My bishop recently released a pastoral letter
on pornography, “Bought With A Price”, and it is really good, take a look at it. I want to focus on one aspect of his thought: the user of pornography generally does so in a desire for intimacy, and is harming himself because the “intimacy” promised by pornography is fake, false, fraudulent.
Some assert the position that acting sexually, in general, and the use of pornography, in particular, meets the most basic of human needs. This position posits that pornography can provide a modicum of human satisfaction and comfort for those who find intimacy in marriage impossible or at least unavailable. Examples are cited of spouses separated by distance, single men and women not yet able to marry, husbands and wives suddenly deprived of marital intimacy owing to age or illness. In each of these cases, the attainment of some level of human (i.e., sexual) satisfaction, even if inferior to true marital intimacy, is offered as a temporary relief to a person longing for human contact.This view presupposes that sexual activity alone, or the viewing of others in sexual activity, is somehow of the same nature as true human intimacy. In fact, the intimacy longed for by all persons is the antithesis of the exploitative and dehumanizing experience of the use of pornographic images. Rather than providing comfort or satisfaction, the use of pornography inevitably leads not only to repeated unsatisfying experiences, but demands an escalation of stimulation. Each escalation and each experience demeans and desensitizes the viewer to the beauty and nobility of the human person.
Bishop Loverde here picks up on something that is keenly insightful, and certainly he enlightened me with this: people turn to pornography – a dead object – because they feel a lack of something, they are not being fulfilled. But the thing that they are feeling the lack of is intimacy with another person. You cannot have true intimacy with a dead object like a photo or movie images. Intimacy involves sharing, give and take, openness. The photo only mimics some of these, and only from one side of the equation.
Intimacy is a deep co-respondence between two persons. By definition, it cannot take place instantly when two people first meet, because they do not yet have the ground-work of knowledge, trust, understanding, and respect that has already grown mutually. Once you have some level of these, then there can be a mutual sharing of the inner self, some of your most closely-held thoughts, feelings, aspirations, amusements. You don’t put these out on display for all the world to see, because all the world cannot understand them properly without first knowing you. They will mistake your hopes for either ambition or silliness, instead of what they really are. They will mock your fears as either ungrounded or futile, but not lend you a sympathetic ear. It takes a true friend to be intimate.
Sexual intimacy is a new level laid on top of the former intimacy of friendship. The human body is made for touching and being touched intimately, but ONLY between two who already have established intimacy of soul, only when they already share intimately their minds and hearts. The physical intimacy of granting to your spouse (and receiving) a touch of delight that comes in the very midst of love, trust, and respect, is the necessary framework in which human sexual relation takes place. Without that framework, sexuality doesn’t express intimacy at all, it only expresses animal desire. Unfortunately, in humans, animal desire separated from what makes it human (the love and deep acceptance of the person him- or herself that is being offered) is a base act of lust, not of love, and not of intimacy.
(Speaking from the perspective of a male, since most pornography is made for men,) seeing a woman who has shed her outer barriers-against-the-world is supposed to be the beginning of the intimacy of physical love within the framework of intimate friendship already established. But seeing that happen outside of a relationship of intimacy (say, at an exotic dance bar) is actually a mockery of intimacy, because it promises a meeting of hearts that it cannot fulfill. Seeing it captured in a dead (and deadening) movie or still photo is even worse: it reduces the woman herself to a mere shell of her live self, something even farther removed from her goodness, wit, love, and affection. It has just a tiny bit of “her” at all, a false suggestion of intimacy carried by some photons, not even a real person.
It also damages the viewer in another way – it reduces his capacity to see in the human physical form the window to nobility, live beauty, and truly human expression of love. In seeking to see love in a photo, instead he transforms his capacity to see love at all. He comes away from the experience not only not having his desire for intimacy met, but with new layers of crust preventing his being intimate properly, and with a degenerate capacity to appreciate beauty. The human beauty that is harbored by the form of your spouse offering herself is a beauty that can be properly perceived only by her husband, who knows her heart and mind as well. That true and proper perception increases your receptivity to beauty in the noble, true, and beautiful. Outside of that relationship, the same sight cannot convey the beauty, and instead the viewer’s receptivity to the true, the good, and the beautiful contracts. Small wonder, then, that (as the Bishop says) pornography demands an escalation of stimulation. It is like being really hungry, and being fed a diarrhetic instead of good food. The poor sod is being sold a bill of goods by the devil: he will get less and less real enjoyment out of things that are more and more evil.
Please note that this thread is not about whether pornography should or should not be legal.
Also, I have company for the next 4 days so I will have limited capacity to follow up. Sorry, but them’s the breaks.
Comments (77)
That's a good pastoral letter. I've been so put off by alarmist rhetoric so typical of much Evangelical writing on the topic that leaves one guessing in the end on why it is wrong. Young people (and old too) need to hear the reasons it doesn't deliver and instead harms them. Great stuff.
Posted by Mark | July 18, 2011 1:27 AM
Psychobabble. It's the old filling-the-void story: "People turn to pornography/food/drugs/religion in order to fill a void inside, to try to satisfy a legitimate need, but it's self-defeating because the void can only be truly filled by [what I'm trying to sell]." Filling-the-void stories started out being popular on the feminine (and feminist!) left, but now they seem to have spread to the right.
There's some truth to filling-the-void, of course. People don't overeat just because they're physically hungry, and they don't use pornography just because they're physically horny. But a theory of pornography as filling-the-void, as trying mistakenly to satisfy a "legitimate," approved need such as intimacy - taking that as the single or even the major cause is psychobabble.
That having been ranted, there is one big category of pornography where the model probably applies more accurately: so-called "women's pornography," also known as romance novels and chick flicks. I'd guess that women do turn to Harlequin romances (or whatever it is nowadays) for a fantasy of intimacy - along with fantasies of other stuff like hot sex, domination, etc.
Posted by Aaron | July 18, 2011 3:47 AM
For those smelling rotten eggs, try laying a good one.
