ASJ Critiques Arlington Pornography Pastoral

The Church's arguments against pornography have to be built on a more solid foundation--one that only ASJ can provide.

Just over a month ago Bishop Paul Loverde of Arlington, VA issued a pastoral letter condemning the evil of pornography. “Bought with a Price: Pornography and the Attack on the Living Temple of God,” is a most welcome teaching on this very thorny subject. The Apostolate of St. Jerome applauds Loverde for tackling this issue.

But while the pastoral makes many great points that will surely benefit souls, we fear that many of Loverde’s arguments suffer from the same mistakes that permeate so much modern Catholic teaching about sex. Our concern is that this faulty theology undermines the force of the bishop’s sound moral denunciation of pornography such that too few will find his arguments convincing and heed his sound advice.

Our goal here is to identify key weaknesses in the document, and to offer more solid arguments for the Catholic opposition to porn. In so doing we can show how the fundamentally flawed sexual theology rampant in today’s Church forces Catholics like Loverde into arguments that are far too weak to face the evil involved. We also show why a theology that emphasizes celibacy and virginity is of far greater pastoral value than one that places emphasis on marriage.

But first we must call to mind the many great points Bishop Loverde makes, such as his advice to defeat this temptation by taking the internet out of one’s home. “Do not justify the presence of a snake in the home,” he writes, “for the benefits [instant access to information] may bring.” In the opinion of ASJ, this is the most effective way to deal with internet pornography. In fact, we wouldn’t mind if the bishops prohibited Catholics from having broadband internet in their homes. Given that many internet providers like cable companies make huge profits on the sale and distribution of porn over TV or internet, we hope that such prohibitions are not far off. At least, if such connections continue to be allowed, the bishops should command Catholics to purchase filter services like those that ASJ employs on our computers.

The closing chapter on man’s gift of vision may seem forced, but ASJ thinks the bishop is clearly onto something. For whether it’s Lot’s wife gazing back at Sodom, Noah’s son looking upon his loins, or Israel looking at a serpent on a stick, Scripture is full of many puzzling passages that seem to convey a mysterious truth that our vision can be a portal through which good or evil transformative power can enter our bodies and souls.

Another strong part of the Bishop’s document, evident from the titular reference to Corinthians, is his emphasis on the damage done to the soul of the one who looks at porn. ASJ could not agree more with this. But unfortunately the bishop doesn’t develop this point further which , we feel, would warrant deeper reflection on the spiritual advantages of sexual continence. Furthermore, Loverde contradicts this point with language elsewhere in the pastoral implying that those being photographed or filmed are the true victims, and not those doing the looking. And this gets us to our criticisms of his document that must be addressed if the Church is going to win the pornography fight.

ASJ has long seen Internet porn as a key weapon that Satan has explicitly tailored to exploit the weaknesses in the sexual theology held by many modern Catholic leaders. That is, with the current mindset regarding sex, marriage, and chastity, the Church has painted itself into a corner from which it is hard to fight. This binding of our own authoritative hand is evident in the fact that Bishop Loverde is the only U.S. bishop to author a pastoral on the issue of porn. Clearly the bishops know porn is a problem; something has got their tongues.

That something of course is the fundamental contradiction that comes from all the “goodness of the body” talk that Pope John Paul II left as a legacy. For how can the Church talk so glowingly about the body, sex, and marriage, and then turn around and say that those who look at sex and the body on the Internet commit sins? A condemnation of porn means the bishops must explain why something God “created” can’t be looked at. And this is the hard part for them. For this reason, ASJ suggests, bishops are squeamish about arguing against online porn. They know it’s evil, they can feel the evil, but the Church’s exaltation of sex has stripped the bishops of the intellectual wherewithal to construct forceful and persuasive anti-porn arguments.

But ASJ knows that the key to combating sexual sin like porn lies in exalting celibacy, virginity, and chastity instead of marriage, sex, and the body. But this correct understanding is suppressed in today’s Church in favor of doctrines that speak of marriage and sex in ways that betray the true gospel message entrusted to the Church.

The truth needed to fight pornography, hard as it will be for some to hear, is that neither marital sex nor illicit sex please God in any way, it’s just that He tolerates the former in this life as a concession to our fallen nature so as to avoid the latter. But because men like Loverde operate without our theology, they ensnare themselves in a web of contradictions that robs their arguments of persuasiveness. We now show how the conclusions drawn from Loverde’s faulty premises contradict common sense.

One main problem with the pastoral is its failure to understand what we’re really up against; it begins with an inaccurate characterization of internet porn. This error keeps Loverde from properly isolating the sin by describing precisely where the moral evil of pornography lies. See, Loverde doesn’t seem to realize the key difference between internet porn and the porn of the past. Today’s porn is not driven by money, but by something else. Time and again Loverde assumes that the porn serpent can be slain by striking at its profit-seeking head. But this ignores the “free” nature of the web that has been a dogmatic principle of the internet from its inception. Because of the proliferation of devices like digital cameras and webcams, just about any horny person can produce pornographic content and upload it for all the world to see. And the point is they can make it available for free.

