Pornography

KANSAS CITY, Kan. — It’s bigger than pro football. It’s bigger than pro basketball, or even major league baseball. In fact, its annual revenues are bigger than all three of those sports combined.

“It” is pornography. And its gargantuan revenues only hint at the impact it’s having on our society.

“Pornography has grown into a $10 billion business . . . and some of


	Help is a call away Catholic Community Services counseling staff has extensive experience in helping to heal individuals and couples with pornographic addition. • Kansas City area: 913-262-1160 • Leavenworth: 913-651-5261 • Lawrence: 785-0307 • Topeka: 785-233-6300 • Emporia: 620-343-2296

the nation’s best-known corporations are quietly sharing the profits,” reported ABC News in “American Porn: Corporate America Is Profiting From Porn — Quietly,” which aired on Jan. 28, 2003.

At one time, for example, General Motors’ former subsidiary, DirectTV, sold more graphic sex films every year than did Hustler magazine magnate Larry Flint, reported a Oct. 23, 2000, story in The New York Times.

But the big money is only part of the story. The true cost of pornography is measured in the devastation it wreaks on the spiritual and personal lives of not only the addicted, but also their families and communities.

One family’s struggle with pornography

Pornography is no respecter of persons, as John and Jan (not their real names) found out the hard way.

John, a successful businessman now in his 50s and a member of an area parish, was not only raised Catholic — including graduating from a Catholic high school and college — but continued to actively practice his faith along with his wife, also a lifelong Catholic. John was even heavily involved in his parish — on the parish council, on the school board, and in the choir.

John’s addiction started out innocently enough when he was in his mid-30s — and in his own living room, watching the family TV.

“It started basically with me staying up late at night after the family went to bed, and I ’d do a lot of channel surfing on TV,” he said. “It got to the point where I would settle on channels that had some kind of sexual content in their programming. After a while, it got to the point where it wasn ’t satisfying enough, so I started to rent R-rated movies that had nudity. Once the wife and kids went to bed, I ’d stay up and watch these movies.”

What happened to John is a textbook example, said Sam Meier, a sex addiction therapist with Living Water Counseling in Colorado Springs, Colo. As with many men, when John viewed the pornography, his brain received a huge rush of endorphins and enkephalins.

These powerful chemicals are produced naturally by the body, and have the ability to produce a “high,” explained Meier. Man-made psychotropic substances that mimic these chemicals include morphine, heroin, codeine, methadone, and demerol. Hence, it is indeed possible to be addicted to pornography. The phenomenon of progression is common, too, because the addict needs a stronger stimulus to feel the same “high.” This was what was happening to John.

But enthralled as John became with the movies, he was at the same time ashamed of watching them. He hid the movies from his wife and kids, usually under the seat of his car — but he didn’t stop watching.

As his habit took hold, he felt worse and worse about himself. The shame, coupled with the loss of sleep, began to make him an unpleasant person.

“It’s like a cancer,” he said. “It starts off small. And if you don’t check it, it grows, and you get an insatiable hunger for this type of stuff once you start feeding on it — almost to the point where you can’t get enough.”

There is no telling where the escalation would have taken him had John’s addiction not suddenly been revealed.

While John was playing golf with a friend one day, his 12-year-old decided to surprise him by cleaning out his car. When she discovered a pornographic video he had rented, she was shocked. Up until that moment, her father had been the epitome of the Catholic faith to her.

She handed it to her mother with the words, “I thought my dad was better than this!”

“When I came home that afternoon, I was flying high,” recalled John, “because I had shot the best round of golf in my life. When I walked into the house, my wife was in the kitchen and this video was in the center of the counter. ”

Right then and there, it was as if John’s whole life collapsed into a dark hole. The hardest part, he said, was going to his crying daughter and apologizing to her.

John made apologies to his entire family, and went to church for the sacrament of reconciliation. Next, he got help from some special friends.

“Luckily, I had a couple of friends I shared this experience with at a prayer group meeting we had, ” said John. “Afterward, one of the guys told me how he and another guy had an accountability group that they met with every Saturday, and if I was willing, they ’d consider having me part of the group.

“At first I thought that I could battle this on my own, but after talking with Jan, we decided that it might not be a bad thing for me to become a part of this accountability group. ”

Two other big parts of John’s recovery were his recommitment to his wife and the forgiveness and support he received from her and their children. Today, their marriage is better than it was before.

Jan said that it helped that John clearly recognized that he had a problem.

