Catholic Sex Blog

My dear fellow Catholics,

The grace and peace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you always.

I am writing this letter to you today to ask for your kind and gracious help. In the gospel according to Luke, Jesus tells his disciples, “Obstacles are sure to come, but alas for the one who provides them!” He teaches us that as fellow Christians we should not cause our brothers and sisters to sin.

There are two groups of people that need your help today and these two groups of people have a special tendency to sin so we must do our best to help them to avoid sin.

The first group are those who are addicted to pornography. For men especially, who are in this situation and trying not to sin, we lead them to sin when we appear before them in immodest dressing. This dressing applies to both men and women, for there are both straight and gay men who are addicted to pornography.

The second group of people are those who have a tendency to judge others. When they see people who dress shabbily or immodestly, they are quick to judge them as disrespecting the Lord. When we present ourselves before them in clothes that are less than suitable for the occasion, we become a cause of sin to these people.

Therefore, on behalf of both these groups of people, I implore you, my fellow Catholics, to dress modestly wherever you go, especially in church. Dress modestly and suited to the occasion, so that we will not be a cause of sin for others.

Thank you, my brothers and sisters!

God bless,
Catholic Writer

The writer of today’s reflection for the daily scriptural devotion called OXYGEN (also available via email subscription) is “John Tan” who shared in the Singapore Archdiocesan newspaper the story of his addiction to pornography, and how he overcame it.

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25 Mar - Fifth Sunday of Lent

The Lord Who Has Wiped Out Our Past Sinfulness

The utter completeness of Christ’s forgiveness is almost incredible. When he says to us, “Neither do I condemn you”, the past is dead, snuffed out like wick, forgotten. Laughter and song fill our hearts. It seems like a dream.

- the Sunday Missal
____________________

Forgiven and Forgotten

How I wish for a wonderful place
Called the Land of Beginning Again,
Where all our mistakes,
Our sins and our aches,
Could be locked in a case
And dumped in a lake
Never to surface again.

- God takes our sins and dumps them into the deepest lake. The problem: God puts a sign on the lake: “No fishing!”

- When God forgives, God suffers from total amnesia!

- God presses the “erase” button, and the sheet comes out blank!

- taken from “150 More Stories for Preachers and Teachers” by Jack McArdle
____________________

Isaiah 43:16-21

Thus says the Lord,
who made a way through the sea,
a path in the great waters;
who puts chariots and horse in the field
and a powerful army,
which lay there never to rise again,
snuffed out, put out like a wick:

No need to recall the past,
no need to think about what was done before.
See, I am doing a new deed,
even now it comes to light; can you not see it?
Yes, I am making a road in the wilderness,
paths in the wilds.

The wild beasts will honour me,
jackals and ostriches,
because I am putting water in the wilderness
(rivers in the wild)
to give my chosen people drink.
The people I have formed for myself
will sing my praises.
____________________

Philippians 3:8-14

I believe nothing can happen that will outweigh the supreme advantage of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For him I have accepted the loss of everything, and I look on everything as so much rubbish if only I can have Christ and be given a place in him. I am no longer trying for perfection by my own efforts, the perfection that comes from the Law, but I want only the perfection that comes through faith in Christ, and is from God and based on faith. All I want is to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and to share his sufferings by reproducing the pattern of his death. That is the way I can hope to take my place in the resurrection of the dead. Not that I have become perfect yet: I have not yet won, but I am still running, trying to capture the prize for which Christ Jesus captured me. I can assure you my brothers, I am far from thinking that I have already won. All I can say is that I forget the past and I strain ahead for what is still to come; I am racing for the finish, for the prize to which God calls us upwards to receive in Christ Jesus.
____________________

John 8:1-11

Jesus went to the Mount of Olives. At daybreak he appeared in the Temple again; and as all the people came to him, he sat down and began to teach them.

The scribes and Pharisees brought a woman along who had been caught committing adultery; and making her stand there in full view of everybody, they said to Jesus, “Master, this woman was caught in the very act of committing adultery, and Moses has ordered us in the Law to condemn women like this to death by stoning. What have you to say?” They asked him this as a test, looking for something to use against him. But Jesus bent down and started writing on the ground with his finger. As they persisted with their question, he looked up and said, “If there is one of you who has not sinned, let him be the first to throw a stone at her.” Then he bent down and wrote on the ground again. When they heard this they went away one by one, beginning with the eldest, until Jesus was left alone with the woman, who remained standing there. He looked up and said, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?” “No one, sir,” she replied. “Neither do I condemn you,” said Jesus. “Go away, and don’t sin any more.”
____________________

Someone asked me why did I choose the name “John Tan” when I shared the story of my addiction to pornography. It could be because today’s gospel reading comes from the apostle John.

