Pornography, Masturbation, and the Confessor | John M. Grondelski | Homiletic & Pastoral Review
The spread of pornography is a new pastoral challenge for confessors, but I want to suggest that there is another moral issue which is often overlooked in the discussion over pornography.
Confessors today undoubtedly note an increase in a phenomenon that other social observers have also noticed: a growth in use of, as well as addiction to, pornography. Two factors are particularly responsible for that spread of pornography: ever easier access, and a growing cultural toleration.
The former is primarily a result of the internet. Whereas once upon a time, pornography had to be sought out in seedy neighborhoods, or bought furtively—both social conditions which helped tamp down on its spread. Today, pornography is universally available with just a few clicks on a computer.
The latter is a more complex phenomenon. While undoubtedly the greater availability of pornography is, in some measure, responsible for its social toleration, social acquiescence in pornography is more complex than that. A progressive corrosion of public morality owes its roots to the so-called “sexual revolution” of the 1960s/1970s, which attacked the notion of public morality itself, as well as ingraining the message that personal pleasure and “fulfillment” is the be-all, and end-all, of sex. The spread of pornography is, like abortion, also an instance where sexual ethics have been “dumbed down” to general male standards rather than raised to general female standards.
What do I mean? In the case of abortion, justification for “a woman’s right to choose,” when most abortions occur for reasons of convenience, means that society acquiesces to a general male promiscuity, while providing a utilitarian solution for women to avoid having to bear the consequences, and the child. In the case of pornography, its spread is also in some measure an acquiescence in general male promiscuity: men want sex, so women need to match male images and expectations. Men shouldn’t become more chaste; women should become more provocative. Pamela Paul identified this trend in 2005, rightly coining a term to describe it: we are being “pornified.” 1
The spread of pornography is, indeed, a new pastoral challenge for confessors, but I want to suggest that there is another moral issue, lurking here in the background, which also deserves to be taken seriously, and which is often overlooked in the discussion over pornography. That issue is masturbation. Masturbation is typically the “silent partner” in pornography use and addiction. Its powerful erotic experience plays no small part in cementing an attraction to pornography. When addressing the issue of pornography, masturbation is often overshadowed and, indeed, overlooked. But this essay aims to lay out a more explicit connection between pornography and masturbation, providing some ways for this vicious relationship to be addressed in the Sacrament of Reconciliation.
Catholic teaching on masturbation was among the second tier casualties in the rebellion against Catholic sexual ethics, unleashed by contraception and the dissent against Humanae Vitae. While the immediate bone of contention against the encyclical was an effort to justify contraception, at least in certain instances, the rejection of Humanae Vitae targeted its central moral teaching, i.e., that there is an “inseparable connection, established by God, which man, on his own initiative, may not break, between the unitive significance, and the procreative significance, which are both inherent to the marriage act.” 2
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