?Pornography is way beyond a problem of film and magazines'

Intermountain Catholic

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San Francisco Archbishop George Niederauer warns of the dangers of pornography in a keynote address for the Lighted Candle Society's Guardian of Light Awards Dinner May 8 at Little America in Salt Lake City.

SALT LAKE CITY — Saying pornography now generates more annual income than all three major professional sports combined, "and causes as well the world’s fastest growing addiction," San Francisco Archbishop George H. Niederaur urged Americans to beware of statistics and concentrate instead on the damage pornography does to the human dignity and the sexuality of its victims.

In his keynote address at the annual Lighted Candle Society Guardian of Light Awards Dinner May 8 at Little American Hotel in Salt Lake City, Archbishop Niederauer described the current "electronic tsunami of pornography" afflicting the country.

"Pornography is not a new challenge to single-hearted human love and to respect for the dignity of human persons and human sexuality," he said. "However, the explosive increase in the accessibility and availability of pornography is new and deeply troubling. Pornography is now way beyond a problem with films and magazines. Every computer terminal is its pipeline, and cell phones and other hand held devices, many of them marketed to children and young people, literally deliver pornography everywhere, to anyone."

The archbishop spoke of "discouraging numbers: daily there are 68 million search engine requests for porn sites on the Internet, 25 percent of all daily requests; 70 percent of 18 to 24-year-old men visit porn sites in a typical month; one-third of all visitors to adult web sites are women; 40 percent of adults believe that pornography harms relationships between men and women; 90 percent of 8 to 19-year-olds have viewed pornography on line; and the average age of a child’s first exposure to pornography on the Internet is 11."

While bishop of the Diocese of Salt Lake City, Archbishop Niederauer was chairman of the Utah Coalition Against Pornography (UCAP). He received the Guardian of Light Award in 2005.

As Archbishop of San Francisco, he serves as chairman of the U.S. Bishops’ Committee on Communications and a member of the Pontifical Council on Social Communications.

"What should motivate us most profoundly is not the amount of pornography there is, but the kind of harm it does," Archbishop Niederauer said. "Pornography assaults human dignity and commodifies people and human sexuality. Porn starves the human soul in its spiritual dimension.... The human person, an irreplaceable gift, becomes a throwaway toy."

Each year the Lighted Candle Society, headquartered in Washington D.C. and Salt Lake City by John Harmer, honors one person locally and one nationally for their efforts to curb pornography. The May 8 dinner saw Radio Talk Show Host Michael Reagan honored with the national award, and Community Activist Pamela Atkinson recognized for her local efforts.Atkinson now leads UCAP.

"Pornography leads further into human loneliness and low self-esteem, into a fantasy world, away from the real world of real people in relationships," Archbishop Niederauer said. "Because lust isolates, while love unites, pornography damages familial and social relationships, insidiously perverting the beauty of the intimate love proper to marriage. Nor should we ignore the social implications of pornography: it exploits the desperate poor and the innocent young. All too frequently it is associated with, and contributes to, acts of sexual violence or abuse."

The archbishop explained that most addictions, including pornography, "thrive on secrecy and silence. The addict’s first step has to be admitting the problem, naming it. He or she doesn’t have to overcome it alone, and probably cannot do so. Accountability and support are essential. We clergy should preach about this subject modestly and prudently."

He cautioned everyone to look first to their own tastes and habits in books, films, and Internet communications.

Archbishop Niederauer, a great film fan, didn’t spare Hollywood their responsibility for the current pornography epidemic. "The world of film," he said, "is capable of so much beauty and so much trash."

Quoting The New Yorker magazine writer Ken Auletta, who asked rhetorically: "Why is it ‘censorship’ if a movie critic like Michael Medved urges that moviemakers think more about the consequences of what they put on the Screen?"

"Moviegoers can’t be sponges," the archbishop said. "We need to be able to call good good and evil evil. Just as in our experiences of other media, in watching films we need to become our own best filters..."

"In his discussion of excessive violence in films, Kenneth Turan of The Los Angeles Times... says the entertainment industry, the gun lobby, and other influential groups should all probably stand up and take the blame," Archbishop Niederauer said.

Catholic San Francisco editor Dan Morris Young contributed to this story.