God Called Us To Be Holy, Not To Be Immoral

Pastoral Approaches to Pornography on the Internet

“We are called to be holy, not to be immoral” (1 Thess 4:7). This admonition to the early Christians of Thessalonica is as relevant today as it was then. For it seems that it is becoming increasingly difficult for us to live sexually pure lives. We live in an age where almost everything is internet-based. The internet is a great source of information yet it is also a serious source of concern. Perhaps no other greater concern is presented in the internet than online pornography.

Pornography used to be only in the margins of society until the internet has brought it to the mainstream. The purpose of this paper is to help put the risks of online pornography into perspective and to present various realistic and practical approaches that can help pastors, educators, parents and other responsible adults to deal constructively with those risks.

The first chapter of this paper will explore how cyber porn has become a multibillion-dollar industry and the number one entertainment choice for millions of people around the world. It will also delve into the effects of online pornography on individual viewers and on society in general.

The second chapter will focus on the pastoral responses to online pornography. It will survey the documents issued by the Vatican and by the local churches regarding pornography on the internet. It will offer some realistic and practical recommendations about how to deal with cyber porn.

The whole paper will conclude with a somber note that the problem of online pornography is a complex problem. It will also make clear that this problem is our problem. And finally, it will finish off with a hopeful tone that the problem of cyber porn is a solvable problem.

Chapter 1
CAUSES AND EFFECTS OF ONLINE PORNOGRAPHY

1. Causes of online pornography
1.1. Pornography is a lucrative industry
Online pornography is a very profitable industry. If there weren’t money to be made in pornography it would not exist. The high demand for it is shown by the fact that everyday an average of 30 million people across the globe log on to pornographic websites. Forbes Magazine reported that the total legal business profits of online pornography have reached $56 billion worldwide in 2001. In the United States alone pornography revenues reached $230 million in 2001 and will reach $400 million by 2006. No wonder why it is now estimated that 30% of all websites are pornographic.

Even Yahoo!, one of the most well-respected and biggest internet websites, is into the cyber porn industry, in the sense that Yahoo! actively entered into business arrangements with adult companies and directly profited from porn on the web. Yahoo! charges $600 for each adult website listed on its search system. Other facts reveal the following:
- 77 percent of online visitors to adult content sites are male. Their average age is 41 and they have an annual income of $60,000. 46 percent are married.

- Online perusers of adult content have been using the Internet for 3.3 years and surf 14 hours a week — slightly more than the general online population.

- 56 percent of adult online visitors have purchased online in the past three months. They spend $17 more per month buying on the Web than the average online consumer does.

- More than half of adult content visitors say they indulge less than once a week, while an insatiable hardcore subset, 26 percent, reports multiple weekly sojourns. Mostly high-income, these frequent users — 84 percent of whom are men — spend 17 hours online per week and spend an average of $133 online per month, versus the average online buyer who spends $26 less in the same time period.

1.2. Pornography is addictive
As has been mentioned above, online pornography has become a very lucrative industry because it has an enormous market. But what draws 30 million people to online pornography everyday? Erick Janssen, an associate scientist at The Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction at Indiana University, wrote that “sometimes people seek out porn simply because it feels good to be in a state of sexual excitement. Sometimes they use it to be entertained, or to be distracted from work or other activities. More often than perhaps assumed, people don’t use it because it feels good, but because it makes them feel better.”

Based on his personal experience and that of other people, Gene McConnell observed that there are people who use pornography not only to make themselves feel good but also to null their pain when they are depressed, angry, lonely, unloved, or rejected. Pornographic materials, coupled with masturbation and/or sex, give them temporary relief from emotional pains.

Dr. Victor Cline has treated approximately 350 males afflicted with sexual addictions in the span of his 25 years as a licensed clinical psychologist. His findings led him to write, “in about 94% of the cases I have found that pornography was a contributor or facilitator in the acquisition of their deviation or sexual addiction,” His clinical experience also led Dr. Cline to outline the four steps that cause sexual addiction through pornography.

The First Step is Addiction – at this stage the porn-consumers get hooked. Once involved in pornographic materials, they kept coming back for more and still more. The Second Step is Escalation – with the passage of time, the addicted person required rougher, more explicit, more deviant, and “kinky” kinds of sexual material to get their “highs” and “sexual turn-ons.” The Third Step is Desensitization – pornographic materials which were originally perceived as shocking, taboo-breaking, illegal, repulsive, or immoral, in time came to be seen as acceptable and commonplace. The Fourth Step is Acting Out Sexually – increasing tendency to act out sexually the behaviors viewed in the pornography, including compulsive promiscuity, exhibitionism, group sex, voyeurism, frequenting massage parlors, having sex with minor children, rape, and inflicting pain on themselves or a partner during sex.

