Catholics will get the chance to hear from one of the world’s leading experts on the devastating personal and social effects of pornography at a special event in Perth, next week.
Dr William Struthers, neuroscientist from Wheaton College in the US, will expose the debilitating impact porn has on men’s interactions with women, one another, and God, at 2-3:30pm at the Faith Centre on Tuesday, June 10.
The author of Wired for Intimacy: How Pornography Hijacks the Male Brain, Dr Struthers will also be putting forward a positive vision of what freedom from porn might look like.
Communications director for the Archdiocese of Perth James Parker said the event would be a milestone in lifting the veil of silence and shame that surrounds the issue, as well as addressing a pernicious social evil of our time, particularly as porn continues to reach younger and younger audiences through portable electronic devices.
“Possibly the greatest concern is the fact that the average age today of a child’s first exposure to pornography is 11 years old which is where 70 per cent of the next generation learn about sex – through hard-core pornographic material that not even lifetime sex offenders would have necessarily have had access to a couple of decades ago,” Mr Parker told The Record.
“Last year, a newspaper in Britain reported that in a cross-section of Year 9 groups interviewed all the boys and over half the girls had accessed pornography. Certain teachers in Western Australia are also discovering that the word porn is unquestionably among the top words, if not the top word, most attempted to be accessed – and yet which is blocked – by high school children in sections of Western Australian schools. We need to wake up and listen to what this is telling us.”
In the US, around 29,000 people view pornography, every second. Worldwide pornography brings in over $100 billion a year.
Two-thirds of pornographic sites are visited by men, but pornography aimed at a female market is a growing niche.
More than half of Christians in the US admit to pornography being a problem at home, with Sunday being the most popular viewing day.
“We need to explore and proclaim a true theology of desire and to recognise and remind people that our sexual longings are meant to propel us towards holiness and the objective dignity of one another,” Mr Parker said, “and not to bring about desecration and the abuse of each other as objects.”
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