The epidemic of pornography

Pornography is silently destroying the lives of boys and girls, adults and the middle aged alike. It has successfully dismantled marriages and pulled apart families. It is corrupting priests and seminarians. It is making entry ways into convents and communities. It is invading every strata of human presence. Let us call spade a spade - Pornography is a disastrous epidemic of epic proportions.

What do we do about it? How do we protect ourselves and our young? How do we heal and restore those who are harmed by it. How to educate people about this intrinsically evil epidemic. How to empower them to willfully reject it?

In the divine design, man and women would enter into the sacred sexual union in the sacramental framework of marriage, fully prepared to become a gift to each other and become parents of the children their union begets, assuming responsibility, accepting hardships and challenges. This valiant marital commitment gave them meaning and purpose to their lives. 

Sexul union is foundational to humanity. Our future generation is dependant on the way we are engaging in sexual activity. Sadly, in our age, pornography has become the most imitable model that shapes our sex life. This generation is attempting to play out the porn sequence in their bed rooms. The marital bed that should have become the Holy Alter where man and women offered themselves mutually in love now turns into a laboratory where the perversions of pornography is experimented reducing the other to a mere specimen. In the process they are victimised, used, abused and dishonored. Such abusive relationships are incapable of maturing into authentic nuptial bond.

Our culture is disatrously self centred. The well concocted recipe of pornography is an absolute match for this mindless life style. Another shocking phenomenon that takes place in marriages these days, especially with men is that, if his idea of woman’s beauty and sex is shaped by pornography, it becomes almost impossible for him to like the body of the spouse when he is exposed to her for the first time. Because all he could do then is to compare her body to the thousands of naked bodies he has browsed through before and despair. Because pornography associates sexual pleasure merely to the physical aspects of the body. Love, care, compassion, patience, self control, respect, temperance etc has no place in the sex popularised by the porn world. 

Pornography is a disastrous epidemic. Disastrous because it corrupts human minds, destroys marriages, promotes selfish pleasure, encourages rape, abuse, molestation, hookups and the culture of mindless sex. Epidemic because pornography has become accessible and available to all young and the old alike thanks to internet and mobile devices. It is a malicious virus infiltrating humanity at unimaginable pace.

Pornography is highly addictive. It weakens our capacity to make right moral choices. It promotes selfish pleasure at the expense of the other. It operates on fantasy and pleasure without commitment. Pornography degrades human beings to be mere objects to be used.

Sex in pornography is bunch of performers acting out in-front of the camera for money according to porn maker's imagination. The production often involves drugs, abuse, manipulation, false hopes, ill treatment and sexual diseases. There are also men and women who sell their private tapes for quick money to the industry. These eventually end up in the porn industry because of the easy money and the 'popularity'. Little do they know, all that their fans care about is their body and its utility to pleasure them. People choose to surrender their inviolable and invaluable dignity and self worth without thinking about the disastrous consequence. The title "porn star" and the hype created around it is a strategic business plan to lure young girls and boys into this trap, cleverly erasing the stigma and shame that are naturally attached to it. Pornography is a multi-million dollar business. It destroys the lives of not only those who watch it but also those who make it. 

The authentic sexual union which is rightly ordered to be within the confines of the sacred bond of marriage is now made a public spectacle and an object of mass entertainment. Even normal life is becoming pornographic. Advertisements, movies, music videos, TV shows, have all become sexual. Society has lost its sensitivity. We easily put up with all kinds of sexual perversions. Marriage is regarded as a religious imposition that deprive people of their freedom to do what they please with their own bodies. Pornography is advised and prescribed as a self-help tool by the wise and learned of the society to those seeking help. No one dares to question because of the twisted and manipulate human right laws and ideologies that prevail. Perversion is accepted as freedom of expression. Morality has become a hateful term. Everyone is encouraged to act according to their preference. To make things all the more convenient, God is shown the exit door and Church is demonised and portrayed as anti-human.

Do the generation after us deserve what we are making them to be? 

Pornograhy has dulled our conscience. Our young must have access to the truth and the right awareness before pornography introduces itself to them as their chum and birth right. 

Sex was God’s idea. God has a plan for our sexuality. Everyone deserves to know the divine  truth about Sex.  Word of God tells us “whoever looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” - Mathew 5:28.  This betrayal takes place within the depth of our heart. Sex has supreme spiritual significance. Without the spiritual, sex cannot be fully understood or meaningfully entered into. 

But the scripture also promises "If the son of God sets you free you are free indeed - John 8:36

The solution to the ‘pornography problem’ is not a revolt against the porn industry or the makers and actors of porn but a spiritual war waged within. We must wilfully renounce the lies of pornography. All we need a cleansing of self with the detergent of Divine Truth and His unending grace. We need to usher God back into our lives. We need to look again to the teachings of the Church for light. It is through the Church that God offered us the truth to live in harmony and with dignity.  Yes there is solution to the epidemic of porn and the solution is spiritual it is a war within.  Lets wake up!