Share:
[…] post 9 Reasons to Kick Porn to the Curb appeared first on The Catholic […]
A blog for Catholic men that seeks to encourage virtue, the pursuit of holiness and the art of true masculinity.
9 Reasons to Kick Porn to the Curb
April 9, 2015
Forget Ebola, porn is the real plague consuming our society. It is an epidemic of massive proportions and a growing public health crisis. The vast majority of men admit they regularly look at it: Lawyers, doctors, pastors, priests, husbands, it doesn’t matter. And despite the best efforts or protective parents, every child will be exposed to it sooner or later. As one expert on the issue says, it is not a matter of if, it is a matter of when.
I wish I could say Catholic men were better than the rest of society, but it isn’t true. Catholics, and indeed all Christians, view pornography at essentially the exact same rate as non-Christian men. This is tragic.
I could go on, but we know pornography is a real problem. So what to do about it? We need to kick porn to the curb. Mercilessly. If pornography is present in your life, you need to put a gun to its head and pull the trigger. Stop messing around. Stop tolerating its presence in your life. Get ruthless with it and take action.
Here are ten compelling reasons to kill porn in your life.
1. It hurts real women
A lot of times we get the impression that porn is harmless. We are duped into thinking that the women in porn videos are really enjoying themselves and that they are all performing by choice. Wrong. It’s a lie. Countless porn stars who have left the industry have told stories of physical and emotional abuse, coercion, self-harm, depression, violence, and attempted suicide. They say vehemently that being a porn star was miserable, not fun.
That’s not to mention the millions of women who are illegal trafficked and sold as slaves to feed the porn industry, as well as those are who are sold into prostitution to serve the fantasies of men who want to act out porn videos. Make no mistake, porn harms real life women. And every time you watch a video or look at an image, you are causing untold pain to millions of women and children who deserves to be loved and cherished, not abused and objectified.
2. It kills love
Marriages have been ripped apart by pornography. Some men sneak their porn use. Other men look at it openly. Either way, porn destroys intimacy. Watching pornography sticks a knife deep into the heart of your spouse. It causes her to lose all trust. It tells her she will never be good enough, can never measure up. It makes a mockery of your marriage vows. It plants the seeds of bitterness and resentment. It causes her deep pain, emotional and spiritual. Men, if you have any love in your heart for your wife, stop looking at pornography.
3. It causes you to enjoy sex less
A recent survey revealed that a growing number of men prefer pornography to real sex. Why? Because it’s easier. With the click of a button, you have infinite access to seemingly endless airbrushed women doing things no wife in her right mind would ever do. You don’t even have to worry about giving pleasure to another person—porn is all about you. In comparison, real sex feels like a chore. Many men are even reporting they can no longer become aroused enough to have sex with real women. Basically, it ruins your sex life.
4. It warps your view of women
The absolute fastest way to distort your view of women is to watch pornography. In porn, women are just objects, playthings. They have no emotions, no needs, no soul. They are just instruments of gratification. You simply can’t watch women being abused and objectified in the most horrible ways on screen countless times and expect to have a healthy view of real-life women. It simply isn’t possible. News flash: Women are real human beings with emotional, physical, and spiritual needs. They have a soul that will live forever. They deserve your respect and protection, not lust.
Men, do you really want to view your sisters in Christ as so much fresh meat? Because that’s what will happen if you look at porn. You will not look below the surface and see a woman as made in the image of God. Instead, you will begin to fantasize about her as if she were your plaything. This is wrong. This is evil. And it’s what porn does.
5. It extinguishes God’s grace in your soul
A mortal sin is a sin which destroys God’s love in your soul. It is a sin that is so grave, so heinous that it separates us from God, leaving your soul cold and lifeless and hellbound. You can make all the excuses you want, but looking at pornography is a mortal sin and it charts you on a course to hell. St. Paul makes it clear: Those who tolerate sexual sin in their lives “shall not inherit the kingdom of God” (Gal. 5:19-21). You can either have heaven or porn, but not both. Take your pick.