Posted by Scott W, | July 18, 2011 8:13 AM
I think it's a fantasy of both sex and intimacy. In that sense, it's even more dangerous than most visual pornography which is just sex. It sets women up for both unrealistic and selfish sexual expectations, but also extremely unrealistic relationship and intimacy expectations. Long-term relationships require work in real life, they don't in fiction. There is also the simple fact that the average woman is as unlikely to attract a man resembling a romance novel male love interest as the average man is to attract a drop-dead gorgeous bombshell who will happily alternated between devoted wife by day, and total whore in the bedroom at night.
There's also evidence that the effects of romance novel consumption are equivalent to pornography consumption.
Posted by Mike T | July 18, 2011 8:42 AM
Good post, Tony, thanks.
I often say that certain types of Christians understand the rules about human sexuality but don't understand the great fact that lies behind them: That sexual intimacy between husband and wife is sacred. If they actually understood this, it would make a difference in all sorts of ways, even in small ways. For example, young Christian women would never refer to men as "hot," or vice versa (that is, Christian men would never refer to women in that way, either). Christian country singers would not sing suggestive songs, and they certainly wouldn't excuse them by saying, "Oh, well, the idea is that I'm singing it to my wife." Really? You would say suggestive things to or about your wife in public?
Pastors would not discuss intimate matters in detail in front of large, mixed audiences.
Modesty would return to the discourse and behavior of people who give lip service to traditional sexual morality if they truly internalized the important truth that lies behind it.
Posted by Lydia | July 18, 2011 9:03 AM
"The sexual reality [after the sexual revolution] was often halfhearted and disappointing, much obsession but little passion--what D. H. Lawrence had called "sex in the head." Men and women did not benefit from the boasted "revolution" as they had expected; it did give some people the free play they wanted, but it pushed many more into courses unsuited to their nature and capacities.
"It did not install the Mohammedan paradise on earth, although everything in sight suggested that it had. Pornography is a form of utopian literature and, like the advertising of Desire, it set a standard that brought on paralysis. When an erectifying drug was put on the market, the millions who rushed to obtain it numbered the healthy young as well as the ailing old, and women at once demanded its feminine equivalent. It was apparently not known that desire must be dammed up to be self-renewing."
-- Jacques Barzun, _From Dawn to Decadence_, 2000
Posted by The Sanity Inspector | July 18, 2011 10:12 AM
"Lust is the craving for salt of a man who is dying of thirst."
-- Frederick Buechner
Posted by The Sanity Inspector | July 18, 2011 10:13 AM
"Pornography tells lies about women. But pornography tells the truth about men."
--John Stoltenberg
Posted by The Sanity Inspector | July 18, 2011 10:21 AM
Posted by Mike T | July 18, 2011 10:32 AM
I believe the exact wording of one Christian country singer was "Yeah, I let my wife think those songs are about her [laughs]." Which is a weird way of putting it anyway. Like, "What do you mean---do you have a secret girlfriend or something?" I believe it was a lame attempt to be funny. It's not like I doubt his Christianity, but as Lydia said, some Christians just don't seem to "get it" when it comes to the sanctity of sex. I've lost count of the number of guys I actually like who will casually refer to their "smoking hot wives" --- intended as a term of affection! And the women aren't always unappreciative either.
Posted by The Masked Elephant | July 18, 2011 10:36 AM
I really wish, sometimes, that the Almighty had given all mankind the gift of telepathy. Just before the mind turns to the drenching of hormonal stimulation in the processing of pornography, just for a split second, there is always a sense of the recognition of an otherness in the pornographic object. That is not the case in marriage. In fact, brain scans have shown that while the brains of people watching pornography are excited, the brains of married people looking at pictures of their spouses are actually calmed. Any proper act brings peace. Even nature screams this fact within the mind of man, if only for a second before it is drowned out.
This is a round-about way of agreeing with Lydia that there is a correlation between the loss of the sacred and the rise of the obscene. In the beginning, God made them male and female. He made them different, why? Why did God make men and women different? When one starts to understand the reasoning for that, one begins to move away from looking at pornography, which has exactly the opposite purpose - to make men and women equal objects of the appetite - instead of making the able to be intimate. Intimacy implies a knowledge and a respect for the other, which must begin with a recognition of their proper station. Obscenity is a misdirection of an appetite towards an object outside of its normal station.
The appetite for pornography is a result of the Fall. It is a disordering of the procreative appetite, which should be governed by reason, that is meant to explain to a man and a woman, each time, anew, within the marital act, why God saw it fit and good to make them male and female. Pornography explains nothing of that fact. It is simply another form, generations of reasoning removed, of making God in one's image.
The Church is supposed to be the perfect expression of man's intimacy, being a place where love of God and neighbor comes to fruition in the sacramental signs. Sex, within marriage, is a sacramental sign. Pornography is a cut-out image. It is like trying to baptize with confetti.
The Chicken
Posted by The Masked Chicken | July 18, 2011 11:24 AM
At the risk of another 200+ post filibuster, I'd say your observation here ought to inspire a lengthy treatment of the rise of porn and the poison of egalitarianism.
Posted by Scott W, | July 18, 2011 11:47 AM
I'm still feeling shocked to think (as I interpret the Masked Elephant's comment above) that otherwise very nice Christian men refer to their wives as "smokin' hot" in public and that the wives don't mind. I don't think I'd realized it had gotten that bad, even though I'm the one who first made the comment about how Christians need to recognize the sacredness of sex and become more modest in their talk.
Posted by Lydia | July 18, 2011 1:18 PM
Tony,
Just a great post and thanks so much for sharing that wonderful letter. I wonder what Aaron thinks is a better theory for why men use pornography?
As a companion to the letter, this is an excellent book about the subject, written from the perspective of a Christian neuroscientist/psychologist at Wheaton College who has studied the brain science behind pornography as well as the spiritual side of the problem and comes to many of the same conclusions as Bishop Loverde:
http://www.challies.com/book-reviews/wired-for-intimacy
Posted by Jeff Singer | July 18, 2011 3:23 PM
Aaron, I don't propose that the need for intimacy is the sole thirst that drives pornography. But it is certainly there lying behind the more superficial desire of mere physical pleasure. But Christians understand the pleasure as being part and parcel with the other goods that sexuality fulfills: sex is an integrated act of the whole person, and it meets needs that are expressed on many levels. The pleasure at the level of sensation is connected to other goods, and at their service. But pornography alone does not satisfy the desire for being touched, (even in mimicry), so it would seem to be directed toward one of the other goods that lies behind the physical.
