Transcript

It's always good if a person genuinely loves the traditional elements of the Catholic faith.

But for some people, their religiosity is a mask hiding a sinful addiction and ignoring this problem doesn't help anyone, and that problem is pornography.

Now to be clear, I am not saying that anyone who loves Catholic tradition is secretly addicted to porn.

That's obviously false.

I'm also not saying that pornography is only a problem among traditional Catholics or pious Christians.

That's false.

It's a universal problem.

In fact, the universal nature of the problem is why we cannot say, Oh, this isn't an issue for my family, or those families, or this traditional parish community.

Here's a clip from Father Ripperger on this issue.

If you look at the number of sins against the six commandments, sins like self-abuse, pornography, fornication, among traditionalists, they are not any better than the people who go to the- to the new mass.

In fact, there's some estimates by some priests that it's worse than it- it is among the new rite people.

This is a serious problem.

Father Ripperger and other traditional priests have said that some Catholics who are addicted to porn will try to overcompensate for their addiction by portraying themselves with an extra religious exterior to try to balance out the shame of their interior sins.

In a 2022 address, Pope Francis noted the scope of this problem among Catholics saying, It is a vice that has so many people, so many laymen, so many laywomen, and also priests and nuns.

The devil enters from there.

The pure heart, the heart that receives Jesus every day, cannot receive this pornographic information.

That today is so commonplace, and if from your cellphone you can delete this, delete it, so you won't have temptation in your hand.

Originally, I wanted to do an episode about some female pornographers who are making tens of millions of dollars on sites like OnlyFans.

I wanted to point out that doing evil to make easy money is a temptation as old as time, and it's not worth it, especially since the average OnlyFans creator only makes about $180 a month.

Now, no amount of money is worth your soul, but especially this amount of money, as well as your public image given that pictures on the internet stay there forever.

But then I realized I should not mention the names of these pornographers.

That's because some of the men in my audience who, in spite of their genuine desire to pursue holiness, will look these women up and they will give into the temptation to view their content.

That's why I'm really torn about Christians appearing on the Whatever podcast, which usually has OnlyFans pornographers on as female guests and gives them free advertising as a result.

I've only been on that show twice: once to debate Destiny on abortion, and a second time to debate him and another woman on pornography and prostitution.

I was concerned about giving her attention, but getting the two of them to bite the bullet and admit their sexual ethics entails bestiality, that was worth it for me.

I mean, if I talk about an abortionist, that's not gonna cause someone in my audience to go get an abortion.

But talking about a certain pornographer, especially to someone who is really struggling with pornography, that can be enough to entice that person to indulge in this sin.

So, I wanna talk about how we as Christians should respond to this epidemic, and part of that requires us to admit that no community is safe from it.

I'll give you an example from my own life.

One time, I was having a vigorous discussion with a very traditional Catholic who attends a Latin mass.

This person was married, had children, and was arguing with me saying that it was a grave sin to get the COVID-19 vaccine because of its connection with research that had been done on aborted fetuses.

I told this person that even if this were true, it wouldn't make such remote material cooperation with evil gravely sinful, and I even cited an article from the Society of Saint Pius X, or the SSPX, that agreed with me on this point.

But this person wouldn't have any of what I was saying.

They told me that a little bit of evil is always too much evil, and that was the end of our discussion.

Several months later, I found out that this person confessed publicly to having an affair, and even worse, they were having an affair at the same time that they were arguing with me about the morality of the COVID vaccine and how a little evil is too much evil.

This person reminded me of Jesus' criticism of the Pharisees who loved to follow the minor parts of the law, but ignored the major parts.

Jesus said, Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!

For you tithe mint and dill and cumin and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith.

These you ought to have done without neglecting the others.

You blind guides, straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel.

Now to restate what I said earlier, this does not mean everyone who cares about tradition and virtue is a hypocritical Pharisee.

My point is just that we must avoid thinking that porn addiction could never happen in certain families or schools or parishes just because things seem very holy on the outside.

Here's an example of that.

In 2021, Father James Jackson, a Latin mass priest, was arrested on charges of possessing pornography involving minors.

During this early period, there were a lot of traditional Catholics who were absolutely convinced he had been framed because they thought he just could not be the kind of man who would commit such a sin.

But in 2023, Jackson pled guilty and was sentenced to six years in prison.