6. It gets worse with time
Porn very quickly becomes an addiction like crack or meth. And the thing about addictions is that they always get worse. Sure, you may start innocently enough, spending just a little too much time looking at an ad featuring scantily clad women. But then you enter a Google search, and then another one. Months go by and things get boring. It takes more and more extreme stuff to get you excited. Soon you are watching things that would have horrified you only a short time ago. And no matter how much you see, it is never enough.
Those child abusers you read about? It’s easy to hate them, but they didn’t start out that way. They started out just like you, thinking they could handle the poison of porn. But they couldn’t, and neither can you. Unchecked, porn will consume your life and leave you an empty lust-filled shell of a human being—or worse yet, behind bars. Is that really what you want?
7. It makes you selfish
This one should be pretty obvious, but when you are spending hours gratifying yourself with obscene images, you begin to become obsessed with yourself. Instead of embracing the sacrifice required by true love, you begin to view others as objects designed to serve your needs and wants—just like the fantasy women on the screen. Instead of giving and serving like Christ, you become obsessed with taking and consuming. You become self-centered, angry, abusive without even realizing it. You become a narcissist that uses others instead of loving them.
8. It steals your joy
Porn leaves you guilt ridden and miserable. No matter how much we lie to ourselves, we know deep down that porn is wrong. And every time we look at it, our conscience naturally bothers us. Even if we go to confession about it a few times, the next failure leaves us discouraged and depressed and ready to despair. Soon, the devil tempts us to give up on our spiritual lives altogether. “The struggle isn’t worth it,” he whispers in our ears, “Just throw in the towel.” In short, we become like Adam in the garden, hiding from the presence of God.
This is not how Jesus wants us to live our lives. He redeemed us with his precious blood to bring us peace and joy and abundant life, not fear and shame. If you want a newfound joy in your spiritual life, reject porn.
9. It makes you a slave
Before we were baptized, we were the devils slaves. Ruled by our passions and lusts, we were driven around helplessly like so much cattle. But Christ redeemed us, and when we were baptized, he freed us from this cruel slavery and brought us into the freedom of the sons of God. If you’re baptized, you are dead to sin and alive to God. You share in the freedom of Jesus Christ, and you are “no longer a slave but a son” (Gal. 4:7).
The problem is, when we become addicted to sin, we are willingly entering back into the slavery of the devil. It’s like the son of a royal king going down to the slave market and offering himself for sale. It’s insanity. Embrace your freedom as a child of God, and throw off the yoke of the devil’s slavery. Kick porn to the curb.
Get Violent
Jesus was gentle with everyone and everything—except sin. When it came to sin, Jesus took no prisoners. His advice? Pluck it out. Cut it off. No one coasts into heaven, he tells us, but rather “men of violence take it by force” (Matt. 11:12). Are you violent with sin in your life? You should be. People who have cancer don’t tolerate it. People with leprosy don’t tolerate it. People with ebola don’t tolerate it. So why on earth do you tolerate sin?
Men, if you are addicted to porn, don’t put up with it any longer. Take it down. Beat it mercilessly. Show it who’s boss. Fight it as if your life depended on it, because in so many ways, it really does.
—
Resources:
Reclaim Sexual Health Addiction Recovery Program (Catholic)
Fortify Recovery Program (Secular)
Don’t Miss a Thing
Subscribe to get email notifications of new posts and special offers PLUS a St. Joseph digital poster.
Related
COMMENTS
Reader Interactions
Comments
Trackbacks
-
-
-
[…] week, I wrote a post about how dangerous porn is; how it destroys your relationships with God and others, how it kills […]
-
[…] Read the full article: here […]
-
[…] Article initialement publié sur le site The Catholic Gentleman […]
-
[…] Article initialement publié sur le site The Catholic Gentleman […]
-
[…] Guzman, fundador y editor del blog The Catholic Gentleman (El caballero católico), compartió un artículo que apunta 9 contundentes razones para rechazar la pornografía de la vida del […]
-
[…] Guzman, fundador y editor del blog The Catholic Gentleman (El caballero católico), compartió un artículo que apunta 9 contundentes razones para rechazar la pornografía de la vida del […]
-
[…] y editor del blog The Catholic Gentleman (El caballero católico), compartió un artículo que apunta 9 contundentes razones para rechazar la pornografía de la vida del […]
This is all difficult, of course, yet all correct. Thank you again, Sam, for you vigilance and wisdom against this terrifying work of the forces of darkness.