Since I shared my story publicly for the first time two weeks ago, I’ve come to realise that the problem of pornography is more widespread than I imagined. How many guys have I known without knowing of their addiction? How many women whose marriages have fallen apart because of their husbands’ addiction to pornography?

But the reflection today is not about me. It’s about the love and forgiveness of Jesus Christ. My story revolves around him because, as St. Paul writes in the second reading, “I am no longer trying for perfection by my own efforts”. Indeed it was only when I realised and accepted that I could not overcome my addiction on my own strength and willpower did I open the door to my Lord Jesus to begin his healing work in me. And even today, I dare not say that I have already won, because I still get tempted, and the 10,000 pornographic images that I’ve seen in my 13-year struggle still appear in my mind, although 10,000 is probably an underestimate.

When I reflect on today’s gospel reading, I imagine myself as the woman caught in adultery. I imagine myself as the man caught viewing pornography on his computer, while masturbating with penis in hand. I imagine being dragged in front of a crowd where Jesus sits teaching and made to stand there in full view of everyone. I imagine Jesus looking at me with compassion in his eyes, and then turning to the people looking judgementally at me and saying, “If there is one of you who has not viewed pornography, let him be the first to throw a stone at him.”

And I imagine everyone going away one by one, because they have all viewed pornography and may still be doing so. And finally, all that are left are Jesus and I, and my Lord Jesus says to me, “John, where are they? Has no one condemned you?” I shake my head slowly, and my Lord says to me, “Neither do I condemn you. Go away, and don’t sin any more.”

Laughter and song fills my heart. It seems like a dream. But because my Lord Jesus believed in me, he gave me the strength to overcome my addiction. And indeed no one has condemned me…

(Today’s OXYGEN by “John Tan”)
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Prayer:
Lord Jesus Christ, please allow us to experience your unfailing love for us, that we who are trapped in shame in our addiction to pornography, may experience your healing. Help us to realise that we cannot overcome this problem on our own, and that we need your help found in the people around us who love us and would never cast a stone at us. Amen.

Give Thanks to the Lord for: Those who love us and support us totally.
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Disclaimer: The reflections expressed in this e-mail are the writer’s own. They may not necessarily reflect the teachings of the Catholic Church. Nonetheless we should all be able to learn something from it.

Someone was commenting in another post in my main blog that when a ‘red-blooded male’ goes for some time without masturbating, he gets very tempted to masturbate, and it becomes hard to think and focus clearly. He would much rather jerk off and get on with life than to endure until he gets a wet dream.

I used to experience the same thing in the past. I would often tell myself that not masturbating makes it hard for me to think clearly and to focus, so I would go for a “quickie”, which is what I called a masturbation for the main purpose of getting a quick fix, and then get back to work.

But now that I look at it, and even though I denied it back then, it’s quite apparent that there was certainly an addiction to masturbation. Like other addictions, for example, to smoking, drugs, alcohol, etc, addicts experience similar withdrawal symptoms when they are off their substance of abuse. They might experience shivers, difficulty in concentrating, etc, and all this would be quickly fixed (and justified) with a “quickie” of their substance of abuse.

You know you’re addicted to something when you can’t seem to function normally without it. This is one good way of checking whether or not you’re addicted to something. If you’re not addicted, you can easily go without it for a period of at least three to six months, or forever. Those who are addicted, if they go cold turkey, will find themselves falling back to their substance of abuse, usually against their will.

A common lie that addicts tell themselves is, “I’m not addicted. I just choose to do it because I like it.”

Of course you like it, otherwise you wouldn’t be addicted to it. But to really prove it to yourself and to others, that you’re not addicted, go ahead and do without it. It is not enough to not go back to doing it; there should also not be any withdrawal symptoms.

Of course as mentioned above, another common lie we tell ourselves is that, “I’m only doing it so that I can concentrate better.” That, if anything, is stronger evidence of addiction.

Speaking of addiction, I’m just going to make a side note here. If you miss Mass, rosary, charismatic prayer session or the devotion of your choice, and you spend the rest of the time feeling down, depressed, guilty, it’s a possibility that you might be addicted to religion. I won’t write too much on this now, because it’s a whole post on its own.

Bottomline is that many of us are addicts without realising it. Some of us know it deep down in our hearts, but we deny it so forcefully that we react strongly whenever anyone even suggests that we’re addicted to something.

One clear way of telling whether or not we’re addicted to something is to check for withdrawal symptoms over a period of time.

For some of us, our substance of abuse causes us shame, and we purposely shy away from any discussion of it. For others, we talk about it in a completely detached way, such as not associating ourselves with it at all.