And the "psychobabble" explains better than anything I have ever heard of why the pornography habit tends to mutate into harsher and more freakish depictions of human sexuality, and seems to demand an escalation of time devoted to it as well.
I suppose you might suggest that some of these latter are actually at the service of the felt "need" for power over others, but that too is just a facet of the desire for intimacy gone wrong. A person who is properly oriented toward friendship, and who has healthy friendships, does not derive even apparent pleasure from viewing such appalling stuff. It takes a disoriented inner self to even grasp at such images as pleasurable.
Posted by Tony | July 18, 2011 6:33 PM
Indeed, the kicks just keep gettin' harder to find.
Don't you see no matter what you do
You'll never run away from you
I don't get the "psychobabble" charge either. If there's a better explanation for self-destructive behavior, I don't know what it is.
Posted by Mark | July 18, 2011 8:39 PM
Nude art has been around since the first cave drawings. The problem today is that most porn no longer attempts to be artful; it is simply graphic and course. To make a rough analogy, I am comfortable with some level of violent imagery in movies and games, the more graphic it becomes the more disturbing it is. So you should be able to draw some distinction between erotic art and graphic depictions of sex.
We are wired for intimacy of course, but men are also wired to expel their older seed which is less likely to impregnate a female. If you can manage to not get offended reading about sexual biology and psychology, this fairly explicit article covers the major bases of fantasy, masturbation, and sex. The article concludes that with nothing left to the imagination, today's porn harms the ability for sexual fantasy - and that is what damages relationships.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=one-reason-why-humans-are-special-a-2010-06-22
Posted by Step2 | July 18, 2011 9:09 PM
Step2, I am willing to read about sexual biology. Not sure whether I am willing to read somebody's theory of sexual psychology, especially if they cannot tell the difference between describing what behavior occurs and explaining what is normative for behavior. Normative is not defined by what most people do: most people sin. Descriptive versus prescriptive. Now, if the psychology manages to steer clear of attempting to identify a norm on the basis of description alone, you might convince me to read it. Or to start it, anyhow.
Posted by Tony | July 18, 2011 9:20 PM
Just as big tobacco admitted that cigarettes were basically delivery systems for nicotene, pornographers have admitted that what they produce are basically aids to masturbation. So it's not just the porn itself that corrodes the ability to interact intimately, but also the resultant masturbation, which is an inherently solipsistic, and therefore inherently anti-intimate, activity.
Posted by Nice Marmot | July 18, 2011 9:27 PM
I wouldn't presume to give any theory explaining the (ab)use of pornography, or of food, alcohol, drugs, or practically anything else. Some observations here or there, but no theory. I agree with Dr. Johnson, you don't have to be a carpenter to know that a table is crooked. This false-intimacy theory is crooked. It's psychobabble in the same way that those 1970s psychological movements described in the book of that name were psychobabble.
My "theory" of pornography is closer to Camille Paglia's in Sexual Personae than to this bishop's, so I don't think it would be profitable to argue over such a wide gap in beliefs. One thing I'm sure we do agree on is that the pornification of America over the last three decades (since the invention of the VCR) has been a bad thing.
Posted by Aaron | July 19, 2011 12:09 AM
To clarify, I don't endorse Paglia's theory either. Too Freudian. But I think she gets a lot right.
Posted by Aaron | July 19, 2011 12:13 AM
Aaron, these "filling-the-void-stories" go back to the earliest Western ideas on morals and ethics. From the sounds of it you have about as much interest in discussing Paglia as I do.
Posted by Mark | July 19, 2011 12:41 AM
Oh, please...like there's been an explosion of wisdom about sex in the twentieth and twentieth-first-centuries. We are about as ignorant as we ever were.
The Chicken
Posted by The Masked Chicken | July 19, 2011 8:21 AM
The false-intimacy theory is not "crooked," it is incomplete. While it's not the whole explanation it is certainly one facet of it, and to dismiss it simply as "psychobabble" is to ignore one important part of the story.
Posted by Nice Marmot | July 19, 2011 8:27 AM
I'm aware that the idea of immorality as a moral disorder - of mistakenly choosing a lower over a higher good, or of choosing an evil because of a mistaken belief that it will bring good - goes way back. Whether Socrates and Plato were right or wrong, I'm not calling them psychobabblers!
The devil is in the details. When someone says, without empirical evidence, that overeating or drug use is a mistaken attempt to assuage spiritual hunger or low self-esteem or whatever, then I call that psychobabble. I think this example is even worse than that because of its confusion about the relation of pornography and intimacy.
Posted by Aaron | July 19, 2011 10:20 AM
No one who deals with sex addiction or porn addiction would deny a "relation of pornography and intimacy." I imagine that the priest above is speaking from counseling and/or confessional experience. Again, it's not the whole story, but it is undoubtedly part of the story, and a not unimportant one.
Posted by Nice Marmot | July 19, 2011 10:43 AM
V. Nabokov, defending himself of the charges of pornography leveled against his novel "Lolita", had this precise description of pornography:
Nabokov's remarks apply equally well to other narrative arts such as cinema and, to an extent, even to the non-narrative ones like painting and photography.
Posted by G. Rodrigues | July 19, 2011 11:42 AM
Which should not mean (though no doubt V.N. thought it did mean) that material is not pornographic, objectionable, and wrong if it is artistically well-done.
Posted by Lydia | July 19, 2011 11:50 AM
Absolutely. Nabokov was first and foremost an aesthete, moral judgements in art only invited his scorn and contempt. For a Christian this position is untenable.
Posted by G. Rodrigues | July 19, 2011 11:57 AM
Bingo.