For a slightly more academic, yet no less accessible assessment of pornography and the Christian life, Reinhart Hütter’s 2012 piece for First Things magazine: “Pornography and Acedia” | http://www.firstthings.com/article/2012/04/pornography-and-acedia
I think you have a typo on the title to number 6.
I’ve long been amazed that women don’t seem to generally appreciate the damage that their sisters do to them by participating in this “industry”.
And of course over time the corruption brought about by the acceptance of what had been a poorly regarded print medium up until the 1950s has spread into the general press. All sorts of magazines now print photographs that would have been regarded as illicit as recently as 40 years ago or so, but now which aren’t even considered to approach this category. This has spread into general conduct, in which women and girls, famous and unknown, feel that they have to essentially self publish. What seems to be missed is that this massively reenforces the concept that women are an “other”, and that other is property.
Put another way, it’s really difficult to accept that women are to be regarded as equal to men, if they feel compelled to sell their images to men this way. It cuts directly against it.
And for that reason, women are never going to be accepted as men’s intellectual equals as long as this industry is accepted. The visual message is far too strong to counter any argument. And for that reason, I”m amazed that women haven’t long ago shunned their sisters who hurt them in this fashion. If they did, this problem would be solved overnight.
‘Shunned’? I should shun and shame my sisters who have been told that this is all they’re worth? This is all they’re good for? To judge and condemn them, Women who are hurt and broken, as stated in the article, these women you call us to shun have been kidnapped and ripped from their rooms. Innocence butchered and raped. This is not a problem that will be solved by telling women to shun those who have been forced and manipulated into an industry to serve a Man’s desires. Very poor choice of phrasing.
Yes, shunned. Not the ones who are in the truly exploitative rags, of which there are many. But now days, many magazines that a person can view on your way to the grocery store clerk fit this category. The women on the cover of those magazines, like many on television, are celebrated for revealing themselves. We fool ourselves if we think otherwise, but the fact that we can’t even recognize it shows how far we’ve gone.
As long as young women are praised for selling revealing images of themselves, they’ll be taken by many men as selling themselves and ultimately all women as objects. Equality for women and true dignity will come when women are judge for their individual talents and quality, not for having a big this or that which exploited on magazine covers or television shows. But getting there will require women themselves to object.
Oh yes. Because women who are in industries like that always have a choice in the matter. Have some compassion and get your head out of your woman hating ass. I am a woman and I can do ANYTHING better than you can. Example: being a decent. Human. Being.
Screw you.
No doubt there are women who are forced into porn, but many do it of their own free will. Women also willingly now wear fashions that were once considered only worn by prostitutes. So enough already that women are completely innocent in this matter, just look at the success of 50 Shades of Gray. And your claim to being a decent human being followed directly by an expletive made me laugh.
On Stony’s comment, I think part of the problem here is that every few years the standard lowers in this category such that now many can’t even recognize it.
The book and film you reference is a good example. The movie would have been regarded as indecent a couple of decades ago, but then so would have a television show like “Friends”. Thirty years ago clothing that’s now routinely seen and very revealing would have been regarded as indecent. At that time, models had to be paid extra, and were often shown in a way that didn’t depict their faces, if the local department store was selling certain clothing.
Now we have entire celebrities who sell their images in ways that would have ruined careers 30 or 40, or even 20, years ago. There’s been at least one two television shows that have run basically celebrating the figures from the brown paper bag magazines.
At its worst, the industry is indeed horrifically exploitative in one form or another. But it’s so accepted now that the fringes of it can be seen just by looking at any magazine rack or even on city billboards. In the latter categories, those women are not forced into it.
It’d be easy, and correct, to say that nobody should accept it. But there’s also something to be noted that during the Civil Rights movement, blacks would no longer tolerate the Stepandfetchit type portrayal of their race by their fellows. Women shouldn’t tolerate this as well, and they shouldn’t tolerate men tolerating it.