For still others, we are not ashamed of it at all, because we are able to fully justify our reasons for doing it. We embrace our addictions. We then go around trying to convince others to see things our way, because the more people who see things our way, the more “normal” we will feel about our addiction. We want others to justify our behaviour because it is not enough for us to justify our own behaviour.

As always, check for withdrawal symptoms, such as depression, anxiety, and craving. They are good indications of an addiction.

Incidentally, here is a Cyber Sex Addiction Screening test that you can do to see if you’re addicted to online pornography.

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“The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.”
- Edmund Burke

One of the reasons why the problem of pornography is so widespread today, is because we have done nothing about it. We talk about it, sometimes, and we disapprove of obscene images on the internet or on TV, but we don’t do anything about it. By not doing anything and remaining silent about it, we are actually showing approval about it.

We are either part of the problem or part of the solution.

What then can we do to change from being part of the problem to being part of the solution? Here are some ways. Feel free to add more.

1. When you see a blog with objectionable material, be it text or images, highlight it to the blog administrators. In Blogger and Xanga, you can ‘flag it’. In Wordpress, you can ‘report it as mature’. I am sure every blog provider has something similar.

Don’t worry, you’re not being a prude. You are helping to fight the problem of pornography.

2. When people pass around pornographic images, whether by email or mobile phone, make your disapproval heard and your disgust known. Again, don’t worry about being a prude. You’re being a trend-setter.

3. Talk about it openly with friends. There are three kinds of people whose lives involve porn. The first are those who see nothing wrong with it. They can talk openly about it, and for it. The second are those who indulge in porn and feel guilty about it. They don’t talk openly about it. The third are those who no longer indulge in porn. They too can talk openly about it, and against it. Be the third kind, who are inspirational to the second kind.

4. If you are a parent, do not ignore or brush aside the matter when your children bring it up. Take pains to explore the matter with your children and help them come to realise what’s wrong and evil about porn. Of course this means that you must first know what’s wrong and evil about it yourself. Keep the channel of communication open with your children, who must feel confident about approaching you about the matter.

5. Report porn spam to internet service providers. Provide them with the IP address and sample of the spam. Internet spam clogs up ISPs. ISPs will be more than happy to help get rid of them. Complain to your ISP, and the sender’s ISP.

6. If you see VCD or DVD vendors selling porn material, anonymously tip off the police. Patrolmen will be sent to investigate, and you will discourage these vendors from frequenting your neighbourhood. It might not solve the problem, but it protects that neighbourhood at least.

7. If you see objectionable material being broadcast on television, complain to the relevant authorities. In Singapore, it is the Media Development Authority (MDA) of Singapore. In the U.S., it is the Federal Communications Commission.

8. If you see indecent, but not obscene material, broadcast on television, complain to advertisers who buy air time for commercials on those programmes. Advertisers are very sensitive to complaints. Complaints means that people may be rejecting their products, which means that the huge amounts of money they spend on advertising on TV might be going to waste.

Note: Advertisers frequently buy TV time months in advance, booking a specific time slot without knowing what programmes are going to fill that slot. If you get that response, tell advertisers that they should monitor the programmes they sponsor more closely and, when needed, screen individual programmes prior to airing.

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Father E.T. has always been an inspiration to me. He was the first priest I had ever heard talk about masturbation. It was during a camp in NUS Catholic Students Society that he was invited to give a session before the participants were to receive the Sacrament of Reconciliation.

During his session, he shared on his struggles with the addiction to masturbation that he had when he was an altar boy. He remembered how guilty he felt whenever he received the Eucharist by hand, “the same hand I used to do it”, he said during that session.

I suppose if I have someone to thank, it would be him, because he was the first priest to give me hope. He gave me hope to believe that it was possible to overcome this addiction. In addition to hope of overcoming it, it was possible to become a priest in spite of such a guilt-causing addiction.

I met him the other day. He still struggles to remain chaste in his celibate life today, and yes, he still continues to be an inspiration to me.

Something he shared during our recent encounter made a lot of sense. He shared that as humans, our hearts are not meant to say “no”, but to say “yes”. If we always say “no” to sex, “no” to women, we end up repressing our sexual drive, which is a healthy thing.

Rather than saying “no”, the Church teaches us to say “yes” to God, like Mother Mary did all her life. That is also why Mary is such an inspirational model of chastity for us.

There was a time when I wondered: is it possible to overcome this addiction to masturbation and pornography? I see this question appear from time to time in this blog’s search engine terms as well.

I’ve thought about answering that question for several months now, but I always wondered whether it was safe to answer that question. And to those who are wondering, I want to give you hope. The answer is:

Yes! It is possible to overcome the addiction. But you cannot do it on your own.

