Most practicing Catholics recognize the dangers of pornography on the spiritual life. Perhaps nothing in our society is better able to lead one away from God than this terrible evil. And, sadly, viewing pornography has become socially acceptable, thus leading many people astray.

Marcel LeJeune over at Aggie Catholics has written often about the plague of pornography, and he recently put up a very good post that shows that pornography’s destructiveness is not only spiritual, but it actually messes with your brain. He writes:

We have known for years that porn is destructive to marriages, families, individuals, and society.  We also know that is is addictive - more so than crack or heroin.  Science is just now finding out just how destructive it is to the brain.  Using pornography radically changes the neuro-pathways in the brain by causing the body to inject strong neuro-stimulants directly into the pleasure center of the brain.  Repeatedly doing this means the structure of the brain itself is altered and the effects are devastating.  As one psychologist puts it, “pornography hijacks the proper functioning of their (men in particular) brains.”

Go read Marcel’s whole article, and then redouble your prayers for all people who are ensnared by the evil of pornography.

St. Maria Goretti, pray for us!

I do not normally keep up with celebrity gossip, but as a golf fan, I haven’t been able to avoid the Tiger Woods scandal. At the time of this writing at least 11 women – mostly a combination of porn stars, cocktail waitresses and clubbers – have been intimately attached to the married golf star.

I think most people – even those who are not religious – find Tiger’s actions reprehensible; if the accusations and rumors are true, he appears to have engaged in extra-marital relations on a very frequent basis with many, many women. He seems to have no control over himself and his desires and little respect for his marital bond. Obviously I too condemn such behavior, but we would miss an important lesson if we just thought this was a problem unique to Tiger or even to celebrities.

Tiger engaged in adulterous behavior on a wide scale because a wide scale of women were available to him easily. As the comedian Chris Rock cynically noted, “A man is only as faithful as his options”. I don’t agree with this statement as it doesn’t take into account the power of grace, but there is truth in it. How many men in Tiger’s place would have been able to remain completely faithful? I think we can answer that question by looking at what is available to most men on a wide scale easily: pornography. Considering the tremendous commercial success of pornography, it is ridiculous to think many married men are not engaging in it. Yet every time a married man views pornography, he is engaging in adultery just like Tiger.

For both Tiger and the average husband viewing pornography, he is committing adultery when it is convenient for him to do so. For Tiger, that involved real physical contact with woman. For the average husband, it involves virtual contact. Christ told us that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully commits adultery with her in his heart: so how is the married man who views pornography any different than Tiger?

Tiger’s family life is imploding very publicly right now, but pornography is causing many families to implode silently. We should pray for Tiger and his family and also for all husbands struggling with pornography.

I have four daughters, the oldest of whom will soon be entering her teenage years. In five years, three of my daughters will be teenagers at the same time! Unlike many parents, I am actually looking forward to their teen years, as it is a wonderful time in which they are becoming adults and hopefully growing in their spiritual lives.

However, I am under no illusions about the dangers of the teenage years in our society. Over the past fifty years, our culture has decided that during the teen years it is acceptable to behave in beastly ways without consequences. This especially applies to the area of sexual relations; it is assumed by many people that teens are just going to do “it”, so all a parent should worry about is protecting them from physical harm (with no regard for the psychological/spiritual/mental harm of pre-marital relations). We see this in the push for teenagers to learn about contraception, while ignoring the possibility of abstinence.