Posted by Lydia | July 19, 2011 12:54 PM
Nabokov did not see himself as first and foremost an aesthete, and I don't think that he was, either. I can't find my copy of Pale Fire right now, so I'll paraphrase from memory a remark by Nabokov quoted in the introduction: "I think that years from now, readers will see me as primarily a moralist." I think he meant that sincerely.
Nabokov certainly was a moralist, and an extremely good one. Moral judgments in art certainly did not invite his scorn and contempt. His own art was full of moral judgments. What invited his scorn and contempt were didacticism, philistinism, and heavy-handedness. Pale Fire was a beautiful, moralistic, but not didactic, work. So was Lolita, probably to a lesser extent. Anyone who can't find moral judgment in Nabokov's writings should go back and read them again.
Re his comment about pornography, there is such a thing as artistically good pornography, even narrowly defined. (That is, even if you reject a wider definition like Camille Paglia's, which includes a lot of high art such as some sculptures by Michelangelo.) The Story of O is a classic example of artistically good pornography.
Posted by Aaron | July 19, 2011 1:27 PM
I googled the quote I was looking for.
Posted by Aaron | July 19, 2011 1:34 PM
@Aaron:
I have read Nabokov so much and so often that reading him back again (which I certainly will) would be something of a redundant operation. Nabokov was, like all artists of true genius, like all human beings, many things. He certainly was a moralist and even a stern one.
I used aesthete in an equivocal sense -- I was not thinking of a Wilde or a Ruskin. I certainly did not meant to imply that in his work he did not make moral judgments -- that is neither here nor there. What I meant by it, as well as in the sentence "moral judgments in art only invited his scorn and contempt", was that rejecting a work of art by moral standards, would be met by him with scorn and contempt. The boundary is fuzzy -- there is no theoretical criteria to decide when eroticism ends and pornography starts, and for that matter, even eroticism is, in my admittedly limited experience, just a euphemism for "soft pornography" -- but pornography is pornography; it is objectionable, even if artistically good.
Posted by G. Rodrigues | July 19, 2011 4:25 PM
C. Rodrigues: You're right, I carelessly misread your other comment. It's clear from context that you were talking about moral judgments about art.
But did moral judgments about art invite Nabokov's scorn and contempt, or was it just those moral judgments that were contemptible? I haven't read any of Nabokov's criticism, so I ask that question non-rhetorically.
All I have to go on is Nabokov's response to criticisms of Lolita. Again, this is all from memory, so please correct me if I'm wrong. He first considered the widespread charge that Lolita celebrates pedophilia or at least excuses it by an art-for-art's-sake aestheticism. Nabokov scornfully rejects this charge, and rightly so: a critic should at least have the minimal ability to read.
The second charge by several critics is that Lolita is anti-American. That was my impression, too, on reading the novel. He seems dismayed and almost hurt by this claim. He replies that the novel is anti-philistine, not anti-American, and that most of the philistinism is American philistinism because the novel takes place mostly in America. He says that his work is just as critical of Russian philistinism, and that philistinism is not characteristically American.
I don't know whether the charge of anti-Americanism is what you mean by a moral judgment, but it's certainly not an aesthetic objection. Whether or not Nabokov's defense is convincing, the point is that he treats the judgment seriously and respectfully.
It also seems strange that someone who considered himself a moralist (and you and I agree that he was) would have scorn and contempt for moral judgments in general about art. It's definitely possible and I guess consistent, but it seems strange. Why would someone who believes that morality has an important place in art rule that out as a criterion of judgment? You'd think that, just as he distinguished between good and bad moral judgment in art, he'd distinguish between good and bad moral judgment about art. But I haven't read his criticism, so I don't know anything.
Posted by Aaron | July 19, 2011 11:54 PM
I would think merely surveying the advertising for weight loss and health and beauty products would convince you that advertisers must have a great deal of empirical evidence for just that. My wife and I actually went to a Lap-Band seminar two weeks ago with a friend, hoping that we'd be able to talk her out of it after hearing the whole bit. Fortunately, it did scare her and she didn't need much convincing. But two women who weren't even very overweight decided to do it. I was amazed. But not really. The creepy presentation and our whole culture breeds dissatisfaction with ourselves, and the promise of feeling better about ourselves is really powerful. If that doesn't describe spiritual hunger I don't know what does.
By the way, don't forget to ask your doctor about the blue pill. You don't have to live with fill_in_the_blank anymore. It's time for a new you. Don't wait.
Posted by Mark | July 20, 2011 4:41 AM
When someone says, without empirical evidence, that overeating or drug use is a mistaken attempt to assuage spiritual hunger or low self-esteem or whatever, then I call that psychobabble.
I read Rosen's book on psychobabble and the idea of people overeating because of a spiritual void is NOT psychobabble. It is the sin of gluttony. Sins are often caused by misdirectedly seeking a good. That is moral theology 101 .
The Chocken
Posted by The Masked Chicken | July 20, 2011 9:02 AM
@Aaron:
V. Nabokov was, in his domestic life, a loving husband and father, and in general a sweet man, but in literature he inherited the acerbic tone of J. Swift, the greatest of satirists in the English language (who definitely was *not* a sweet man). His mockery of vulgarity and philistinism is in his work right from the start. An illuminating and hilarious example can be found in the beginning of "King, Queen, Knave", an early novel from his Russian period (late 1920's).
I am starting with this comment, because while "scorn and contempt" may be too strong a phrase and my own projection of his acerbic tone on his own personality, I still stand by my judgement. There is countless evidence of this. His defence of Ulysses (in his posthumous Lectures on Literature) is telling. His main objection to L. Bloom, the main person in the trinity of characters, is his continual preoccupation with sexual matters and the latrine. He has no problem with frankness on these matters (he even adds that we have too little of it, and what there is is trite and vulgar); his main objection is not the disgusting, but the continual, which strikes him as artificial and unnecessary -- this is a purely aesthetic judgement. In his, also posthumous, Lectures on D. Quixote, he remarks that it is one of the most bitter and cruel books ever penned. But then adds "And its cruelty is artistic". I cannot remember any specific example right now, but I am pretty sure one could dig scores from his Strong Opinions.
