Cannibals Preparing their Victims, Goya

JONATHAN VAN MAREN writes at Lifesite News:

When guys have been looking at porn for a long time, it’s a tough habit to break. And when you’re an anti-porn speaker (as I am), it’s tough to figure out how to make people quit a habit that has deeply rewired their brain and reshaped their attractions, using just words. So one of the things I’ve tried to do is illustrate just how evil porn is, by calling it what it is.

Porn is, at its root, sexual cannibalism.

[…]

Pornography is someone sexually consuming another for one-sided pleasure. That person exists only to fulfill his pleasures, his fantasies, his satisfaction.

Pornography, mass-produced and disseminated, is the perfect vehicle for enslaving men.

— Comments —

CH writes:

While I appreciated the article and the slightly different perspective on pornography, there’s an elephant in the room no one talks about: broadband internet. To even bring this up with most people is met with a response such as, “Well, that’s how it is now. No one’s giving up their Internet or TV.” Fair enough.

But Joseph had the only proper response to such temptation: run like smoke and oakum. Leave your robe on the floor if you must, but run from such temptation. No man, no matter how Godly he may be, will be able to resist long the lure of an easy erotic fix when he is alone at home, knowing that he can download it (for free) in seconds, get that fix, then cover it up; physically, psychologically and spiritually. It will not happen for long. He may resist for a time but there will be situations where frustrations with work, life, family and home will be too much. So long as he maintains that broadband connection to everything in his home, the demon is there at all times, enticing, enchanting and encouraging him.

The modern man, especially the Christian man, must take things beyond any nominal, modern ideas of what is sensible and what is plausible. If he wishes to escape porn, then the key to doing so at home is to make a way to live without the ‘convenience’ of constant connection to the internet. Any other option is the man fooling himself. Myself, I’m going back to a flip phone, which will remove all broadband internet from my home. I have fallen victim to the filth of pornography enough in my life as a divorced man. I just took the Bible’s advice on this one: if the internet puts me in danger of losing what God has so graciously given me, then it must be cut off.

Laura writes:

That’s called “avoiding the occasion of sin.”

Mark Jaws writes:

There is another 800 pound gorilla in the room few ever talk about – women who work and who are too tired or are unwilling to have sex in the evening. I am a traditionalist who has managed to keep porn at bay by using my company’s computer at home which blocks all sexual material. But also as a traditionalist I also know that marriage was ordained for the procreation of children and as remedy against sin and fornication. I will step out of character and avoid the plebian vernacular often used to express the sentiment that a sexually fulfilled man is a man who has no need for pornography.

Laura writes:

The busy, two-income family seems to cause some serious deprivation. You are probably on to something. But obviously there are men who use porn who have wives or friends very available to them. And, needless to say, that’s no justification.

Mr. Jaws writes:

This thread has run its course but I can tell you stories of men, who although married, were totally cut off from sexual relations by their wives within a few years of putting the ring on the finger.  For example, one of my co-workers did not have sexual relations with his wife for 10 years before immersing himself into the soul-corroding world of porn.  It was not long after that, that he started having sex with a series of women whom he had met on-line.  Last year he and his wife decided to divorce, and he lays most of the blame at the feet of his wife who simply refused for whatever reasons to have sex with him. He gives me the line from West Side Story about his having “become depraved because he was deprived.”  He has now shacked up with another recent divorcee for almost a year, and I am trying to bring him back to Holy Mother Church (both he and his new girlfriend are lapsed Catholics), by going to Confession, ending the relationship, or at least marrying the woman, whom he claims he sincerely loves.

I have been a Christian for 35 years.   Twenty as a Southern Baptist and 15 as a Catholic.  In that time I have never heard a sermon or homily on a wife’s obligation to provide physical love for her husband.  Never.  I believe this is so because for the past 50 years the emphasis has been on women’s rights, and not women’s obligations.

Laura writes:

Wow, what an awful story.

There have been previous discussions of this issue before. In this entry, I wrote to a reader whose wife was denying him physical contact:

You might be interested in this talk (and this one) by Father Chad Ripperger, in which he discusses why it is a mortal sin for a spouse to deny sexual relations and affection to a husband or wife who is faithful and not guilty of cruelty. This is a violation of the marital vow. Your wife is not making her life any better by denying you love. It is a true hardship to see your marriage suspended in this way. I can understand why you are distressed.

I also found a draft of a post from a reader who says much the same thing Mark does. I think I was unsure of his point, but I saved it and I cannot recall now why I never posted it. I will post it soon in another entry.

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