Whether out of fatigue with the culture wars, or a reluctance to attack something which has become so normal, or in obedience to St Paul’s warning that impurity should not even be talked about – whatever the reason, a Catholic witness against pornography has often been lacking.
But elsewhere, a backlash has begun. Last month, Utah Governor Gary Herbert signed a resolution deeming pornography a “public health hazard”. It follows a series of studies about how pornography has damaged relationships and created unhealthy attitudes. Recently Time magazine ran a cover story, “Porn and the Threat to Virility”, about young men who felt pornography had reprogrammed their brains and damaged their sexuality.
The US bishops issued a document in 2013 about the threat of pornography. Pope Francis has encouraged parents to restrict children’s computer use to a single device in a communal place. There are Catholic initiatives like theporneffect.com. But clergy and laity alike have often avoided the subject. Now might be a good moment to change that.
You can see why Catholic leaders have kept quiet. The abuse crisis, and the popular image of the Church as a neurotic moral police force, discourage pulpit denunciations. Far better, bishops might think, to give leadership on the refugee crisis, poverty and human trafficking. But precisely the challenge there is to see migrants, the poor and victims of trafficking as infinitely precious human beings. And if there is one thing that stops us from seeing people as precious, it is the instrumentalising force of pornography.
As the comedian Russell Brand puts it, in a video viewed more than 2.5 million times, pornography deceives by reducing sex to an “extracted physical act”. Brand quotes “a priest” as saying: “Pornography is not a problem because it shows us too much: it’s a problem because it shows us too little.”
That line comes from Christopher West, who was himself paraphrasing Pope St John Paul II. If Brand, Britain’s most famously Byronic libertine, can find truth in Catholic sexual morality, maybe Catholics should be less diffident about it.
About 14 per cent of internet searches are for pornography, according to Harvard researcher Dr Ogi Ogas. The generations who have grown up with the internet are especially vulnerable. In an Opinium survey, 80 per cent of 18-year-olds in Britain said online pornography was too easy to access, and 70 per cent said their classmates thought it was normal.
The secular response has been confused. ChildLine’s website tells teenagers that pornography is OK, you just have to watch out for peer pressure, anxiety and so on: as though there is a wholesome way of using pornography. But academic studies – many cited by Gail Dines in the Washington Post – and copious anecdotal evidence, suggest that pornography leads to mental health problems, a breakdown of trust within relationships and sexual aggression. That makes sense, if using pornography is a sin.
If the word sounds harsh, consider Russell Brand’s self-reflection: “I know that pornography is wrong, that I shouldn’t be looking at it … If I had total dominion over myself I would never look at pornography again.”
Elsewhere you find a growing consciousness that pornography is hurting us. Another comedian, Dylan Moran, has half-joked that “after a romantic night in with yourself, there’s a very acute sensation of failed suicide”. The writer Giles Coren declared recently that he was giving up pornography, having realised it had trapped him in a cycle of self-loathing. The Time story quoted a man saying: “When I think about it, I’ve wasted years of my life looking for a computer or mobile phone to provide something it is not capable of providing.”
Whenever Catholics make or remake their baptismal promises, they renounce Satan “and all his empty promises”. Is there any clearer example of what an empty promise looks like?
One obstacle to the Church’s moral teaching is the popular view that something is only wrong if it hurts somebody else. But pornography demonstrates that what hurts you will end up hurting anyone you’re in a relationship with; and that even a private matter can be a moral matter. There are so many people with consciences burdened by pornography, who might find rest for their souls in the mercy God offers through the Church.
The Church’s witness on sexual morality has been complicated by the sense – sometimes justified – that Catholics lack sympathy with common experiences. Condemning gay sex while ignoring the mutual charity and self-sacrifice of gay couples; denouncing abortion and contraception while saying nothing about the poverty and ill-health which encourage them; lamenting IVF without acknowledging the grief of childlessness – that kind of rhetoric grates. But users of pornography are discovering that it is uncomplicatedly bad. If the Church finds its voice on this, it might make some unexpected allies.
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