About the criticisms to Lolita (the book I have read more times in my life and my personal favourite -- although I would rank Pale Fire as his greatest masterpiece -- I have lost the exact count, but 7-8 should be close) the charge that it condones paedophilia is preposterous. One must not have read the book, be illiterate or a paedophile to seriously defend that. The charges of anti-Americanism I never understood; but then again, I am not American. And you are absolutely right; he inveighs against philistinism, whether it is American or Russian, aristocratic or bourgeois. The charge pained him, if I read him right, not because it was an aesthetic judgement but because he considered America a sort of adoptive country where he found a congenial home. At several places he speaks with great appreciation of it: from the landscapes, where he went moth hunting, to the easy-going university atmosphere.
As for your last paragraph, I think the apparent paradox disappears if one changes "who believes that morality has an important place in art" to the more rigorous "who believes that morality has a place in art". All works of art are moral in the same sense that all works of art are psychological. And yet, several times, on commenting his own books he stated that he was not interested in psychology and I do not think he was being ironic. Nabokov prized aesthetics above all in a work of art, which is just one word but replaces a complex combination of style, structure, diction, imaginative capacity and psychological acumen. On encountering an obscene, bad work of art, he would reject it, not because of its obscenity but because it was bad, obscenity being just a symptom of the aesthetic mediocrity. Similarly for the reverse situation of a good, but obscene work of art. Obscene, or violent works of art such as D. Quixote, were redeemed by their artistic qualities.
Posted by G. Rodrigues | July 20, 2011 10:38 AM
"That is moral theology 101."
Exactly, which is why in many of the ascetical writers you find a link between gluttony and lust.
Posted by Nice Marmot | July 20, 2011 12:36 PM
G. Rodriguez, although I admire your capacity to have thoroughly imbibed a specific author's body of work enough to speak this way, I don't find it at all useful: I have read nothing of Nabokov, and virtually nothing about him, and frankly (from the number of people I hear referring to his works) I know few people who do. So I cannot begin to make any judgments about what what you represent as his thought, in the extremely sparse manner you present it. Perhaps, if you think that he is RIGHT, you could flesh out conclusions with some definite premises and arguments in their favor, instead of merely presenting them as coming from Nabokov.
For instance, is there a difference between obscenity as such and the depiction of lewd or vulgar scenes in art? (Is art obscene art because its subject matter is that of obscenity, or can it be obscene without that, or can it be not-obscene even though its subject matter is that of obscene material?) Is it clear that art that is well crafted but obscene is morally justified human activity because it is well crafted, or is it unjustified by that fact? Does it matter in crafting good art, in a decision about using obscenity, as to whether you could have achieved the same goal with another approach than the obscenity? Is there any basis for objecting to the use of obscenity even if your point cannot be adequately made without it? These are all conclusions which require extensive and difficult arguments, not mere theses.
Would anyone care to attempt to define philistinism? I know roughly what is usually meant by it, but it is one of those slippery concepts that means something slightly different in everyone's mouth.
Posted by Tony | July 20, 2011 6:22 PM
Actually, as I understand G. Rodrigues, Tony, he _disagrees_ with V.N. He's just expounding him to show why he disagrees with him. So, when G.R. says, "Obscene, or violent works of art such as D. Quixote, were redeemed by their artistic qualities," that's a position he disagrees with. Above, G. Rodrigues said,
Posted by Lydia | July 20, 2011 7:13 PM
@Tony:
As Lydia said. In my response to Aaron I was just trying to explain, as far as I understand it, Nabokov's position. But that is not my position, because I am Christian and pornography is objectionable, independently of how well it is artistically crafted. One can introduce all sorts of complicating factors into the mix, but the fact that for a Christian pornography is objectionable on moral, prudential, etc. grounds (and violence, although here things are even murkier) is incontrovertible.
Posted by G. Rodrigues | July 21, 2011 10:26 AM
This shows how pathetically unrealistic and unhealthy the teachings of the Catholic church on human sexuality are. It is totally unrealistic to expect people to have sex only within marriage and not to get erotic stimulation of any kind if they are not married.
It is far better to use erotica as a means of sexual release than to have unsafe or promiscuous sex and risk causing unwanted pregnancies or contracting STDs.
Contrary to what the Catholic church teaches,masturbation is a perfectly normal and healthy thing to do. What is NOT normal and healthy is teaching people to think that any kind of sexual activity outside of marriage is immoral,sinful, and dangerous.
Yes, sexual promiscuity is very dangerous. But to be sexually repressed in the extreme, which is what the Catholic church has caused so many people to be over the centuries, is no better,and just as harmful.Watching EWTN, I am appalled the way that priests tell faithful Catholics that masturbation is a mortal sin.
This is unbelievable. You would think that God would have infinitely more important things to be concerned with than whether people are masturbating or not.
The notion that he would condemn people to eternal hellfire for such a trivial matter is beyond ludicrous. I cannot believe that a just and loving God would do this. Yet the Vatican teaches this.
Posted by Robert Berger | July 21, 2011 12:20 PM
I remember on a different thread someone made a similarly ignorant and bigoted statement, and our inimitable (and consistently right) commentator Untenured laughed (electronically speaking) and pointed out that all that sexual repression has produced a lot of children. Sometimes one does wonder whether sexual liberals and libertines know where babies come from. Or is it like in a movie I once saw? "What about children?" "We go to a lab."
Posted by Lydia | July 21, 2011 12:32 PM
You would think that God would have infinitely more important things than to simply care at all about what humans do. As they say, "what is man that He is mindful of us?"
It's only ludicrous to you because you like the idea of screwing around and it offends you to think that God might actually be against that.
What you don't seem to understand is that Christianity posits that God is the supreme creator and we are His creation. Thus "God's game, God's rules." We no more get to negotiate the rules with God than a video game character can quibble about the game engine with the programmer.
Posted by Mike T | July 21, 2011 1:31 PM
The notion that he would condemn people to eternal hellfire for such a trivial matter is beyond ludicrous. I cannot believe that a just and loving God would do this.
God is also named Jealous (Exodus 34:14), so justice isn't really part of the equation.