Like addiction to drugs, addiction to pornography is a problem in itself. Some are even saying that addiction to pornography is harder to break than addiction to drugs or alcohol. This only shows that some people will do anything just to satisfy their urge for sexual pleasure and personal gratification.

1.3. Internet provides fast, cheap, anonymous access to pornography
Before the advent of the internet, it was relatively hard even for adults to get pornographic materials. It was not only expensive and scarce, it was simply too embarrassing to go into the store and buy an issue of Playboy or Penthouse. But today even children can have easy access to it, courtesy of the internet, which provides fast, cheap, anonymous access to pornography. All they have to do is know the address and click on “Yes, I’m over 18” at the first page. There is no more concern for shame because one doesn’t even have to reveal one’s identity in order to view it. And to think that many adult websites can be accessed for free.

How come online pornography continues to exist? Aren’t there laws that prohibit it? Each country around the globe has its own internet obscenity laws. The problem is not with the laws but with their enforcements. Many people believe that obscenity laws are not effectively and vigorously enforced. However there are also people who believe that the reason for this is that because, as Charles Mann noted, “laws, police, governments and corporations — all are helpless before the continually changing, endlessly branching, infinitely long river of data that is the Net.” For them the internet is simply too international, too interconnected and too filled with hackers to control and govern.

trong>2. Effects of online pornography
2.1. Objectification and dehumanization of women and children
Owners and promoters of pornographic websites insist that pornography does not hurt anyone. It is just harmless fun, they say. But research shows that online pornography has undesirable and harmful effects. First of these is the objectification and dehumanization of women and children. Gene McConnel puts it succinctly when he said that, “soft-core pornography portrays women as sex objects who exist only to give sexual satisfaction to men… Hard-core pornography teaches that women enjoy being abused or raped and that children are appropriate sexual partners.”

Women themselves find the pornographic images very disturbing. For them the display of pornography is a persuasive form of sexual harassment. It depicts them as having only one value – to meet the sexual demands of men. Some women in fact find the display of pornography threatening, in the sense that it depicts women’s bodies as objects, things or commodities, or in sexually humiliating or degrading poses or being subjected to violence.

2.2. Corrosion of human relationships
Another undesirable and harmful effect of online pornography is the corrosion of interpersonal relationships. Many researches point out that the pictures and messages of online pornography encourage a behavior that can harm individual users and their families. Some pornography promoters advocate that pornography can improve the sex lives of individual users. But many researches have proven that they are wrong. In fact, pornography can cause disturbance in family life and decrease sexual satisfaction within marriage. Dr. Cline documented that “many wives found their husband preferring fantasy sex (they would catch them stimulating themselves while being immersed in pornography on the internet, in magazines or videos) rather than make love with them, their partner. This had devastating effects on the marriage.” In other words, online pornography presents a clear and present danger to human relationships, especially to the happiness of family life where a husband, for example, feels that his partner can be disposed of when he is no longer satisfied.

2.3. Debasement of the human person and human sexuality
It is now an established fact that pornography and its messages debase the human person and human sexuality. It shapes attitudes and promotes promiscuous behavior that is detrimental to individual users and their families. This dangerous promiscuous behavior may include exhibitionism, voyeurism, obscene phone calls, soliciting prostitutes, brief affairs, and even on occasion child molestation and forced sex. The following are some of the documented effects of pornography on the human person and on human sexuality:
- massive exposure to pornography encourages a desire for increasingly deviant materials which involve violence, like sadomasochism and rape.

- brief exposure to violent forms of pornography can lead to anti-social attitudes and behavior. Male viewers tend to be more aggressive towards women, less responsive to pain and suffering of rape victims, and more willing to accept various myths about rape.

- continued exposure to pornography had serious adverse effects on beliefs about sexuality in general and on attitudes toward women in particular… pornography desensitizes people to rape as a criminal offense.

- 77 percent of child molesters of boys and 87 percent of child molesters of girls admitted imitating the sexual behavior they had seen modeled in pornography.