That depends on how you define the industry. If you restrict it to just the worst segment of it, your point is excellent, if ineffectively made. But if it includes the exploitation of women in the run of the mill magazines, sporting magazines, and television, let alone the internet entertainment news, that’s quite another. We have television celebrities who are principally famous just for exposing themselves, singers who expose themselves every time their career needs a boost, and young women who’ve taken up shipping photos of themselves to men because they feel they need to. All of that does far more damage that the traditional magazines in paper bags did, and it does hurt women.
It’s a dangerous assumption that this sort of exploitation of the female image, which is now epidemic, doesn’t hurt all women in general. And only a fraction of that type is the old style abused women variety.
So indeed, be a decent human being. We all should. And be a better one than the men. Don’t encourage other women to be judged by their physical traits, and don’t support the routine or glamor portrayal of it either, when you can do something not to support it. Women often are the standard bearers in society, and in order to address this ill, they’ll have to be.
“I am a woman and I can do ANYTHING better than you can.”
In a way, this hyperbole brings it to a point. Even if it were true (and that would disregard that each gender, taken as an average can do some things better than the other) there’s one thing that as a man I don’t have to endure, and which women do, and that makes their lives less than “better”, particularly when they are young.
Men, generally, don’t have to walk into every office, into every classroom, and down every sidewalk, encountering a large percentage of the opposite gender whose minds have been formed with expectations depicting them as objects. For every really successful admirable female role model in this society, there’s several women whose images are blazoned in front of theirs for doing nothing other than showing themselves as objects. And man of those women are doing it for economic gain without being forced into it.
It’s easy to disregard this, but just as in the 40s and 50s blacks had to contend with a public image which some of their fellows had exploited for money, women have to do the same now, but with much less economic excuse. You may in fact be able to do anything better than I can, but I won’t have to be judged according to the same expectations of being an object. And that women do, hurts them immeasurably.
Good article. I struggled with this greatly from the age of about 17 until 30. By the grace of God, I decided one morning almost 2 years ago that it was time to stop. Porn (and all that comes along with it) was wrecking my brain and destroying my marriage. Since that morning, I’ve had a few relapses, but have been completely free of this filth for over 6 months now. I’ve never felt better. The enormous hole in my life that I was trying to fill with porn has been replaced with Christ’s love. For all guys who struggle with this, pray unceasingly and surrender to God. He’ll take care of you.
Thank you for sharing your story!
I try to get out of it for 3 years or even more, but it’s not getting better. I pray to God everydoay for help, but I’m to weak to escape. Please, pray for me because it’s very hard, and I cannot do it without help of God and prayer of another Catholics.
I will say there was a lot of good things in this article. It was hard to read because of quite a few typos. I also found it lacking in regards to the fact that it is either preaching to the choir, if that is your aim why write it? And then if it is to those who struggle with it which I think it is, you provided absolutely no practically steps to overcoming this sin. As you said yourself, we know that it is wrong in point 8.
I also found your point about God fleeing from sin a misunderstanding of how sin and God operate. God doesn’t move, it is us. God never ever flees us, or moves away from us. If there is ever movement on His part it is towards us, hence His Incarnation. We are the ones who flee and hide ourselves from Him, like Adam in the garden.
Regarding the typos, I apologize. I write these posts very early in the morning and sometimes I am not as good about catching typos as I should be.
Regarding preaching to the choir, the choir is looking at porn, so I need to preach to them.
Finally, I have previously given practical helps here: https://catholicgentleman.com/2013/10/lets-talk-about-porn/ and elsewhere. Search the archives for purity. I also concluded the article with several resources, including recovery programs. Thanks for you input!
As a priest I find it greatly disturbing to hear so much about this in the confessional. It has gotten so bad that my Archdiocese has had to start a support group and gave us business cards for this group for the confessional. Thanks so much for the timely article. God bless you!
Yes Nic, the majority of the people reading this blog regularly will recognize these things, although I think this is a big enough problem that “preaching to the choir” is necessary. Also, as a reply to Nic’s objection, it is important that these thoughts are “out there” on the Internet, so that hopefully someone caught in this net may see their sins for what they are and turn back to God. Nic, we can also share this and hopefully too it will reach at least one who needs it. As I write this 444 people have shared in Face-space and another couple on twitter.