He told the judge his actions were hypocritical and, quote, Completely unbecoming of a devout Catholic, and more so a clergyman, which removes any lingering doubts concerning his guilt.

And real fast, at this point a lot of people would say in a video, Here's a word from our sponsor.

But I love that our supporters are so generous, we don't need sponsorships.

We can just focus on sharing and defending the Catholic faith.

And if you wanna help us to keep doing that, please hit the subscribe button and support us at trenthornpodcast.com, where for as little as $5 a month you get access to bonus content and you make all of this possible without any sponsorships.

And now- back to the episode.

And it's not just illegal pornography, but the far more common legal varieties that can ensnare anyone.

So, here's some concrete steps to overcome the demon of pornography, even in traditional communities.

First, realize that no one is above this sin, and that means as Christians, we need to set healthy boundaries when it comes to near occasions of sin.

One advice I give to Catholics struggling with temptation is to not be online late at night.

Your body chemistry changes late into the night, and your ability to make good decisions diminishes when you're tired.

There are even studies about this called Mind After Midnight.

I remember being an accountability partner for a friend whose web browsing history was emailed to me through a program called Covenant Eyes.

I noticed that when he looked at pornography, it was usually in short, one to two-minute episodes, and it would typically happen late at night, especially after midnight.

He knew what he was doing was wrong, but his ability to say no to temptation was inhibited by the poor choices he made.

So, if this is something you struggle with, seek out an accountability partner, be it through something like Covenant Eyes or talking to a spiritual director, which is just something good to do in general if you want to grow in holiness.

One anonymous priest who struggled with porn addiction writes about the importance of relationships in overcoming this addiction.

He says, Sometimes when I am tempted, I make a phone call.

Sometimes I just go looking for someone to talk to.

I might talk about my temptations with those who know about my addiction, or I might just talk about anything.

That connection with another human being is crucial for me, and not just when it comes to my addiction.

Check out the link below for his full testimony.

It's well worth reading.

We also need to acknowledge that many women struggle with pornography use.

This often takes the form of erotic novels, but women are also getting addicted to the forms of pornography once thought to be exclusively the domain of men.

If we only talk about this as a male problem, then women who struggle with pornography and similar behaviors might feel like they can't talk about it with anyone.

So, parents need to talk not just to their teenage sons about pornography consumption, but their teenage daughters as well.

Two books I'd recommend would be Good Pictures, Bad Pictures and the relevant chapters on pornography in the book, Made This Way, which I co-authored with Leila Miller.

But while this can happen for some men, I find it's usually young women who are lured into the sin of creating pornography, though many men are tempted to do this by being behind the scenes camera creators and web promoters, emulating people like Andrew Tate, who made money exploiting women this way.

But women usually don't just wake up one day and decide to create pornography.

There is an excellent episode of The Morning Wire that I'll link to below that describes how porn producers groom women into making this content by first looking for targets on Instagram.

Young women notice that they get a lot of attention and even gifts from posting immodest pictures there.

This then graduates into pornographically immodest clothes and then full-on pornography on other platforms.

The second thing that we need to do is educate people on the human cost of pornography.

Matt Fradd's excellent book, The Porn Myth, catalogs the many abuses that men and women endure in the pornography industry.

Graphic trigger warning on this one, by the way.

But in one testimony he collects, a woman says that she had so much intercourse on camera that part of her anal muscle fell out of her body.

That's tough to hear, but if you really understand the human cost associated with this evil, that helps resist this temptation, knowing your views make you an accomplice to this kind of abuse.

Now, some people will say that kind of abuse may happen in older forms of pornography, but newer platforms like OnlyFans make women their own bosses, so nobody's exploiting them.

But the problem is that they are still exploited by their fans and their patrons.

Every content creator feels the pressure from their audience to give them what they want so that they won't go somewhere else.

Even if a woman supposedly works for herself, she can still be pressured by her patrons to do things she doesn't want to do because the competition is fierce.

That doesn't mean she's not culpable for her actions, and you can make a case that these women exploit gullible men, sometimes for very large amounts of money.

For example, many of these men pay for OnlyFans when a lot of pornography is still free because they crave the feeling of intimacy they think that they get from messages from these women, which in many cases are written by bots or people at overseas click farms.

These men realize that sex, it's not just for pleasure.