The greatest concern now involves the young people who are exposed to sexually explicit material on a daily basis through the internet. They are being subjected to pornographic materials before they are emotionally and mentally prepared to understand or evaluate rightly what they are viewing. To think that even if they are not looking for it, pornographic photographs are hard to miss. It will just take few mouse-clicks for them to be in an ocean of explicit materials.

Chapter 2
PASTORAL RESPONSES TO ONLINE PORNOGRAPHY

1. Church documents
1.1. Vatican documents on pornography and the internet
The Catechism of the Catholic Church declares that pornography is a grave sin. It asserts that pornography is an offense to chastity “because it perverts the conjugal act, the intimate giving of spouses to each other. It does grave injury to the dignity of its participants (actors, vendors, the public), since each one becomes an object of base pleasure and illicit profit for others.”

The document The Church and internet, issued by the Pontifical Council for Social Communication in February 2002, states that like other media, the internet has two sides – the positive and the negative. On the positive side, the internet has the potentiality to be used for the good of all. On the negative side, the internet is also capable of doing harm to the user and to others. While it comments that internet can enrich the lives of people, the document also asserts that cyber space can also “plunge them into consumerism, pornographic and violent fantasy, and pathological isolation.” The church has always been concerned about the negative effects and wrong use of the means of mass communications in general and of the internet in particular. It is not only recently did the Church concern itself with the issue of pornography. In fact thirteen years prior to the publication of The Church and Internet, the Pontifical Council for Social Communications issued a document on pornography.

The document is titled Pornography and violence in the communications media: a pastoral response. It understands pornography “as a violation, through the use of audiovisual techniques, of the right to privacy of the human body in its male or female nature, a violation which reduces the human person and human body to an anonymous object of misuse for the purpose of gratifying concupiscence.” This document offers concrete recommendations as pastoral responses to the ever-growing problem of pornography and violence in the media. Its recommendations are the following:
- Parents must re-double their efforts to provide for the sound moral formation of children and youth. This includes inculcation of healthy attitudes toward human sexuality based on respect for the dignity of every person as a child of God, on the virtue of chastity and on the practice of self-discipline.

- Educators must offer programs in media education to develop in young people a critical attitude and properly formed skills of discernment in using television, radio and other media, so that they might know how to resist manipulation and how to avoid merely passive listening and viewing habits.

- Young people themselves can help to stem the tide of pornography and violence in the media by responding positively to the initiatives of their parents and educators and by taking responsibility for their own moral decisions in the choice of entertainment.

- The general public – should make their views known to producers, commercial interests and public authorities.

- Legislators, administrators, law enforcement officials and jurists should recognize and respond to the problem of pornography and violence in the media. Sound laws must be enacted where they are lacking, weak laws must be strengthened, and existing laws must be enforced.

- For the Church, the first responsibility is the constant, clear teaching of the faith and, therefore, of objective moral truth, including the truth about sexual morality.

1.2. Pastoral letters on pornography
Different Catholic bishops’ conference around the world has echoed the Vatican’s concerns. This paper, however, will mention only two of them – the U.S. and the Philippine Catholic Bishops’ Conference.

The U.S. Catholic Bishops’ Conference is aware of the easy access of virtually anyone, including children, to pornography on the internet. That is why it believes that “the best protection against internet misuse is the presence in your home of an atmosphere of prayer and the sharing of Christian values, in which these concerns can be openly discussed by all family members.” It suggested that parents should choose an internet service provider that offers parental control features and activate them. It also suggested that parents should install filtering software like CyberPatrol, CyberSitter, Net Nanny, Surfwatch, X-Stop, or Rated-PG.

The Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines put in writing the following recommendations:
- Parents should build in their children healthy attitudes toward human sexuality through their example and appropriate sex education. They should set house regulations that will prevent entry of pornographic garbage in their homes.

- The schools should help the students develop mature attitudes on sexuality and human relationships, especially in marriage and family life.

- The general public needs to make its voice heard and known to producers, commercial interests and the public authorities. Writing protest letters against immoral materials being shown in public movies and TV or being sold on the newsstands will also prove effective.

