Pornography is not a Private Matter

Last week, I wrote about how the widespread availability and use of hardcore pornography is leading to hugely destructive impacts not just on individuals addicted to pornography, but on the whole of society. As it turns out, this most “private” of sexual behaviors is not private in the least.

This should not surprise anyone. If billions of human beings suddenly all began privately engaging in a certain activity, we would expect this to lead to certain changes in society at large. This would be true, even if the activity were entirely uncontroversial.

If, for instance, billions of human beings suddenly decided to spend hours every week privately reading Shakespeare, we would expect there to be all manner of public repercussions, even if the actual reading only took place in the privacy of their bedrooms.

The mere act of thinking about a certain topic (i.e., Shakespeare) inevitably causes peoples’ interests to shift. This, in turn, causes their behaviors to change, leading them to start spending their time, and their money, in different ways.

In such an unlikely event, theaters putting on Shakespeare plays would probably immediately start selling out, and more theaters would have to be built. More people would need to train to become Shakespearean actors, and the best of such actors would suddenly become wildly famous. More people might decide to major in English literature, with the result that universities would have to expand their English departments.

Social life would be different too. Conversations about Shakespeare’s works would become common at work and at parties. People’s vocabularies would alter and expand, and they would often illustrate points they are making with a reference to some character or plot point in a Shakespeare play. People would start to look for romantic partners who shared their passion for Shakespeare, etc. etc.

It is easy to imagine many more amusing, but also very real, consequences of a society “privately” hooked on Shakespeare.

“Sin Makes us Stupid”

The obviousness of this is what makes it all the more infuriating that so many people treat something as potent as pornography consumption as essentially consequence-free, a private affair. To anyone with an iota of common sense, it is clear that pornography taps into, and alters, one of the most potent forces on the planet, i.e. human sexuality.

On the one hand, it is strange beyond words that so many people seem to have bought into the idea that a person can “privately” spend hours fantasizing to images and videos that invoke incredibly powerful feelings and think that this “private” fantasy will not have at least some impact upon their lives, and the lives of others.

On the other hand, it is not surprising in the least. There is an old saying that goes, “Sin makes you stupid.” Another way of saying the same thing, is that “sin darkens the intellect.” This is the phrase preferred by philosophers and theologians such as St. Thomas Aquinas.

St. Paul warns of the same thing in The Second Letter to Timothy, when he writes, “For the time will come when people will not tolerate sound doctrine but, following their own desires and insatiable curiosity, will accumulate teachers and will stop listening to the truth and will be diverted to myths” (2 Tim 4:3).

As mentioned last week, the statistics are such that it is in some ways accurate to say that we are a society of porn addicts. As such, a significant percentage of people have a very personal reason to argue that pornography is harmless. In their desperation to protect their preferred pleasure, they will argue, and even come to believe, things that our ancestors almost universally understood to be ludicrous. That are, in fact, ludicrous.

The Loss of Collective Wisdom

This is the point made by the Dicastery for Laity, Family, and Life, formerly The Pontifical Council for the Family (and Pontifical Council for the Laity), in the opening paragraphs of its document on sex education, entitled “The Truth and Meaning of Human Sexuality.” As they write, “In the past, even when the family did not provide specific sexual education, the general culture was permeated by respect for fundamental values and hence served to protect and maintain them” (no. 1).

In other words, even if an individual family or set of parents did not explicitly educate their children in moral principles in relation to sex, this was not necessarily the end of the world. While it might have been better for the parents to take a more active role, nevertheless, nearly everything in society educated their children in those moral principles.

One of these principles was certainly that any kind of an obsessive interest in sex, to the point of spending hours viewing images of others engaged in sexual behavior, is not only evidence of a highly deformed mind and character, but also extremely dangerous for the individual and for society. In particular, it was universally recognized that even risking putting pornography into the hands of children was an act of unspeakable vileness.

As such, society had a very great interest in curtailing the availability of pornographic materials, to the point of criminalizing those who produced and distributed such materials. After all, the need to protect the innocence of children, the sanctity of marriage, and the moral character of a society’s citizens, was something that interested everybody, and was very much a matter of public concern.

Now, however, we find that even a significant number of people who call themselves “conservatives” have been so misled by the general consensus of our lost society, that they will defend the ready, barrier-free accessibility of kinds of vicious, violent, degrading pornography that would have horrified even many pornographers a generation or two ago. And they do so in the name of things like “freedom of speech,” or the “First Amendment.”

The Responsibility of Parents

In the past two columns, I have used the issue of pornography as an illustration of a broader point: On the topic of sex, our society is mad. Certain claims that are now taken for granted, are, in reality, grotesque lies: lies that our ancestors would have immediately detected as such.

However, because we live in a society that is steeped in a false understanding of sexuality and of the human person, many people do not even think to question the false presuppositions. The result is that, in myriad ways that are invisible to us, our society reinforces principles that are not only utterly foreign to the Christian worldview, but which continually lead us and our children away from the truth, and toward serious sin.

As discussed last week, pornography addiction has utterly ruined more lives than any of us know. However, it is also the case that this distorted view of sexuality and of the human person makes it much more difficult, in various invisible but sinister ways, even for committed Christians to live out happy, holy marriages, and for their children to enjoy the kind of normal, innocent childhood that sets them up to live meaningful, rich lives, and ultimately for eternal life with God.

As the then-named Pontifical Council for the Family puts it:

In the greater part of society, both in developed and developing countries, the decline of traditional models has left children deprived of consistent and positive guidance, while parents find themselves unprepared to provide adequate answers. This new context is made worse by what we observe: an eclipse of the truth about man which, among other things, exerts pressure to reduce sex to something commonplace. In this area, society and the mass media most of the time provide depersonalized, recreational and often pessimistic information. Moreover, this information does not take into account the different stages of formation and development of children and young people, and it is influenced by a distorted individualistic concept of freedom, in an ambience lacking the basic values of life, human love and the family (no. 1).

It adds: “In such a situation, many Catholic parents turn to the Church to take up the task of providing guidance and suggestions for educating their children, especially in the phase of childhood and adolescence” (no. 1).

To assist in this, the Council produced the document The Truth and Meaning of Human Sexuality. Next week, I am going to dive more deeply into this document, providing some of the highlights that I hope may help parents to meet the challenges of this time. (Of course, you don’t need to wait for me to summarize the document. Why not print it out yourself, and read a little of it each day over the next week?)

Unfortunately, too many parents, including otherwise faithful parents, find that the task of sex education is too difficult or too fraught. Often, they hand the education of their children on this matter over to their schools or to the broader culture. This is not always intentional, but often simply by virtue of negligence.

I am here to say to parents that the relinquishing of their obligations toward the education of their children is not an option. The forces arrayed against Christians households are too pervasive and too powerful to ignore. The only option for faithful parents in an age that is so sick, is to educate themselves deeply, and to intentionally engage with their children by providing a meaningful program of healthy, age-appropriate sex education. This is a difficult task. But it is one from which Christian parents cannot shrink.

As the abovementioned document makes clear: “In giving life, parents cooperate with the creative power of God and receive the gift of a new responsibility — not only to feed their children and satisfy their material and cultural needs, but above all to pass on to them the lived truth of the faith and to educate them in love of God and neighbor. This is the parents’ first duty in the heart of the “domestic church” (no. 5).

This includes in the area of sexuality.

Next week we will look more closely at some of the ways that parents can meet this responsibility in a way that is deeply informed by Church teaching, and that takes into account the maturity level of their children.