"Bought With a Price"
Bishop Loverde's Pastoral Letter on the Issue of Pornography
Posted on 12/16/2006 5:56:56 PM PST by Coleus
Bishop’s forceful letter is "making the rounds."
A U.S. Catholic bishop is speaking out against the evils of pornography and his message is making its way around the world. In a pastoral letter, Bishop Paul Loverde of Arlington, Va., said pornography is "an attack on the living Temple of God." He further insisted that the images distort people's ability to see one another as a unique and beautiful expression of God’s creation. The Rev. Terry Specht, spokesman for the Diocese of Arlington, said Bishop Loverde’s message is simple, but profound.
"Christians are people called apart by God to live a life of holiness," Specht told Family News in Focus. "And this life of holiness is incompatible with viewing a human person as an object." The letter is primarily being sent to other Roman Catholic bishops across America. But people around the world are seeing it on the Internet. "It was immediately on the diocesan Web site that was picked up by a number of blogs; we’ve heard from Australia, we’ve heard from Britain," Specht said. "We’ve had very good responses from all over the world."
C.J. Doyle with the Catholic Action League thinks the statement couldn’t have come at a better time. "We live in a time not only where our culture is drenched in every manner of sexual impurity, but at a time when the pornography industry is going mainstream," he said. "This is a particularly dangerous form of immorality that objectifies women, and which studies have shown may lead to violence." Jenn Giroux with Citizens for Community Values said the document is greatly needed for people of all faiths. "It unites individuals of all faiths (to) come together and see that there’s common ground and a need and desire for people of moral faith to fight against pornography," she said. Giroux said she especially appreciates the straightforward message that pornography is not a victimless crime.
FOR MORE INFORMATION
Daniel Weiss is the author of several works which explore the issue of pornography and its implications for Christians and the society at large. They can be found on Focus on Social Issues, a public policy Web site of Focus on the Family.
Bishop Loverde's Pastoral Letter on the Issue of Pornography
This is, of course, true. Pornography makes human beings into objects and dehumanizes those who look at it. Moreover, if you let those kinds of images into your mind, they tend to stick there and can be difficult to get rid of. This was common knowledge in the Church before Vatican II and the sexual revolution, but seems to have been lost sight of.
(Friday, February 17, 2006)
The annual Sports Illustrated (SI) swimsuit edition hits the newsstands this week, and I cringe every time it comes out. Remember, I hear confessions. This raw mainstreaming of lust by an immensely popular sports magazine has driven many a man into the confessional—at least those who are honest with themselves. As a priest, a confessor and a man, I have to ask this question to the purveyors of this soft-porn excitement: just who gave you the authority to destroy men’s souls like this?
The sellers of SI are the new porn kings dressed in sports uniforms and undermining the decency of our men. Wives and girlfriends may turn a blind eye to this kind of entertainment because “guys will be guys” right? The devil, however, is not blind to it. He knows the fatal wound in the flesh of man and knows that most guys will be lustful when half-dressed or mostly-undressed women are paraded before them. He knows that the more he throws exposed flesh in front of men the more sin he gets out of them. It’s not too hard to figure out, but it is hard to stop once embraced. Guys who get hooked on this stuff usually “graduate” to heavier materials and then women wonder why their marriages break up and society wonders why increasing numbers of young men are becoming sexual deviants and committing sex crimes at an alarming rate.
I can’t say it more clearly: The Sports Illustrated people, as well as all who peddle porn in any form, bear a double burden of guilt for this sin, not just for the exploitation of the women who do the modeling, but for all the sins that are committed by the men who consume their images.
The Church’s tough-love alternative is the chaste mind, heart, soul and life. It might be foreign to men of this age, but the Catechism of the Catholic Church tells us that the virtue of chastity is indispensable for something we love most: freedom.
Chastity includes an apprenticeship in self-mastery which is a training in human freedom. The alternative is clear: either man governs his passions and finds peace, or he lets himself be dominated by them and becomes unhappy (n. 2339).
“Unhappy” is the Catechism’s nice way of saying that one becomes a slave to porn unless he learns to “reject Satan and all his works and all his empty promises,” the very creed we recite at Easter every year.
Men and women who read this: Don’t get caught in this slavery. If you are a store owner, just don’t sell it. If you are a subscriber to SI, just throw it out when it arrives in your mail box. If you are a man thinking about buying the swimsuit issue: think instead of the freedom that Christ bought you by His blood. A few minutes of lustful pleasure is not worth the loss of your eternal soul.
Who said it, "if you cannot beat them, join them"?
You (and Fr.Euteneuer) are right but the gateway to porn is much broader than just these men's magazines. Much of what is produced by the modern fashion industry is designed specifically to show the female body in a sexually provocative manner. For many, maybe most men, a simple trip to the beach can be a severe occasion of sin.
And no guys, we're not puritanical, overly scrupulous killjoys. Jesus said some very sobering words in the Sermon on the Mount. "You have heard it said that thou shalt not committ adultery, but I tell you that anyone who looks on a woman lustfully, has already committed adultery with her in his heart"
Those who place this temptation before us for the explicit purpose of accumulating filthy lucre, committ grave sin.
A trip to the beach? I would go further. An average day for a man, and in particular, a young man, can be a severe occasion of sin. Women's fashion is often snug and revealing. I'd argue that the our ancestors were quite wise in having women wear fashions that were feminine, while not hugging the figure, which really doesn't leave much to a man's imagination. The fashion of today reflects the feminist dogma that there is no real difference between the sexes.
You have pulled a switcheroo in the last two sentences away from the personal responsibiity Jesus addressed to blaming someone else.
My wife made me buy it!
I'm thinking of getting some pamphlets of this letter for my parish's magazine rack.
Our bishop here in St. Augustine sent an open letter to the Jacksonville paper, the Florida TImes Union, about this issue, particularly warning parents to make sure that young people did not get involved in viewing pornography or developing a distorted idea of sexuality from easily available pornography. The bishops appear to have discussed it in some meeting they had in September, and some bold bishops are actually speaking out, even though of course they get ridiculed for it. But it's nice to see something good come out of one of these bishops' meetings, for once.
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