“I realized that he needed to be supported, and there was no point in me applying guilt because he already felt terrible, ” she said. “What he needed was support and encouragement Once he acknowledged his problem, support was the way to go. ”

Hope and help from the church

People today — Catholics included — face an unprecedented onslaught of pornography, said Archbishop Joseph F. Naumann. Pornographers no longer peddle their wares in the bad part of town, so to speak, but boldly reach into our very homes via cable and satellite television and the Internet. To them, Christians are just another market segment to conquer.

“When I was growing up in the 1950s, porn was around, but it was mainly on the printed page and at a few sleazy movie theaters, ” said the archbishop. “You had to really work to get access to pornography. There was a stigma attached to places where there was pornography, or [to] one of the movie theaters that showed it. There was a lot of social pressure not to do those things.

“But with the technology today, pornography is brought right into our homes. The insidious thing about it is that it ’s brought in with a lot of good things. I don’t think most people order cable television to get pornography. There are a lot of good things [on TV], but there is an awful lot of what I would consider pornographic shows that come in. And the computer is even more problematic. ”

The emotional damage that pornography does, he said, is immeasurable. It has the effect of objectifying the focus of our attraction, turning him or her into a mere object of pleasure. That, in turn, can lead to the objectification of the people that we know in real life.

“What it does in families, too, is that it gets in the way of family relationships — in marriage, particularly,” the archbishop said. “If one [spouse] gets addicted to pornography, they’re not viewing their spouse or maybe even their own children as they should. They begin to objectify everyone, and it contaminates the relationships within the family — particularly between spouses.”

The archbishop noted that Catholic Charities reported that 40 percent of those seeking professional counseling in 2006 had pornography-related issues.

He also stressed that the harms of pornography are not just relational, but spiritual as well.

“It’s a spiritual, moral evil, too,” he said. “In one sense, you can say almost every sin is a form of idolatry, because it’s making something or someone more important than our relationship with God.

“I think people who participate in pornography know it’s not something they’re proud of. In a sense, they know that it’s offensive to God, but the lure of the immediate gratification and pleasure it gives is more powerful. It contaminates our relationship with God as well. ”

In view of the current sustained attack on individuals and families by pornography, the archdiocese has launched a new initiative called “As For Me And My House,” taken from the Book of Joshua (24:15) in the Old Testament.

“As For Me And My House” is a parish-based program designed to offer a variety of resources and programs on an ongoing basis. It will be offered in parishes throughout the archdiocese beginning in January 2007.

Pastors will appoint an individual or couple to be the parish coordinators of the program, who will then lead the implementation, beginning with an “Awareness Sunday.”

On that Sunday, a video outlining the issue will be shown during Mass, although parents will have the option of excusing their children during its viewing. Print materials will also be made available, including a program brochure, a Spiritually Healthy Family Checklist, a prayer card, and referral card.

The program was designed to be flexible in order to serve small, medium and large parishes, and to enable the parish to choose what would work best from a menu of options.

A few include:

• Theology of the Body study groups, especially for married couples

• “That Man is You!,” a 26-week Bible study program for men

• “ENDOW” (“Educating on the Nature and Dignity of Women”), a study program for women that promotes a “new feminism” based on the teachings of Pope John Paul II

• A comprehensive program and resource manual provided to each parish

• Parent Night, designed to identify the dangers of the Internet to children

• A variety of additional materials and resources, especially counseling through Catholic Charities.

Already, the “As For Me And My House” program is attracting national attention.

Teresa M. Kettlekamp, executive director of the Office of Child and Youth Protection of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, said that Archbishop Naumann is a leader among the bishops in regard to implementing an anti-pornography campaign.

“I think [the program] is great,” said Kettlekamp. “It is well-organized and covers the subject matter very well. The information is very thorough. I like the fact that it ’s parish-based, and that there were pilot parishes. I think the resources are very beneficial. I liked every aspect of it. ”

Bishop Michael J. Sheridan of the Diocese of Colorado Springs, Colo., is just beginning to plan a similar effort, and sees the Kansas program as a model.

“I think as we look toward doing something similar in our diocese, something like a DVD to get the message out could be part of our plan, ” he said. “Our task force is just beginning to be brought together to do this.”

The program is getting attention even closer to home. Bishop Robert W. Finn of the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph was so impressed with “As For Me And My House” that he has adopted it for his own anti-pornography initiative, even to the point of keeping the same logo and name.

For more information about “As For Me And My House,” call archdiocesan program coordinator Bill Scholl at (913) 721-1570, or go to the Web site at: http://myhouse.archkck.org.