Sam, I have been reading Spiritual Combat, and one point I think should be added at the end of your post is that it is not “you’ that will conquer this, but God. We have to recognize that we need complete confidence in God to grow in virtues and holiness. If we rely on our own will–like many probably found out during Lent–it is not a matter of if we will fail, but when. devotion to the Blessed Mother is so important in this because she is the one who is conformed to his will.
From Chapter 4: THE PRESUMPTUOUS MAN is convinced that he has acquired a distrust of himself and confidence in God, but his mistake is never more apparent than when some fault is committed. For, if he yields to anger and despairs of advancing in the way of virtue, it is evident that he has placed his confidence in himself and not in God. The greater the anxiety and despondence, the greater is the certainty of his guilt…. The man who has a deep distrust of himself and places great confidence in God is not at all surprised if he commits a fault. He does not abandon himself to confused despair; he correctly attributes what has happened to his own weakness and lack of confidence in God. … I sincerely wish that what has been proposed here would be attentively considered by many who think they are very devout. yet from the moment they commit a fault they will not be pacified, but hurry away to their director, more to rid themselves of the distress arising from self-love than from any other motive. Their principal care should be to wash away the guilt of sin in the Sacrament of Penance and to fortify themselves with the Eucharist against a relapse. http://www.catholictradition.org/Classics/combat4.htm (the whole work can be read there for free)
I find that having lustrous images impressed upon our hearts to compete with the lustful images society presses upon us helps deter one in the temptation to lust that all experience. Clips from films like this can replay in our minds in a way that dissuades us from sullying such beauty: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fGvfbDj1hk8.
Thanks a lot for all this information…it comes to my mind Mark 6,34. “When Jesus landed and saw a large crowd, he had compassion on them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd. So he began teaching them many things”. Cheers from Mexico!.
http://www.faithit.com/an-open-letter-to-the-dad-looking-at-porn/
Do not despair, Tom. God’s grace is greater than the ugliest of our sins. Just a few minutes ago I managed to resist one of these temptations; I was amazed by the progress Jesus has worked in my soul. I offer this victory along with a Divine Mercy Chaplet for you now, Tom. Put your trust in the Lord – He will free you!
My marriage was utterly destroyed by porn. I tried everything to help, but because he had been looking at , and using porn from age nine when he found his oh so Catholic fathers magazine’s, he would not stop. I did not know he had this problem till 6 years into our marriage. We have 4 beautiful children, 3 of which are girls. Financial malfeasance often accompanies this addiction, and he was no exception. Ruined us financially, and still stayed up hours every night downloading porn. Membership to the sex video shop, secret bank accounts, secret computer accounts…. I could go on and on. I dragged him to our priest, he went on retreats, I cried buckets, got angry, begged. To no avail. I finally had to ask him to leave. He did and I gave him six months to show me some real change and work to try to correct this horrible thing that has destroyed our marriage.
He did not change. I am now a working single mother rather than a stay at home, homeschooling mother. Our four children are now in public school. I am financially ruined, and he doesn’t even pay his child support as ordered.
THIS is the truth of what porn does to marriage. It destroyed not only my marriage, but gutted my children and my life. Almost cost me my faith, because the Priest did no more than tell my husband he needed to stop. No real harsh spiritual counseling. I HATE PORNOGRAPHY. My husband is lost in it. He already exposed our son to it. His father, whose magazines he found is lost in it. His father progressed to molesting his own granddaughters, one of them MY daughter.
So any man who thinks that porn doesn’t kill the soul of the person using it, or that it doesn’t destroy the bonds of marriage, is a fool. It captures you, and you will give up everything and everybody for it. You will view all women as objects to be used. Your heart will become hardened to the pleas of your wife. You will completely and utterly destroy her. And your marriage.
I had to save my children and myself. I did not want to divorce, and I spent 8 soul crushing years trying to save our marriage. But at the end of the day, porn won. Lust won. Selfishness won.
My children and I lost.
And so did the man I married.
You make an important point here, about the introduction to this material.
It’s everywhere around us now, on television, in magazines, movies, etc., and we’ve become so used to it, that people don’t even recognize it.