2. Creative pastoral responses
2.1. Outlooks that respect the true dignity of the human person
Absurd as it sounds but to children, pornography “educates” in the sense that it presents new information to them. Unfortunately the “education” that they get from online pornography is not only misleading but also harmful. Streaming videos, clip arts, photos, spam emails and virtual games that depict the objectification and dehumanization of women and children constitute powerful tools of misinformation and miseducation as regards the true dignity of the human person in general and of human sexuality in particular. In addition, pornography portrays unhealthy or antisocial kinds of sexual activity, such as sadomasochism, abuse, and humiliation of females, involvement of children, incest, group sex, voyeurism, sexual degradation, bestiality, torture, and rape. How then can this misinformation and miseducation be countered? Katterina Villalon, a writer for Sunstar Daily in Ilo-ilo, Philippines believes that the best way to counter the wrong values presented by online pornography is “to be active in the promotion of positive values in the media and we, the rest of the population should make sure that this happens.” There is therefore a great need for media education that is particularly aimed at educating people, especially children, about the dangers of pornography and to promote a positive outlook that respects the true dignity of the human person.

From a pastoral perspective, the promotion of a positive outlook that respects the true dignity of the human person can be realistically done in the parish level. Every parish has a youth commission and the youth are the best people who can actualize it. They can be easily trained and they can become trainers themselves. They know how the internet works and so they know how to take advantage of its power to inform and educate. By employing their know-how on the internet they can effectively increase public awareness of the availability and harm of online pornography, particularly in the lives of children. Here are some concrete suggestions as to what they can do:
- Find ways how to prevent people, especially children, from deliberately finding inappropriate material or experiences (e.g., searching out an adult-oriented website)

- Find ways to prevent people, especially children, from being inadvertently exposed to such material or experiences (e.g., receiving an unsolicited e-mail containing an inappropriate image or text)

- Find ways for people, especially children, to develop skills that enable them to cope constructively with such exposure should it occur and making available a support infrastructure that reduces the harm or injury that might result from being exposed to such material or experiences.

- Find ways for sex addicts to overcome their addictions.

A more concrete suggestion is to lobby before government authorities to have a special domain suffix for all websites containing pornography. The domain suffix could be .prn. In this way browsers can be programmed to disallow .prn if they so desire. It will also let online pornography businessmen and providers a section of the web solely for their product but at the same time allowing a way to stop it for those who do not want to view it.

2.2. Our shared responsibility
As we can see above there are many recommendations as to how to combat online pornography. We have enough suggestions, now all we need is action. One thing that should be always kept it mind is that the fight against online pornography is not just a Church cause or a particular group’s crusade. It is a shared responsibility. No single institution or person should bear alone the burden of protecting people, especially children, from the dangers of online pornography. The whole community should be counted on for support – especially the schools, libraries, internet service providers, parents, church leaders and law enforcement officers.

CONCLUSION
The problem of online pornography is a complex problem. We have seen in chapter 1 that it is a profitable industry in itself, that it is addictive, and that the internet provides fast, cheap, and anonymous access to it. The technical nature of the internet has made it more complicated – it is simply too international, too interconnected and too filled with hackers to control and govern.

The problem of online pornography is our problem. We have also seen in chapter 1 that online pornography does real harm to just about anyone, especially to children – it objectifies and dehumanizes women and children, it corrodes human relationships and it debases the human person and human sexuality.

The problem of online pornography is a solvable problem. But since it is a complex problem it also entails a complex solution. But there is hope. We have seen in chapter 2 many practical and realistic recommendations as to how to address the problems presented by online pornography. For parents – to enhance effort to provide sound and moral foundation to their children and the youth through their example, education at home and the creation of an environment safe from the threats of pornography. For educators, the school and the media – to provide programs that promote positive values and equip the children, youth and adults with skills to enable them to cope constructively with the effects of pornography. For the youth – to respond positively to the initiatives set by their parents and the different sectors of the society and channel their positive energies to influence their peers in the positive use of the internet. For the legislators, administrators, law enforcement officials and jurists – to be alert and responsive to the needs of the citizenry, establish fair, firm and clear laws on pornography, strictly enforce them and mete out punishments when it is due. For the church – to teach clearly and consistently the truth on sexual morality. It must become the voice of the victims of online pornography and work for the conversion of the hearts of its advocates. For the general public – to voice their needs and opinions so the different involved sectors of the society will be aware and be guided in the concerted effort of curb pornography.

The problem of online pornography is our common problem, and thus, it necessitates that all of us must take it as our shared responsibility. As Christians, it is our common responsibility and goal to create a culture where people are r
espected for who they are, where children have a protected period of innocence, where human sexuality and human relationships are highly valued, and where there is freedom from all forms of sexual exploitation. For after all “God called us to be holy, not to be immoral.”

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