Bishop Calls on Men in the Church to Recommit to Purity and Renew Sacred Commitment to Wife and Children
Hilary White : Mar 10, 2014
LifeSiteNews.com
The largest consumer demographic for internet pornography is the 12-17 age group and 80 per cent of 15-17 year olds experiencing multiple "hard-core" exposures. Ninety percent of 8-16 year-olds have viewed porn online, most while doing homework on their personal computers and laptops.
(Arlington, VA)—The growth of pornography use, particularly on the internet, is "a matter of utmost urgency for every son and father today," Bishop Paul Loverde of the Catholic diocese of Arlington, Virginia said in a letter to his flock released this week.
Titled "Bought with a Price: Every Man's Duty to Protect Himself and His Family from a Pornographic Culture," the 77-page letter was first issued in 2006, but in his introduction, Bishop Loverde emphasizes that the porn industry has grown exponentially in the last eight years.
Since 2006, Loverde said, "The porn epidemic engulfing our families, marriages and communities, has reached a pandemic scale."
Pornography, Loverde wrote, "has been excused as an outlet for free expression, supported as a business venture, and condoned as just another form of entertainment." But "it is not widely recognized as a threat to life and happiness. It is not often treated as a destructive addiction" that "changes the way men and women treat one another in sometimes dramatic but often subtle ways."
"I call on every man in the Diocese of Arlington to search his heart and renew his commitment to purity. I call on every husband and father to renew his sacred commitment to his wife and children," Loverde wrote.
"Rather than being the expression of a married couple's intimate union of life and love, sex is reduced to a demeaning source of entertainment and even profit for others. Pornography violates chastity also because it introduces impure thoughts into the viewer's mind and often leads to unchaste acts, such as masturbation or adultery." (Photo via LSN)
Answering the objection that pornography is a "harmless" vice, Loverde writes that to the contrary, the porn industry "preys on the most vulnerable: the poor, the abused and marginalized, and even children" with promises of easy money. "This exploitation of the weak is gravely sinful."
"Those who produce and distribute pornography leave a wide path of broken and devalued men and women in their wake."
The largest consumer demographic for internet pornography is the 12-17 age group and 80 per cent of 15-17 year olds experiencing multiple "hard-core" exposures. Ninety percent of 8-16 year-olds have viewed porn online, most while doing homework on their personal computers and laptops.
"To a degree that my father could never have imagined," Loverde wrote, "today's father must protect himself and his children from the relentless assault of an increasingly pornographic culture; moreover, mothers share this sacred task.
"Every home now stands in the pathway of this attack on our children's innocence and purity. If we are not vigilant, our sons and daughters will pay a steep and heartrending price."
"Never before have so many Americans been so tempted to view pornography. Never before have the accountability structures—to say nothing of the defenses which every society must build to defend the precious gift of her children—been so weak."