So the old argument that porn wouldn’t be around if people didn’t buy it simply isn’t factual anymore. No one need spend a single dime to download a lifetime supply of free pictures and videos. Porn companies are trying to capitalize on the demand for on-line porn; they are not the ones causing it. Our point is that internet porn is driven by something other than profit. If every porn pay site folded today, thousands if not millions of sites would still offer porn, uploaded by amateurs, not professionals, that can be downloaded for free. With the internet, all it takes is one “altruist” with a web server to supply the entire world with all the porn it can consume. This fact of technology is the beauty of the internet, and here it gets used for evil. But to say that porn production would go away if the money dried up is foolish. By hammering the “shameless profit” angle, Loverde ignores the true problem.

We argue that the true root of porn is the sin of exhibitionism, which, having been freed from its cage inside the perverted mind by technological advances, drives the production of pornographic material. This exhibitionist aspect to lust does not need the motivation of profit to produce porn, hence the term “gratuitous nudity.” Look at the behavior of Britney Spears. She’s not exposing herself to the public for profit, but just for the heck of it. Her sin is not in any financial motivation, but her exhibitionism. Her parts can now be downloaded by anyone in the world, but who profits? The question dogging the Church is this: why is it wrong for a girl to change swimsuits in front of her webcam? Why is it wrong for a man to put nude pictures of himself on the internet? Why is it wrong for a couple to have sex, record it, then put it on the web? It can’t have anything to do with money, no money’s involved! They do it because they ask, “Why not?” And the Church presently has no cogent answer. But ASJ does have an answer and the Church needs to accept our views.

Whether porn is produced for profit or for kicks is irrelevant. The sin at the heart of the porn plague is committed when people violate the precept, that is binding even apart from faith, obliging man to conceal, with limited exception, the genitalia and their associated behaviors. That is, it is proper to cover the genitals, taking reasonable care that they are not exposed unnecessarily, and to use discretion in the discussion of sex acts, even licit ones. This is the virtue of modesty plain and simple. Now Christians, with the aid of Revelation, are in better position to understand exactly why God demands this of His creation. The bishop and the Church could be convincing in their fight against porn if they would argue, like ASJ insists, that sex is something that God wants covered up, and so any photography of sex acts or the sexual organs that could even potentially be distributed as porn is the real evil. This is not to mention the fact that in the vast majority of cases the acts being photographed are prohibited as well. But this is where the “Theology of the Booty” has painted our teachers into a corner of weakness. To make our argument, the only cogent argument, they would have to reject the tenet of modern sexual theology that sex is something that God created for us to enjoy. In its place they would have to adopt our stance that the need for modesty stems from the fact that sex is something we should be ashamed of. We hope our readers see that the ability of the Church to fight pornography depends on the ability of ASJ to spread the truth about sex within the Church. Even if the bishop convinces the entire world not to seek profit off of production of porn, his argument does nothing to decrease supply by deterring those who produce porn through exhibitionist lust.

Another major problem with the pastoral is related to this first problem. Because Loverde misunderstands the driving force behind the porn industry, he naturally misplaces the blame for the evil of porn. Rather than condemn those who produce the porn and the sex acts involved, he focuses instead on the sin of those who consume it. Thus, Loverde tries to make a greater victim out of porn producers than those who are ruthlessly tempted to use it. But this is exactly backwards. Granted porn producers can be addicted to the lure of easy cash, but our fallen nature is much weaker in the face of sex than in the face of money. Thus in the question of greater culpability between a person tempted by money and a person tempted by sex, the greedy one commits the bigger sin.

Besides, the gospels make it abundantly clear that sin is bound to occur, but woe to those who cause others to sin. But notice how Loverde’s twisted logic totally reverses this. He thinks that consumers sin more because they “cause” the producers to degrade their bodies. So rather than rush to the aid of those in his flock who are harassed in temptation and often ensnared in sin by pornography, Loverde instead defends the “models” who, in addition to not being practicing Catholics, are, in his mind, victims of being degraded for profit! The producers of porn and those who participate in the sex acts certainly have to be held in greater contempt than the consumers, but the bishop never makes this point.

The biggest problems with the pastoral however stem from mischaracterizing the real damage internet porn inflicts on the Church. Alas our space runs out, so future issues of The Loyal Lion will have to finish our point that celibacy and chastity, not marriage and family, are the true casualties of Satan’s porn attack.

For Loverde claims that the immorality of porn “comes, first of all, from the fact that it distorts the truth about human sexuality. It perverts the conjugal act[.]” What this distorted truth is he doesn’t say. But what he does say, hard as it is to believe, is that porn is a sin against sex! See, Loverde thinks porn damages the intimate bond between couples, and thus erodes marriage and society. But the truth is porn damages the intimate bond between chaste Christians and the Lord, thus eroding celibacy and crippling the Church. This major flaw in the bishop’s argument is a departure point from which so many other errors spring. As we will explain later, this mindset is illustrative of a big problem whereby Catholic leaders act as if our sexual teachings were constructed by Christ to preserve marriage. But our sexual restrictions were put in place to preserve celibacy and virginity. The conjugal act is in little danger of declining popularity. And though porn may very well encourage some to marry, it always has a destructive effect on the institution of celibacy, and by extension, on celibate vocations.

Besides, the conjugal act has already been perverted at the tree. It’s not our job as Christians to maintain marriage in some “pristine” state. God instituted marriage precisely because marriage had been perverted. And he wishes for celibacy precisely because even chaste marriage is not what He originally created. By failing to recognize this, the bishops fail to strengthen those in their flock who are least immune to the porn plague—celibates and virgins.

 This article appeared in the January 17, 2007 issue of The Loyal Lion.