We no more get to negotiate the rules with God than a video game character can quibble about the game engine with the programmer.
What sort of programmer would design a game character that breaks the rules, rigs the game, and for good measure destroys the computer? Least omniscient programmer in the world.
Posted by Step2 | July 21, 2011 4:43 PM
A more basic issue is whether particular catholic assertions about God's rules are correct. No one knows the answer to that, whether or not individual claims encourage more or less healthy choices. OK then.
Posted by eli fironzelle | July 21, 2011 5:13 PM
The notion that he would condemn people to eternal hellfire for such a trivial matter is beyond ludicrous.
There are several misconceptions in this sentence related to a misunderstanding of God's nature, his sovereignty, the relationship of sex to the individual and to society.
Now, everyone is entitled to an opinion, but an uninformed opinion, not so much. This is one of the reasons I rarely comment on economics on this blog - I simply am not informed enough to have a defendable opinion.
Mr. Berger may disagree with what the Catholic Church teaches, but it is nowise obvious to me that he has informed himself as to why the Church teaches as it does. Until it becomes clear that he has done his homework (watching EWTN rarely counts as homework) to understand Its position, his remarks come off as no more than whining.
From the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC):
St. Paul wished that all were as he (unmarried), but he called all sexual aberrations (masturbation is included in the general use of the term, fornication - having use of the sexual faculties outside of marriage), sins against one's self. He counseled those who "burned," to marry. Nowhere does he say to relieve that burning by committing sin.
Simply put, the constant teaching of the Church is that if you want to rightly use the sexual faculties, get married, man-to-woman. Anything, other than that, is sin. Not only is it the teaching of the Church, it is also the teaching of Scripture. To single out masturbation as not being particularly sinful is to become a cafeteria Catholic.
That being said, Mr. Berger does not mention that the Catechism of the Catholic Church has this to say, regarding culpability:
So, even his statement that masturbation is a mortal sin has to be qualified: it is always objectively mortal, as it involves serious matter, but it may be imputed, in certain instances, only venially.
St. Thomas, in the Summa Theologica says that masturbation is a more disordered sin than adultery, which at least has the right species of object, another oppositely-sexed human being. His discussion is in II.II Q 151- 156. This is the minimum information one should have before expressing an opinion.
The Chicken
Posted by The Masked Chicken | July 21, 2011 6:06 PM
I'm not a Catholic or a Christian, and I didn't say that it's okay to "screw around",and to be promiscuous. However, it's still unrealistic to expect adults who have never been married not to have sex with any one.
People will have sex whether they are married,divorced,widowed,never married,
homosexual,heterosexual,young or old. You cannot escape this fact.They always have,and always will.
What I mean by sexual repression is the very unhealthy way the Catholic church teaches its followers to be terrified of not following its teachings on human sexuality, and to be terrified that if they somehow screw up sexually, they are doomed for eternity.
And I repeat - there is absolutely nothing immoral or shameful about masturbation,and to teach children that it is is not only wrong, but foolish.
Magazines such a Playboy and Penthouse are not harmful in any way, and are in fact pretty tame stuff compared to the grosser forms of pornography.
Men's magazines are in no way responsible for causing rape etc, and to think that they do it ridiculous. If you don't already have it in you to rape a woman, no men's magazine or sexually titillating film will make you commit such an awful crime. And if you are the kind of psychotic man who does rape women, not having access to such things will not stop you.
I repeat - the teachings of the Vatican on marriage, the family and human sexuality, though well-meant, are totally unrealistic and highly counterproductive.
Posted by Robert Berger | July 21, 2011 6:13 PM
Berger's a troll, MC. I've encountered him on other sites where I post under a different handle. Don't waste your time.
Posted by Nice Marmot | July 21, 2011 7:01 PM
Nice Marmot, truer words have seldom been spoken. You and I have found common ground in troll-identification.
It occurs to me to point out: The sheer cost of the sexual revolution in human misery ought to be _so incredibly obvious_ by now that even people with no Christian beliefs ought to begin to say, "Hmmm, maybe all that business about getting over repressions and such wasn't such a good idea."
I'm not one for consequentialist arguments, but the truth is that God made mankind and human sexuality, and even the dullest among us, if he can see at all, ought by this time to be getting a tiny inkling that maybe throwing away those rules for running human society and human sexuality wasn't such a bright idea. The wreckage might draw attention to the possibility that the people promulgating the "repressive" rules knew something after all.
Ayn Rand once said (this regarding socialism) that those idealists who originally propagated it would one day see the totalitarian results and say, "But we didn't mean this!"
That might even more truly be said of the architects of the sexual revolution. Once upon a time a petty megalomaniac named Gershon Legman wrote a particularly silly, nasty little Freudian book called Love and Death in which he put forward the absurd thesis that if pornography were legalized, "love," by which he meant sex, would conquer "death," by which he meant violence in popular media.
As the saying goes, we have data on that...Sometimes, history really is a laboratory--unfortunately for all the little lab rats the utopians experiment on.
Posted by Lydia | July 21, 2011 8:23 PM
Mr. Berger, you may suppose that you are entitled to your opinion. But in this here blog, you are not entitled to express that opinion except at the license of the moderators. In particular, you are expected to present your thoughts in the form of comments that directed for or against other comments as reasoned arguments. In presenting your opinions, you have asserted many things, but have reasoned to them not at all. If you wish to be taken seriously, or even to remain here, you will have to discover how to make an argument politely, carefully, and in due season. For example, had you read things a little more carefully, (like, the first sentence), you might have noticed that this particular thread isn't about promiscuity or God condemning people to hell. Some people have learned how to make good arguments by keeping their mouths shut and listening, and asking short but well-developed questions on occasion. Those who are interested in discourse that is open to the truth because they engage in real, honest reasoned debate are very welcome indeed. Those who are unable to tell the difference between that kind of debate and opinion-slinging are not.