For example, I can enjoy a good steak without thinking of another person, but when people masturbate, they almost always think about another person.

Deep down, we know sex is for union, and OnlyFans provides a fantasy simulation of this union.

Pope Benedict XVI wrote in Deus Caritas Est about the Greek word for love, agape, saying that is, quote, A love which involves a real discovery of the other, moving beyond the selfish character that prevailed earlier.

Love now becomes concern and care for the other.

No longer is it self-seeking, a sinking in the intoxication of happiness.

Instead, it seeks the good of the beloved.

The anonymous priest I referenced earlier admits that he was most likely to give into pornography when he struggled with loneliness and didn't have healthy relationships.

Now, the men and women involved in pornography have varying degrees of culpability, but soon there may be a way to remove women from the equation entirely.

Advances in artificial intelligence have allowed people to create convincing fake Instagram models and even fake videos of immodest or nude women that are just computer simulations.

I'm glad if some sinful businesses, like being a prostitute or a pornographer, go out of business.

On the other hand, I worry that AI porn will make people feel like it's not really a big deal because the images involved don't represent real people.

I can even see some Christians trying to justify this.

In a previous episode, which I'll link to below, I showed clips of Christians who said the act of masturbation may not be sinful as long as you aren't lusting after another person.

I also quoted Christians who say the Bible only condemns lust, not the physical act of masturbation.

And this isn't limited to Christians.

Dennis Prager notoriously thought animated pornography involving minors wasn't sinful because it's not real.

Would you use the word evil of animated child pornography?

'Cause I certainly would.

No, I can't, I, I c-, no, I would use evil only with behavior.

Okay.

That's where we might differ-

Yeah.

for- forgetting the sex issue.

You can't be evil, you didn't do evil if you thought evil.

You did evil-

If- if I masturbated-

and a few committed-

to animated pictures of pornography, I'm not doing something evil?

That's correct.

Yeah, I think that's- I think that's despicable.

Yeah.

Really?

Yes, of course.

So I won't be surprised as some of these people end up saying AI porn isn't really porn because you're not lusting after a real person.

However, the Catechism of the Catholic Church says this, Pornography consists in removing real or simulated sexual acts from the intimacy of the partners in order to display them deliberately to third parties.

It offends against chastity because it perverts the conjugal act, the intimate giving of spouses to each other.

It does grave injury to the dignity of its participants, actors, vendors, the public, since each one becomes an object of base pleasure and elicit profit for others.

It immerses all who are involved in the illusion of a fantasy world.

It is a grave offense.

Civil authorities should prevent the production and distribution of pornographic materials.

While AI wasn't on the minds of the Catechism writers, I would say they were quite prophetic in noting how pornography involves simulated sexual acts and immerses people in illusory fantasy.

AI just takes it to its logical conclusion of reducing people to mere objects.

Regardless, the Church teaches that it is not just lust that's wrong, but also the misuse of our sexuality in acts like masturbation.

The Catechism says that someone who is immature, like say a young preteen, is less culpable for this act, but it is still a grave offense to misuse our bodies in this way.

And deep down all people know this is shameful given how they talk and joke about it.

Finally, we should take practical steps to end porn, just like we took practical steps to end abortion.

For example, even though tobacco is legal, we have changed our culture away from the view that tobacco is classy and we can do the same among those who think pornography is harmless.

And we can also legally restrict pornography without dealing with First Amendment issues.

Age verification laws that require porn sites to verify users are not minors have been effective at getting Pornhub to not offer its service in several states because they don't want to comply with this law.

Also, I'm sure porn sites would really hate it if some tech savvy Christians crippled them with a computer virus or malware.

Now, I'm not telling Christians to do this, but it would really disrupt the evil they do.

Along that same line, I was happy to hear when Ashley Madison, a website that promoted adultery, was infiltrated and the names of its clients were released to the public.

It probably hurt OnlyFans business if a similar hack happened to their user database.

But ultimately, what drives these businesses is its primarily male user database, so we have to go after this demand, including the demand we might overlook that exists among otherwise faithful Christians.

I hope today's tips were helpful for you and I'll link to the books I mentioned in the description below, though I'd especially recommend Matt Fradd's book, The Porn Myth, when it comes to understanding this issue.

Thank you so much for watching and I hope you have a very blessed day.