But this mindset has also entered the realm of vaccinations. There is now a standard vaccination pushed on pre-teen girls which is to protect against HPV – Human Papillomavirus. This is a sexually transmitted infection, and the assumption of the vaccination is that the vast majority of girls will be sexually active in their teen years, so they should be vaccinated to protect themselves against HPV. My wife has been adamant that we will not get this vaccination for our girls, and I found a great article called “Girls and Gardasil: The Protection Game” which details the reasons not to give it to our daughters. It really is worthwhile to read the whole article and it is difficult to just excerpt parts of it. But here are some of the opening paragraphs:

Most people would agree to vaccinating their children against infections that are generalised within the community so that everyone stands an equal chance of catching them – whooping cough and measles, for instance. But there is a new class of diseases that are increasingly being targeted by vaccine developers: sexually transmitted diseases such as Hepatitis B and cervical cancer, and this is where parents need to consider more carefully whether to immunise or not…

The argument advanced for vaccinating schoolchildren is that most will be sexually active by the time they are eighteen and will have caught the virus by their early twenties; therefore, to be effective, the vaccine has to be administered prior to sexual debut. While this may appeal to parents with a pragmatic approach to life’s challenges, parents who are looking at the overall formation of their children need to take other factors into consideration. They have probably already had conversations with their children about the importance of exercising sexual responsibility prior to marriage and, with luck, they have been demonstrating steadfast fidelity and mutual support in their own marriage.

Deciding that they need to vaccinate a daughter against a sexually transmitted disease seems like a vote of no confidence in the child’s ability to display sexual self-control or choose a like-minded husband. It is like saying to a child, “Eat healthy foods, don’t overindulge and you won’t become obese … but, just in case you can’t control yourself, we’ll give you gastric banding surgery in advance.” Child psychologists are agreed that children are good at spotting when parents give them contradictory messages – and may later use them as justification for their behaviour. A school-based programme adds a social message that early sexual intercourse is allowed, as long as one uses “protection”…

The question we should be asking is, do we base our family decisions on worst case scenarios or do we try to support our children by building a “best practice” ethos within the family? And, importantly, using worst case scenarios to justify vaccination against STDs does not take into account the other ways of preventing cervical cancer nor the possible side-effects of vaccination.

Do read the whole article, and if you have pre-teen girls think carefully when you are asked to give them this vaccination. Are you possibly straining a gnat but swallowing a camel?

A study found that people who use condoms have poorer mental health than those who do not:

A leading Scottish psychologist has claimed that condom use is associated with poorer mental health, problems with stress and depression, saying his research shows the natural conjugal act can significantly boost the mental wellbeing of men and women.

But my favorite line was the following:

“The more often people are using condoms independent of age, independent of the nature of their relationship, the greater use of immature defense mechanisms against stress”

So using an immature defense mechanism against parenthood leads to a greater use of immature defense mechanisms against stress. Who’d have thunk it?

There is a plague that has been quietly sweeping the world the past decade. It has always existed, but recent advancements in the developed world have actually caused this plague to spread like wildfire. It infects men disproportionally, but almost no one is immune. It is far more deadly than the swine flu, and can have an incubation period of just a few weeks.

What is this plague? Addiction to pornography.

Pornography is one of the most destructive forces known to man – it destroys marriages, leads to crime, enslaves women, and most importantly, kills the soul. The spread of pornography in our internet age is one of Satan’s greatest successes. Now almost anyone can access pornography at anytime in the anonymity of their own home. Furthermore, Hollywood has made “soft core” porn standard-fare in popular movies, thus killing our consciences to this terrible plague. Pornography can be as addictive as the worst drugs, and as difficult to overcome.

But there is hope – the power of grace can overcome any sickness or sin. The Knights of Columbus have recently started a website called “Fathers for Good” which has a whole section dealing with the issue of pornography, including a list of resources for those struggling with this terrible addiction.

I urge anyone who is struggling with this issue to get help immediately – your family and your soul could be hanging in the balance.

St. Maria Goretti, pray for us!

Last week Christopher West, a popular proponent of John Paul II’s “Theology of the Body” was profiled on ABC’s Nightline. When I watched the piece (video available in the link provided), I have to admit I was a bit disappointed. The whole segment seemed to be completely focused on sexual acts, devoid of any serious context. It even presented Mr. West as being a fan of Hugh Hefner and made him appear to be supportive of the sexual revolution. I do not know Mr. West, although I am vaguely familiar with some of his work, but I do know the media and I assumed that ABC was to blame. Considering our culture’s distorted obsession with pelvic issues, it is not surprising that they would divorce issues of sexual acts from the context of male-female relationships as intended by God.