In the 50s and 60s, a certain now ossified octogenarian mired in the filth he created here, cleverly marketed this material such that it moved mainstream, and when he did, it went from being acknowledged as “dirty” to being more mainstream. That was his marketing goal, and it worked. By the late 1950s, it no longer was regarded as filthy as it previously had been. And at that point, it moved into Christian and other Catholic homes, as well as into more conventional journals.
This means that a lot of Catholic men can’t even recognize it. I doubt that all Catholic men realize that viewing such material is a mortal sin, if done knowing what they are doing and its gravity. So many young men, indeed mere boys, are introduced to it, and that’s been the case now for decades. Boys introduced to this material as boys have a very hard time overcoming that later. We need to realize that as parents.
For men, and this is a blog focused on men of course, that means fathers need to be zealous in keeping out this sort of image from their homes, and not just from the rags acknowledge to purvey it, but those which have seasonal wide acceptance as merely being arty, or sporty, etc. The point has to be made now more than ever.
And while I’ve been criticized for being blunt and hard nosed on this above, I also feel that person needs to be blunt about what people are doing, so the point comes across. Young women singers who are hawking their visual wears are engaging in something recalling the world’s oldest profession, and we need to note that. Beautiful young women who rely on exposing their assets for fame and money should be pitied, not admired. And so on. A point has to be made, and not only to boys, but to girls. That’s not a dignified and mentally safe way to go about living.
I will be praying for you Mr. Smith!
and everyone else too! Stay strong!
No more porn and everything else that goes along with this filth.
Ave Maria ora pro nobis!
Good article. I agree fully that porn has disastrous effects on couples. I am a 29 year old male, and I’ve been porn-free for only 3 months or so after a long struggle. I will NEVER go back. EVER. Porn has had a brutal impact on my previous relationships. It absolutely ruins your sex life. It ruins your views on intimacy. It ruins your ability to experience pleasure with a partner. My ex even watched porn. It’s not just guys – girls are increasingly consuming it too. It hurt me that she watched porn because it led to her masturbation to it as well. And once a male or female gets used to the porn-masturbation-orgasm cycle, the brain has a hard time adjusting to sexual situations outside of this and reaching orgasm only with a partner. Whenever we would get into a fight she would watch porn that night as a means to masturbating to alleviate stress. Total nonsense. I gave it up but I became neurotic about whether or not she was still watching it. It made me crazy. I know all too well how women feel. Don Jon and Shame are two great movies that make important comments about porn. The next thing to leave my life is masturbation, which also has disastrous effects on relationships. Death grip / death schlick are real phenomenon. Save yourselves. I am out of the porn game and I’ve never felt better.
Keep it up! If you can knock porn our of your life, you can get rid of masturbation too. With masturbating, the first week or so after quitting is the toughest. After that, it gets easier and easier. It is utterly amazing how clear your mind will be after ridding yourself of these habits.
Very well done article. Do you have a link for this statement “Catholics, and indeed all Christians, view pornography at essentially the exact same rate as non-Christian men.” I’m sure it’s true. But before I use it as “fact” in a blog post I’m writing, I’d like to see it in a study somewhere that I could reference. Thanks!
Felix, good point! Here is some proof: http://www.christianpost.com/news/nearly-two-thirds-of-christian-men-view-porn-monthly-they-are-watching-it-at-same-rate-as-secular-men-says-study-125471/
That is great – thank you very much!
Dear all:
I have been sober for quite a while, but I’m constantly tormented by lustful and violently lustful thoughts, which cause me to despair about my salvation often. I can tell you for a fact that pornography is probably why I am attracted to homosexuality, pedophilia, and even incest, as well as attracted to giving and receiving violent sexual acts. Combined with my natural sentimentality/feminality and emotional-depression problems (and possibly OCD), and my current life situation: failing college, lost at what to do with my life (career), no friends (incredible loneliness), living off my parents and disappointing them, etc., the only thing that has kept me from suicide is my own laziness and the Grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Kill pornography in your life before it kills you.
Christi pax.
I pray for everyone affected by this scourge. I’ve been clean a little over a year, having been deeply addicted to Internet pornography from age 12 to 28. Since being clean, my marriage is better now. My anger is better. I feel more strongly the love of God and His working in my life.