Posted by Tony | July 21, 2011 8:26 PM
You seem to believe that the Church didn't anticipate this. Indeed, the very reason that Jesus had to die on the cross for our sins past, present and future is precisely because Christianity teaches that we are incapable of living obediently to God on our own. This is in all things, not just sex. You can be completely chaste and still end up in Hell because you're a very unrepentant liar and thief. Sin is sin insofar as it has power to separate man from God.
You would have been better off arguing the (probably dubious) statistical correlation between the decrease in rape rates and the increased availability of pornography.
The issue here isn't that Playboy gives men "wiener madness" and makes them rape the first bipedal female they see, but that pornography is corrosive toward human sexuality in subtle and devious ways. It has demonstrable impact on our ability to bond and experience intimacy.
Posted by Mike T | July 22, 2011 10:59 AM
If you doubt this is true, then just ask most men who are stuck in sexless or borderline sexless marriages.
Posted by Mike T | July 22, 2011 11:01 AM
I've always wondered if there's a correlation between pornography and fertility/birth rates. If a country has very liberal pornography laws do they have fewer children than a country with tougher laws. I know for instance Japan and Spain have very low birth rates and liberal pornography laws (The recent increase in fertility rates within Spain is mainly due to mass immigration). Japan also has very low crime rates in general, including rape, and this is one of the reasons the statistics about rape and pornography laws look the way they do.
Posted by Monkey Boy | July 22, 2011 12:28 PM
St. Thomas, in the Summa Theologica says that masturbation is a more disordered sin than adultery, which at least has the right species of object, another oppositely-sexed human being.
I'm confident that while the Old Testament says nothing specific about masturbation, it places adultery among the most serious sins and for very sound sociological reasons like preventing blood feuds. Likewise, nothing specific in the New Testament either, unless you use a highly disputed definition of malakoi arsenokoitai to be a reference.
Ayn Rand once said (this regarding socialism) that those idealists who originally propagated it would one day see the totalitarian results and say, "But we didn't mean this!"
Wow, quoting Ayn Rand on a thread about pornography. How ironically appropriate.
- Ayn RandPosted by Step2 | July 22, 2011 8:44 PM
I was simply giving the citation. It so happens she was the one who said it. That vivid picture of people shocked by the real-world outcome of their ideology is a useful one in many contexts.
Posted by Lydia | July 22, 2011 8:52 PM
I'm confident that while the Old Testament says nothing specific about masturbation, it places adultery among the most serious sins and for very sound sociological reasons like preventing blood feuds.
Didn't read the citation I provided, did you? More disordered as per individual act does not provide a comment on sociological implications. You would be wrong about the Old Testament, as well, but as I am of sensitive ears and this topic is embarassing to me (St. Paul said there were some things best not even mentioned), I will forego a more extensive discussion.
The Chicken
Posted by The Masked Chicken | July 23, 2011 8:15 AM
I'm confident that while the Old Testament says nothing specific about masturbation
Step2, the Bible doesn't need to single out a sin explicitly and distinctly in order to put it under prohibition. I am confident that masturbation does not escape the censure presented in these 3 quotes, first 2 from the NT and the last from the OT. But I don't think that this thread needs to get into that discussion here.
Posted by Tony | July 23, 2011 8:38 AM
The "the Bible doesn't mention x" argument is one that for some reason we usually hear more from the Christian left, despite the fact that it has a distinctly fundamentalist ring to it. It puzzles me that anyone from that camp would want to make such an argument. After all, the Bible never says anything explicitly against beating your children severely, either. Or your wife. As with various sexual sins and perversions that don't _happen_ to be named explicitly in the Bible, one can find biblical principles that would seem to include "Don't beat your wife" in their implications. But if we're going to insist on explicit prohibitions, not so much.
Posted by Lydia | July 23, 2011 1:23 PM
E. Michael Jones has said that masturbation, being an inherently completely solipsistic, selfish activity, is the polar opposite of prayer. Hence, as he puts it, a healthy prayer life and an active masturbatory fantasy life cannot for long coincide in the same person. Eventually either prayer will "ruin" your fantasy life or masturbation will ruin your prayer life.
Posted by Nice Marmot | July 23, 2011 2:16 PM
E. Michael is, ppssibly, paraphrasing St. Teresa of Avila, who said that if you are in mortal sin, pray, and you will, eventually, either give up the sin or give up the prayer.
The Chicken
Posted by The Masked Chicken | July 23, 2011 4:59 PM
The "the Bible doesn't mention x" argument is one that for some reason we usually hear more from the Christian left, despite the fact that it has a distinctly fundamentalist ring to it.
Why shouldn't I argue with your premises? For those who believe the Bible is divine revelation, especially if you are of a fundamentalist, literalistic inclination like many conservatives are, I would think a failure to condemn a common behavior would at least give you some reason to doubt your belief that it was divinely condemned. It isn't as though the prophets and scribes were shy about condemning behaviors, sexual or otherwise.
After all, the Bible never says anything explicitly against beating your children severely, either.
That is because the Proverbs chapter encourages strict corporal punishment for children.
Proverbs 13:24: He that spares the rod hates his son, but he who loves him is diligent to discipline him.
22:15: Folly is bound up in the heart of a child, but the rod of discipline drives it far from him.
23:13: Do not withhold discipline from a child, if you beat him with a rod, he will not die.
Or your wife.
This may seem off-topic, but it concerns a false myth about wife beating. Which gives you an idea of how easy it is to create false myths.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_of_thumb#Thumb_used_for_regulation
The story of Onan who was killed because of his disobedience to a family/clan decree doesn't imply anything about his method for doing so. Although it is odd that nobody has morally objected to impregnating a dead brother's widow as a religious duty.
Posted by Step2 | July 23, 2011 7:25 PM
Just guessing, but could that be because that particular practice is not an issue any more? Whereas masturbation, adultery and porn...
Posted by Nice Marmot | July 23, 2011 11:35 PM
I frown on idealistic and pious statements like this. Prayer is the polar opposite of that? I'm not sure prayer is the polar opposite of anything, or if it is what. Prayer is not unselfishness, prayer is prayer. There are many types of prayer, but characterizing it by unselfishness seems like conflating it with virtuous character. The essence of prayer may well be asking. Willard holds that, and I think he's probably right. It is certainly true that one must not and should indulge in certain types of interior fantasies to be maturing and healthy person, but prayer linkage seems strained and pietistic.
