Professional Documents
Culture Documents
The April 10, 2010 bulletin of iMAPP Marriage News [1] highlighted this issue. It
focused on the Witherspoon Foundation’s recent conference and book, The Social
Costs of Pornography.[2]
The Conference (and papers included in the book) featured the following
presentations: “The Moral Bases for Legal Regulation of Pornography” by Gerard
V. Bradley; “Pornography's Effect on Interpersonal Relationships” by Ana Bridges;
“Pornography: Settling the Question in Principle” by Hadley Arkes; “Desire and the
Tainted Soul: Islamic Insights into Lust, Chastity, and Love” by Hamza Yusuf;
“Freedom, Virtue, and the Politics of Regulating Pornography”
by James Stoner; “The Impact of Pornography on Women: Social Science Findings
and Clinical Observations” by Jill C. Manning; “Industry Size, Measurements and
Social Costs”
by K. Doran; “From Pornography to Porno to Porn: How Porn Became the Norm”
by Pamela Paul; “On the Abuse of Sex” by Roger Scruton; “Pornography and
Violence: A New Look at Research” by Mary Anne Layden. In a later essay for
Culture of Life I will summarize and comment on these presentations.
Gallagher considers that the most important potential cost of porn is the way it
affects ordinary men and their ordinary relationships. Layden makes this a major
At the end of her report Gallagher said: “Porn disconnects the reward system of the
male sex drive from the drive to master reality. Porn is nowhere near as satisfying
as a real relationship with a woman, but it is a lot easier and much less fraught with
the possibility of failure or humiliation. Porn use thus is an aid to sexual failure in
men, and a contributor to our ongoing failure to create a culture that connects men
and women, parents and children, sex and love.”
In his “theology of the body” (hereafter TOB) [3] catecheses 60-65 John Paul is
concerned with “the ethos of the body in art and media.” A central theme of TOB
as a whole is that “The human body-the naked human body in all the truth of its
masculinity and femininity-has the meaning of a gift of the person to the person
(61.1, p. 367; emphasis in original).
The crucial difference between portraying the human body in films and
photographic arts from portraying it in paintings and sculptures
John Paul II thinks that the portrayal of the human body in films and in
photographic art differs essentially from its portrayal in paintings and sculptures.
“In painting or sculpture, man/body always remains a model that is subjected to a
specific reworking by the artist. In film, and even more, in the art of photography,
there is no transfiguration of the model, but the living human being is reproduced
and in this case the human body is not a model for the work of art, but the object of
a reproduction obtained by means of suitable techniques” (60.4, p. 366; emphasis in
the original). This is an important distinction for the ethos of the body in works of
culture. It is so, first of all, as John Paul II then notes, because a kind of anonymity
is associated with films/photos and photographic reproductions of paintings and
sculptures, and this anonymity, a way of “ veiling” or “hiding” the identity of the
person involved, is a specific problem (60.5, p. 367).
Here it seems to me John Paul II gives us a good criterion for determining that
works of art are truly “pornovision.” It is this: if, on viewing the body, one wishes
to “consume it,” regarding it as object of personal sexual gratification and not as the
sign of the “gift” of the man-person to the female-person and vice versa, then it is
“pornovision; i.e., if its intention is to threaten “the element of the ‘gift’” (62.3, p.
378).
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Notes
[1] iMAPP stands for Institute for Marriage and Public Policy; its website is
http://www.marriagedebate.com.
[2] The book, edited by Mary Anne Leyden and Mary Eberstadt, is available from
Amazon.com. for $5.00.
[3] All translations of TOB will be taken from John Paul II, Man and Woman He
Created Them: A Theology of the Body, Introduction, Translation, and Index by
Michael Waldstein (Boston: Pauline Books & Media, 2006). References will be
made to the number of the Audience (133 are given in the new translation), the