For all those struggling or trying to keep clean, I urge you to frequent confession. Use the screen if necessary, at a parish not your own if necessary to overcome the embarrassment, but come clean. Don’t hide anything from our blessed Lord acting through the person of the priest. Confession has been absolutely vital to my continued fight.
(Also, Someone above mentioned the first week without masturbation is the most difficult. I’d say it’s the first month or two that’s really tough…)
Check out this program— Integrity Restored: helping Catholic men break free from Pornography addiction (http://www.peterkleponis.com/)
It is the only Catholic program out there to help men. Very successful!
Why the hyperbole?
Where is this listed in this “real plague consuming our society … an epidemic of massive proportions and a growing public health crisis” listed in this chart 😕
http://www.drugwarfacts.org/cms/Causes_of_Death
Sugar is addictive, and destructive – when over consumed.
– Caffeine is addictive, and destructive – when over consumed.
– Nicotine is addictive, and destructive – when over consumed.
– Alcohol is addictive, and destructive – when over consumed.
– Starchy carbohydrates are addictive, and destructive – when over consumed.
– Exercise is addictive, and destructive – when over consumed.
– Excessive worry and anxiety is addictive, and destructive – when over indulged.
– Why, even sex is addictive, and destructive – when over consumed.
And porn is addictive, and destructive – when over consumed.
People with ‘addictive personalities’ are subject to getting addicted to *something*. Getting addicted to
porn isn’t a good thing but definitely better than opiates.
There are many problems with getting out of bed in the morning; porn is a very small one, for most people.
Acting as if it’s a symptom of the end times just makes you look silly.
Oh really? Can you take heorine and do not overconsume it? Some drugs are definitely more addictive than others. I say porn is one of those more addictive. You should avoid it like heroine, cocaine and meth.
What is most gut wrenching to me is the fact that I, a catholic woman, expect catholic men to live up to different standards and protect women from their lustful feelings, but they’re the same as any other guy out there when it comes to porn. I’m about to end a 2.5 years relationship because of this filth. Been waiting for almost 2 years to see at least a significant sobriety (at least 6 months), broke up once because of this, thought he had gotten better and got back together to find out he hasn’t been able to stay clean for more than 3 months. He’s been on his recovery journey for almost 2 years. I’m 30 years old and I can’t stay because I have no idea how much longer is it going to take him to solve this and I don’t want this crap in my marriage. Oh, and not only that, I have to accept the fact that the next man that will show up in my life will very likely use this crap regularly. I hate this garbage like you have no idea. I’m scared that I’ll never find a suitable man to marry that doesn’t hurt me with this. I’m sick and tired of men not living up to true manhood, to keep this facade they respect some women but use others. I’m sorry for the rant, but it is the same situation that repeats in my parish too and it makes me feel hopless about finding a good man again.
Thank you for this article! I have several problems with erotical literature and chat-rooms. I pray to God to help me to get out of this, because one day i want to serve him as priest, not as a slave. Glory be to God.
To the Seminarian who commented above, recall the stories of St Thomas Aquinas in the tower and St Benedict with the thornbush! If your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out (metaphorically!)
Thank you for this article. It all rings true.
If you are trying to conquer porn you are not going to succeed by yourself. You need to pray everday. It works. Pray a simple direct practical prayer. Put it on your calendar recurring reminder. here’s one.
Jesus, Lover of chastity, Mary, Mother most pure, and Joseph, chaste guardian of the Virgin, to you I come at this hour, begging you to plead with God for me. I earnestly wish to be pure in thought, word and deed in imitation of your own holy purity.Obtain for me, then, a deep sense of modesty which will be reflected in my external conduct. Protect my eyes, the windows of my soul, from anything that might dim the luster of a heart that must mirror only Christlike purity.
And when the “Bread of Angels becomes the Bread of me” in my heart at Holy Communion, seal it forever against the suggestions of sinful pleasures.Heart of Jesus, Fount of all purity, have mercy on us.
And go to confession immediately when you need to. And avoid situations that open you to temptation. Keep the door open. Go to bed early and keep busy.
And commit to forever. Say to yourself everyday I will never do it again.