Well, it appears that Christopher West also takes issue with ABC’s presentation. On his website, he notes some errors with a number of points in the report. He also granted an interview with Catholic News Agency in which he gives further corrections to ABC’s sensationalism of his work.

However, some Catholics are still not happy with Mr. West’s apostolate, including Alice von Hildebrand. Her main objection seems to be that she does not think Mr. West is “reverent” enough in his discussions of sexual issues and does not take seriously enough the problem of concupiscence.

This is clearly an important issue. We live in a culture is that is incredibly sick when it comes to sex. You cannot walk in a mall without seeing semi-pornographic images and you cannot watch more than 15 minutes of prime-time television without some message urging sexual relations without any responsibility. High schools and colleges are deep in the “hook up” culture, which reduces the God-given gift of sex to an animal urge. How are we as faithful Catholics to respond to such a culture?

On the one hand, I am uncomfortable with some of the Catholic responses to the sexual revolution, which try to be like a “Catholic Dr. Ruth” or as “edgy” in its language as Howard Stern. Dr. Hildebrand has a point when she urges us to be reverent when speaking of sexuality and to always remember that we are all afflicted with concupiscence. Yet I also think that one of the beauties of JPII’s Theology of the Body is that it breaks free of the Puritan demeaning of sex. Sexual relations between a man and a wife is a wonderful gift from God and one of its purposes (along with begetting children) is to unite a man and a woman as “one flesh.” St. Paul tells us that marriage is a “mystery” that reflects the relationship between Christ and His Church – how incredible is that? The response to culture’s worship of sex is not to proclaim that “sex is evil” or even to avoid talking about sex, but instead show how sexual relations can and should point people to worship of sex’s creator. From what I have seen, this is the ultimate intention of Christopher West’s apostolate.

Inevitably, good people can make mistakes and perhaps go beyond the proper boundaries when discussing sexual relations. We need to pray that everyone involved in this type of apostolate stays close to the Lord and helps others to understand God’s gift of sex in its appropriate context.

Reason #4,503,294 to kill your TV:

Study: Children Who View TV Targeted for Adults Engage in Sexual Activity Earlier

A friend sent me a link to an article with the following headline:

No such thing as virginity, author says

My first reaction was “boy, anyone can get published these days” (ironically, the same reaction I had when Our Sunday Visitor agreed to publish my book). Somehow the author, Jessica Valenti, lives in modern America and thinks our society emphasizes virginity too much. That’s what I often think as I’m walking through the mall looking at semi-pornographic pictures of whores pop tarts everywhere. In spite of the actual reality of our culture, Valenti is offended by the fact that a few souls have decided to resist the oversexualization of our girls (and I do mean “girls” – try to find modest clothing for a 12-year-old girl and see what happens) by promoting virginity.

Valenti especially criticizes “virginity pledges” – when someone makes a public commitment to save themselves for marriage. There has been a lot of publicity about these pledges over the years and some have questioned their usefulness. I do believe these pledges can be worthwhile (I took one before I was married and found it was helpful), but of course they are only one piece of the puzzle. Chastity is not just a commitment to avoid performing a single action – it is an entire way of life (and it doesn’t end at marriage). It involves how you dress, how you talk, who you interact with, what you watch, and countless other actions. If someone is unchaste in their clothing or their viewing habits, they are very unlikely to be chaste in their sexual life.

Unfortunately, almost every aspect of our culture puts tremendous pressure on our young people to be unchaste in word and thought – which will often lead to a lack of chastity in action as well in spite of the best efforts to fulfill a “pledge.” We need to teach our children from an early age about the dignity of the human person by word and action so that when they become teenagers they can see that being chaste is a fundamental way to show respect for that dignity, both of one’s own person and others.

St. Maria Goretti, pray for us!