and Christian living.

Chastity both within marriage and outside of it must be rediscovered. It is the virtue of moral integrity by which all one’s energies, strivings and desires are held in a healthy, growth-filled tension whereby one keeps oneself alone for one’s spouse or for one’s God.

Instead of simply offering endless sports opportunities to our youth, we need to offer practical schooling in moral self-discipline, so that when a young person comes to marry, they can honestly say that they are giving themselves totally, completely and exclusively for the first time to their spouse.

If you are suffering from porn addiction, recognize your problem and seek the spiritual and psychological help you need. Confess your sins frequently, pray to Our Lady, receive the Body of Christ. Seek out a 12 step program or support group, since programs are available for victims and their families.

Pornography is neither unbeatable nor inevitable. John Paul II offered the Church and humanity a stupendous theology of the body.

By baptism our bodies become the Lord’s temple. By the Eucharist his sacred Body is united to ours and ours to his.

We need to find or to be people who are willing and able creatively to inject these immense spiritual resources of the Church into the lives of our youngsters.

They need it, they deserve it and Christ commands it.

Together let us work and pray resolutely to deliver it.

Msgr. Peter Magee

Sunday, October 30^th, 2005

Annunciation Parish, DC: 11.30 am