Pastoral Letter
Most Rev Gerard J Holohan
Bishop of Bunbury
29th September 2013
The Rural Financial Counselling Service reported recently that the number of rural people within Western Australia succumbing to internet pornography addiction, drug use and depression, is growing. Research shows internet pornography addiction to be a rapidly growing problem across Australia and overseas.
In the United States, internet pornography addiction is a factor cited in 50% of divorces. Increasingly too, young people are needing psychological therapy to help with relating and sexuality problems.
This is an important issue for parishes and for individual Catholics, for we exist as a Church to continue the mission of Jesus. Those in need were Jesus’ priority, and internet pornography addicts certainly are people in need. We need to help them if we can – especially by inviting them to seek Christ’s help.
I have written elsewhere about pornography actors as victims. The focus of this Pastoral Letter is on:
How Christ can help
The effects of pornography on an addicted person’s brain
Deepening in personal relationship with Christ
How Christ seeks to help through his Church
How Christ seeks to help through the Christian.
1. How can Christ help?
Many today would think that Catholic faith has nothing to offer the internet pornography addict. Yet, as for other Christians, Jesus Christ for Catholics is the Son of God and Saviour (the word ‘salvation’ deriving from the Latin word for ‘healing’).
He offers salvation from all in us that is not of God. This includes internet pornography addiction.
The human need for salvation
The general human need for salvation becomes clear when we remember that God originally created human beings in relationship with their Creator. Empowered by this relationship, our first parents experienced harmony within, harmony with each other and harmony with the rest of creation. 1
This situation changed when our first parents succumbed to Satan’s temptation to reject their relationship with God. Instead of accepting their dependence on the Creator who created them to love, they desired to be equal – wanting to be ‘like gods’.
They rejected the God who gave them even life itself.
Now their original relationship with God was destroyed. Their original experiences of harmony were replaced by inner division, social division and division between themselves and the rest of creation.
These are the experiences of ‘original sin’.
The root of the divided human nature with which we are born. As a result, the ‘control of the soul’s spiritual faculties over the body is shattered’.
Ever since, people have experienced inner conflicts.
For example, our experience today is of selfishness conflicting with love; judgementalness with compassion; and confusion with truth. At times emotions weaken the will and cause intellectual confusion. Relationships between men and women can be damaged by lust.
Internet pornography addiction is one of the symptoms of this inner division.
The will is weakened by lust, desires and increasing neurological dysfunction (as we will see). This addiction is a consequence of efforts to escape life problems through fantasy.
There is no other way of restoring genuine and long term inner harmony than by the healing of the human relationship with God. People need Christ’s salvation.
Christ as Saviour
The whole Christian message is about Christ as Saviour. In the context of this Letter, we can only recall key points relevant to the topic of internet pornography addiction.
First, Jesus began revealing himself as saviour by miracles. For example, he cured the sick, freed cripples to walk, restored sight to the blind. These examples were visible signs to show his power to the healing, liberating and giving new sight. His power showed Jesus to be establishing the kingdom of God in the world. By his miracles, Jesus was showing his power to be greater than the kingdom of Satan. Everything in creation not of God was a symptom of Satan’s influence.
This included all forms of sin, human suffering, disharmony and death. In revealing that his power could conquer Satan, Jesus described Satan as the great deceiver, the ‘father of lies’. Satan’s greatest successes today are those people who have been deceived into imagining that Satan does not exist – as is common in modern Australian society.
Jesus taught that he had come to redeem all people from the power of Satan. All who commit sin are ‘slaves’ to the sin. Jesus would redeem them by dying on a cross, giving his life ‘as a ransom for many’.
Second, Jesus revealed that he had come to share ‘eternal life’ – the life of God – with all who believed in him. He, with God the Father and the Spirit, would ‘make a home’ in them.
Jesus fulfilled these promises by his resurrection and the sending of the Holy Spirit.
By his resurrection, Jesus empowers believers today to live as he taught. Through Baptism, we ‘share the divine nature’.
We share the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Christ.
Third, Jesus left a number of means for members of the community of his followers, whom he referred to as his ‘church’, to draw on his power for their lives.
These means include the seven sacraments, the Eucharist being the most important. As we do so today, the influence of the divine grows within us. The influence of Satan, including the power of internet pornography addiction, weakens.
We accept Christian salvation by entering into a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. He taught us how to pray, to worship and to live to do this. As we relate personally with Jesus as Saviour, our relationship with God is healed. Jesus’ power also strengthens our souls’ spiritual faculties so that inner harmony and harmony with others is restored. Continue reading
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