Posts Tagged ‘Porn’

Pornography and the curse of total sexual freedom

Tuesday, April 26th, 2016

The most recent issue of Time Magazine features a fascinating and deeply troubling article on the prevalence of pornography in our culture. The focus of the piece is on the generation of young men now coming of age, the first generation who grew up with unlimited access to hardcore pornography on the Internet. The statistics Read more

Men struggle with porn addiction, some women want to feed it

Tuesday, March 15th, 2016

There is good news and bad news about pornography this week. The bad news is that women are clamouring for a fair share of the porn industry; the good news is that men are deserting that pigsty. These are very broad strokes, but the details are equally disturbing and encouraging. First, the women. It is Read more

Pornography, US bishops and feminists

Friday, November 27th, 2015

Naming it “corrosive” and a “dark” sign of contemporary American culture, the U.S. Catholic bishops approved a document this week condemning the production and use of pornography as a mortal sin. Reaction from the bishops’ critics didn’t take long. Some said the bishops themselves have very serious problems with pornography; others pointed out the not-so-distant Read more

Pornography is harmless? Think again

Tuesday, November 3rd, 2015

Pornography may be defined as “the depiction of erotic behavior (sexual display in pictures or writing) that is intended to cause sexual excitement” in the viewer.(1) Over the past decade there has been a large increase in the pornographic material that is available to both adults and children. Mainstream pornography use has grown common because Read more

Porn and the shaping of our brains

Tuesday, August 4th, 2015

Porn, and the way it is shaping our individual and collective cultural mindset, has moved on dramatically since I last wrote on the subject for this title six years ago. Sexually explicit material is no longer on the fringes of our culture; it’s in the mainstream. Yet while the ‘dirty secret’ about porn is well Read more

Boys’ addictions — porn, video games, ritalin

Friday, May 22nd, 2015

In the UK today, a young person is more likely to have a television in their bedroom than a father in their house by the end of their childhood. And even if fathers are around, their sons don’t engage with them much: boys spend 44 hours in front of a TV, smartphone or computer screen Read more

Is pornography addiction real?

Friday, November 7th, 2014

Maybe we should ask the experts–those seeking help. There is much debate about whether or not pornography is addictive. Pornography addiction is controversial even among professional therapists. This debate heated up when the Fifth Edition of the Diagnostic Statistical Manual for Psychiatric Disorders (DSM-V) for therapists did not include sexual addiction as a clinical diagnosis. Read more

Church cannot shy away from talking about sex

Friday, November 22nd, 2013

A common activity in youth work is to use the day’s newspapers to help start a discussion with young people. I can only imagine the apprehension of any church youth leaders using this activity last Wednesday. The Daily Mail headline, ‘Minister: My fear for boys warped by porn’ could have produced a rather uncomfortable conversation. Read more

Christ and a growing rural addiction

Friday, October 25th, 2013

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. Read more

Hotels and the pornography plague

Friday, September 13th, 2013

A bit more than a year ago, we wrote on Public Discourse a letter we had sent to the chief executive officers of our nation’s largest hotel chains, respectfully asking them to stop offering pornography in their hotel rooms. “We are, respectively, a Christian and a Muslim, but we appeal to you not on the Read more