A widespread and pernicious though often overlooked evil affecting modern life is pornography. The Catechism of the Catholic Church states that:
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 illicit 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.[1]
Pornography is a grave offense against God and His gifts to men and women. God created men and women “in His image” to share in His divine life. Rather than respecting and cherishing this image of God, pornography promotes a harmful and destructive anthropology (view of the human person). It teaches people to use others as “objects”—in this case, a means of selfish, lustful gratification. In addition, since pornography attacks sexual desire and the conjugal act itself, it wages war on marriage. It is important to remember what God created for husbands and wives. As John Paul II explains in his Letter to Families:
‘In the conjugal act, husband and wife are called to confirm in a responsible way the mutual gift of self which they have made to each other in the marriage covenant…the mutual gift of husband and wife…is in itself a mutual communion of love and of life. The intimate truth of this gift must always be safeguarded.… The person can never be considered a means to an end; above all, never a means of pleasure. The person is and must be nothing other than the end of every act. Only then does the action correspond to the true dignity of the person.’[2]; [3]
[1] CCC §2354.
[2] Pope John Paul II, Letter to Families, no. 12.
[3] U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.