Awareness
Understanding the pervasiveness of pornography and its detrimental impact on individuals, families, and society can be the first step in moving from a life of slavery to a life lived in the fullness of God's love. Our culture today often sends the message that what's good for "me" is what counts. We know in our hearts that we cannot live alone and only for ourselves. We have been made to share God's love with others in relationships--friendship, family, marriage.
Human relationship and human belonging often get messy and sometimes intriguing. To form healthy and holy relationships adds even greater challenge. Because doing it well takes time, energy and commitment, most of us try short cuts. Instead of staying committed for the long haul, we try to skip the steps of authenticity, process, relationship, honesty, sacrifice and surrender. We live in a society which conditions us by placing a high premium on efficiency and instant gratification. Many of us have programmed ourselves to expect things quickly and easily. When that doesn’t happen it is a sign to us that something is wrong or may even trigger or exacerbate our restlessness, instead of a sign the we are living with the reality of messy lives that take time and commitment.
In an article for Zenit, the News from Rome, Dr. Kleponis states:
"Because of our First Amendment right to freedom of speech, pornography will always be available in our society. I believe the best way to stop the spread of pornography addiction is through education. I compare this to tobacco use. Fifty years ago, doctors knew that smoking was killing people. They knew it was causing cancer, lung disease, heart disease, etc. However, it was politically incorrect to say anything negative about smoking. Every adult had the right to smoke. It took 50 years of massive public education, and the example of millions of people dying from tobacco use, to convince Americans that tobacco was dangerous. Today, most Americans don't smoke and are aware of the health risks associated with tobacco use. I believe that pornography addiction will have to be addressed in the same way. We need to educate Americans on the true dangers of pornography so that they too will choose not to use it."
Help your parish get the word out to parents, teens, and all adults that all pornography is harmful; there is no safe minimum of time one can view pornography. The As for Me and My House initiative has resources to assist your parish in educating families and protecting children.
Learn more about the dangerous effects of porngoraphy on your relationship.
The Dangerous Effects of Pornography on Society (from Dr. John Splinter)
Symptoms begin to emerge, like brush strokes in an impressionist painting by Monet, van Gogh, or Renoir:
A consistent 50% divorce rate
- 35% of our children now born out of wedlock
- 26% of our nation’s girls 13-19 carry at least one STD
- 25% of our nation’s adults have genital Herpes
- Suicide now the third leading killer of our nation’s adolescents
- 85% of youths in prisons come from homes with no dads
Those are vignettes of what happens when a culture cuts itself off from a relationship with its Creator.
Another very telling brush stroke has been the acceptance of pornography as “normal.” In the late 1950s when Hugh Hefner launched Playboy, most people called it a “dirty magazine.” Back then Playboy pictures were of women wearing provocative underwear, but no sexual body parts were actually shown. Today, Playboy’s nudity is tame in comparison to what’s available for free on the Internet ~ e.g., actual filming of intercourse, oral sex, homosexual sex, bestiality, masturbation, child rape, sexual torture.
It is becoming all but commonplace to hear of leaders losing their jobs and/or being arrested in regard to their use of porn. Here are recent examples taken off the Internet. There are hundreds more similar examples, any of which could have happened in any town or city in the USA:
- April 23, 2010 the news broke of top SEC officials spending eight hours a day looking at porn while the nation teetered on the brink of economic disaster. (Dateline, Washington D.C., April 23, 2010)
- May 1, 2010, 1he mayor of the small southwest Missouri town of Dadeville is charged with possessing child pornography. (KMOV)
Perhaps most symptomatic of the deterioration in our culture is that nobody’s marching in the streets, protesting. We’ve passively accepted what was formerly called “debauchery” as merely being “something men and women do” ~ sort of like drinking milk but with a shot of whiskey.
This phenomenon has an age-specific dynamic to it. People born before 1960 are generally deeply concerned about the moral drift exhibited by cultural acceptance of pornography. People born after 1980 generally accept porn as a normal (if not very savory) component of a pluralistic society. In the 1960s, if a person wished to see a naked breast in a movie, they had to go to one of those sleazy theaters found in the cruddy parts of big cities, playing the raunchiest trash in town ~ and hope nobody saw them enter or leave the theater. Today, we see far more sexual stuff on the TV in the privacy of our kitchen or bedroom.
We’ve been lured into a belief system that calls pornography, a “victimless crime.” Person after person who is caught and punished due to porn, expresses the thought, “I wasn’t hurting anyone.” To say porn is victimless is like comparing hydrogen bombs with party-pops. [for information go to pureHope.net]