ToB and Pornography in perspective.
If the redemption of our bodies is the way, “historical man” can attain heaven and holiness including the full
integration of the human sexuality at the eschaton, then the porn addict has plunged “historical man” deeper
backward with the further disintegration of his human sexuality. Pornography reduces human sexuality into a
lifeless and empty husk. It is depersonalizing, enslaving, self-destructive, alienating, isolating and reductionistic
of the human person. The redemption of the body on the contrary calls man to reclaim the spousal meaning
of his body with the power to express love that makes him into a gift and through this gift fulfils the very
meaning of his being and existence. The difference between the reality of human sexuality and its residue in
pornography is the difference between hope and despair, heaven and hell!
With a sex life dominated by lust and concupiscence, the heart of the porn addict is unable to “see” with the
new ethos and closes his eye to the virtue of purity. He is unable to see others as pure sexual beings but rather
as sexual objects for his own self gratification. His lust displaces love and lust depersonalizes him. His efforts at
objectivising the opposite sex lead to the objectivization of his own self. He becomes disoriented, shameless,
alienated and becomes an object “for the other”. This is enslaving and is incompatible with the communion of
persons since he cannot be a gift and incapable of self-giving to his sex partner.
For the porn addict, sex must come first before personhood, lust before love and pleasure before conscience.
The proper order should be: The human relationship must come first and the sexual relationship must be
grounded in self-donative love not self-love! He is blind to this natural order of both human and sexual
relationships and his heart suffers deep grief and in great need of healing from the graces of God.
Alienation leads the porn addict to isolation of the self and encourages the illegitimate privacy of isolation
leading to withdrawal from social interactions. Pornography also violates legitimate privacy which is the non
public display of naked bodies. It also reduces the person to a thing and exchanges a name for a number (the
size of the organs, the duration of the intercourse, the number of partners, the frequency and intensity of
organism). These so called “vital statistics” do not denote life as much as a person reduced to a thing!
Since the “new ethos of Redemption is always linked with the liberation of the heart from concupiscence”
(TOB 43:6), there is no liberation of the heart of the porn addict from concupiscence. With no Spirit of the
Lord to give new forms to his heart’s desires, those inner movements that animate our lives, there is no new
ethos of redemption and new ethos of “seeing”. There is no self mastery of his desires and he retains a lustful
heart at the core of his sexuality. There is little purity of life and he is blind to the purity of the opposite sex. He
needs desperately the liberation of his sexuality through JP2’s theology of the body and our prayer and God’s
grace for the salvation of his soul.
Living the Theology of our bodies means living the truth of love, God has inscribed in the theology of our
bodies (see TOB 126:5). The heart has become a battlefield between love and lust.
The more lust dominates the heart, the less we experience the spousal meaning of the body. (TOB 32:3)
The new Ethos of Seeing is an inner transformation that “demands an intense spiritual commitment and is no
stranger to painful purifications the ‘dark nights’” (NMI 33). We cannot acquire this purity without
renunciation, without struggles against our own inner weakness. Since all Christians are called to universal
holiness, every Catholic is called to the redemption of the body and to recognize that human sexuality is so
profoundly central to the constitution of the human person. Holiness and sexual immorality are mutually
exclusive categories, no matter what one’s state of holiness is. We are all called to maturity of heart and pure
vision and to live vigorously JP2’s theology of the body!
David Teo Wee
Aug 11, 2013
17th Aug TOB Conference