Even generally on the issue of "distractions" in prayer, I can find no consensus among the greats of the faith historically. Some maintain that it can be mastered, and others that it can't and needn't be. I think St Theresa of Avila was of the latter camp if I recall correctly from Interior Castle.
Posted by Mark | July 24, 2011 2:01 AM
Step2, the point is just that it's dumb to expect that every single possible sin will be explicitly named in the
Bible. That would be a dumb thing for Christians to think, and there's no reason why, in arguing with you about anything, Christians should accept such a dumb premise. "Everything that is not explicitly forbidden is no problem" is neither a biblical nor a common-sensical principle.
Posted by Lydia | July 24, 2011 8:48 AM
Here's an interesting "filling-the-void" story on the first page. A pretty interesting article overall too.
Posted by Mark | July 24, 2011 5:09 PM
Step2, you have the facts wrong. The "disobedience" was not merely to a clan ruling, God made it a general law in Deuteronomy that a childless widow should be wed by his brother. But the law prescribed shame, not death, for the evil of refusing to so marry. And, the law was not that the brother should "impregnate" the widow, but marry her, and THEN raise up a son to his brother's name. Get the facts right, OK?
http://socrates58.blogspot.com/2004/02/why-did-god-kill-onan-luther-calvin.html
Posted by Tony | July 24, 2011 10:26 PM
The essence of prayer may well be asking.
Only in part. From the Catechism of the Catholic Church:
Sin is incompatible with prayer precisely because it seeks to exclude God from one's life.
The Chicken
Posted by The Masked Chicken | July 25, 2011 9:09 PM
I think, and Willard also said, that there are implied requests in all of these.
That seems novel. What would be a reference for that?
Posted by Mark | July 25, 2011 10:13 PM
That seems novel. What would be a reference for that?
????
The entire weight of shared human existence.
The Chicken
P. S. Where do you see implied requests in this:
For me, prayer is a surge of the heart; it is a simple look turned toward heaven, it is a cry of recognition and of love, embracing both trial and joy.1
Posted by The Masked Chicken | July 26, 2011 8:09 AM
The consensus of the mystical writers of the Church implies that the more pure one's life becomes the less self-focused his prayers will be. He will pray more and more on behalf of others and less and less for himself. So requests will still be there, but they will be for others and not for self.
Posted by Nice Marmot | July 26, 2011 8:50 AM
Without getting into a long digression on the four standard types of prayer, some types of prayer are intercessory, but some are simple gazes. I was just pointing out that prayer does not always involve petitions.
The Chicken
Posted by The Masked Chicken | July 26, 2011 10:46 AM
If the essence of Christianity is relationship with God, then the *essence* of prayer cannot be asking.
I had 57 years with my beloved daddy. Asking things of him was a small percentage of our relationship -- larger when I was a child and diminishing as I grew older. We shared our thoughts and concerns and lives with each other; often we just enjoyed being together, without words at all. Of course I still "petitioned" him even in his declining years -- for advice and prayer, mostly; I'd have felt free to ask for material help if I'd needed it because I knew he would have wanted to help me in any way he could. And he freely gave me not only what I asked for and needed but much more, materially, spiritually, emotionally.
Of course our relationship to God is not precisely like that to our earthly fathers, but the latter is meant, at its best, to be at least a hint, an imaging, to draw us to the former. And if one is *mostly* asking things of God, if the *essence* of prayer were merely asking, then it wouldn't even come close to a much lovelier relationship which *includes* asking -- because you know you are loved by a generous Person who desires to and can meet your needs (and "you do not have because you do not ask" -- we need to be reminded that we are needy and He is the one who provides) -- as only *one part* of a total relationship, one in which you also simply enjoy the Other's company and offer praise and worship and simply be still and know Him, be still and be bathed in His love.
I fall far short of such a relationship with my Father. But because I had such a wonderful daddy, I long to learn to simply be with, share with, listen to, and love my Father in the same -- and yet a far deeper and more perfect -- way. Now and then I get glimpses, such as the morning I woke from a deep sleep with the words "I love you, Father" resounding in my heart. Now that is something to ask for -- a deeper love that asks less and simply *is* more.
Posted by Beth Impson | July 26, 2011 11:11 AM
Yea, Beth!
The Chicken
Posted by The Masked Chicken | July 26, 2011 12:30 PM
I was going to say something like what Chicken delineated. But Beth said everything so much better. Thanks Beth.
I will just add: a few times each day (at least when I try to be recollected) I will turn my heart to heaven and simply say "thank you for x". Nothing more, and go on my way. Not: "thank you, and please may I have some more."
Posted by Tony | July 26, 2011 2:53 PM
Thanks, MC and Tony. This is an area I want to grow in - not wanting all the time but learning to just trust and be more of the time.
Posted by Beth Impson | July 26, 2011 3:15 PM
Step2, you have the facts wrong. The "disobedience" was not merely to a clan ruling, God made it a general law in Deuteronomy that a childless widow should be wed by his brother. But the law prescribed shame, not death, for the evil of refusing to so marry. And, the law was not that the brother should "impregnate" the widow, but marry her, and THEN raise up a son to his brother's name.
When referring to Genesis, there are no facts as far as I'm concerned, there are only story points. Still, Deuteronomy is estimated to be 400 years or so in the future from the story of Onan, so I don't have to grant that his punishment was based on later law. If I did suppose that Onan married Tamar and then used a primitive form of contraceptive sex it takes away virtually nothing from my claim, because her "customary right" in that context was to be impregnated by a brother of her dead husband. There still isn't a clear connection to masturbation, even after accepting all your facts.
To be fair to Onan, his best choice would have been to flee. When Tamar discovered Judah wouldn't also surrender his youngest son Shelah to her, she disguised herself as a harlot, beguiled the recently widowed Judah, and then bore him twin sons. You know, Old Testament values of human intimacy like God intended.
Posted by Step2 | July 27, 2011 8:06 PM