Have you ever said to God, “I want to be pure and chaste” only to fall into the habit again? It is not enough to want to be pure and chaste. We need to say, “I want to be pure and chaste for (name) and I know that God will help me.” And we must put that into practice.

When we try to fight the addiction on our own, we are sure to fail, because our strength is limited, and we’re up against the devil in this. His tactic is simple: If he can convince us to rely on our own strength, he can convince us that it is alright to give in bit by bit.

You can’t beat the habit on your own strength. If you don’t believe me, you can try. And you probably have been trying already. If you could beat it, you’d have beaten it already.

I find that it helps to have an accountability partner. An accountability partner is one who you are accountable to whenever you fail to keep chaste and pure. It should be someone that you can trust and he or she might be going through the same thing. Lots of people are addicted to pornography and masturbation these days. It is easy to find another person who does it. It is harder to find someone who trusts you enough to share his secret with you.

An accountability partner does more than keep an eye on you. My partner and I set up a system such that whenever we get tempted, no matter how subtle, we raise our guard and stay alert. Temptations can come from anywhere, even in church, and they are usually very subtle. But once you learn to recognise them, you can resist them. My partner and I talked a lot about this and we learnt to identify how these temptations seem to bypass our defenses.

Whenever we recognised these temptations in our daily life, we raised our guard immediately, because we knew where they was leading us to. And we SMS the other and ask him to pray for us. Prayer works. You can’t begin to fight this battle without prayer. Prayer is essentially the art of spiritual battle.

But a person can’t go to battle without an armor and a weapon. Here are a couple of scriptural verses that you can memorise or write down. Refer to them and pray them every time you’re tempted:

“You do not belong to yourselves but to God; he bought you for a price.” - 1 Corinthians 19-20

“I have made a solemn promise never to look with lust at any girl.” - Job 31:1

There are many more, but it’s up to you to go find them. In addition, it helps to learn more about the whole issue. You are just one victim, but it helps to equip yourself with the knowledge of what pornography is, the lies that it tell us and what it does to us. At the end of this article, you will find some links to websites with articles that I found very useful in my battle.

Like any other battles, sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. In the beginning you might lose some battles, but work together with your partner and together, you can overcome the enemy.

Don’t give up hope. It can be done. The way to win is to keeping getting up each time you’ve fallen. Keep relying on God for strength. Direct your sexual drive to other healthy avenues. Avoid places or situations that compromises your chastity and dignity. And above all, be open and say “yes” to God with all your strength, all your mind, all your soul, and all your heart. Receive the sacraments frequently. They will give you the grace you need to fight the battles.

And remember, you can’t do it alone. Rely on Jesus through prayer. It can be overcome, because Christ has set us free. We just need to accept that freedom and live it.

In summary,

1. You can’t beat the addiction on your own. You need help from God, and you need to admit that you need help from God.

2. An accountability partner helps a lot. He or she is one who prays for you when you are undergoing temptation, and you do the same for him or her.

3. You need to equip yourself properly for this spiritual battle. This means

4. The art of combat in this spiritual battle comes in the form of prayer. The more people praying for you, the better you will be able to resist temptation.

5. Sometimes you win the battle, sometimes you lose. But the only way to win the war against the addiction is to never give up hope, and continue to trust in God’s help.

6. Avoid situations in which you might be outnumbered or overwhelmed.

7. Receive the sacraments frequently.

8. Say “yes” to God with all of your being. One way of learning how to direct your sexual energies instead of clamping them down with “no”, is to read and learn about Pope John Paul II’s Theology of the Body.

Some useful links that are helpful in your battle against addiction to pornography and masturbation:

1. PornNoMore.com - http://www.pornnomore.com/
We are here to help anyone in need who recognizes the pain, agony, disconnection and inability to achieve normal socialization within their lives because of pornography - people who realize that their problems are rooted in inordinate desires of the flesh.

2. Dr Judith Reisman - http://www.drjudithreisman.org/
Dr Judith Reisman is sought worldwide to speak, lecture, testify, and counsel individuals, organizations, professionals, and governments regarding fraudulent sex scientists, sex education, and the power of effect of images and the monopoly media to alter human behaviour.

3. Online resource for dads - http://www.dads.org/ 

4. Theology of the Body Institute - http://www.theologyofthebody.org/
The love of man and woman “tends to rise ‘in ecstasy’ towards the Divine, to lead us beyond ourselves; yet for this very reason it calls for a path of ascent, renunciation, purification and healing.” - Benedict XVI, God Is Love, n.5

5. Christopher West’s website - http://www.christopherwest.com
Christopher West is the person from whom I learnt about Theology of the Body. He makes the pope’s teachings something much easier for laypeople to read.

Original post here.