I read through Roy Cimagla's article on pornography, which reads more like mumbling rather than presenting a tight thesis on "The Scourge of Pornography" as it was titled.
The article starts by quoting a recent report from the Vatican, which says that some 70% of Italian males aged 15-18 access printed or online pornographic material. The writer then wonders how it is in the Philippines.
I *know* how it is in the Philippines. When I was this age, *everyone* willfully accessed porn. It's part curiousity, part adolescence, part entertainment and part rite de passage. Yes, the Internet wasn't around back then but access was never a problem. One magazine is all you need and the whole tribe is happy.
My main problem here is this: the writer here, who is a priest, calls for a "program of education" to form people to be "responsible citizens able to exercise self-control and mature judgment". I find this flies at the face of the true scourge of our country, our burgeoning population. The Roman Catholic church's nose-thumbing of the government's sincere efforts to educate citizens to -- to paraphrase -- "exercise self-control and mature judgment" in planning a family has been an immovable obstacle in keeping our population under check.
And, to simply be mean, I always check my morals, but I'm not really one to take serious advice on sexuality from someone who has vowed to eschew it for a lifetime.
Morality is another thing. Reading further:
Those who try to soften the evil of pornography by saying it’s just part of growing up, should be reminded of the moral aspect, and not just look at the matter from a purely human or biological point of view.
Pornography makes kids lose their innocence and innate sense of goodness as it introduces them to a world of dark obsessions with their usual complicated network of deception and hypocrisy.
No one really has proven a relationship between pornography and "dark obsessions" (maybe The Vatican, who knows). In fact, what is hard about quietly accepting the "moral aspect" here is that it so hard to grasp these intangibles. Pornography, if we take the writer's word for it, is typically "complicated" and filled with "deception and hypocrisy". My God, so is everything in life, if you put it that way. I stretch this argument, because the writer does the same thing:
I would even say that a good part of the reason why so many people find it hard to pray, offer sacrifices, and do other spiritual things is the scourge of pornography.
Now, is there a link between prayer and pornography? Can you believe that those two words can be used in the same sentence? He goes on even further to blame pornography for pretty much everything, including immaturity, lack of a sense of responsibility, cynicism, acne, early onset arthritis, male pattern baldness, so forth and on.
I don't have all the arguments about pornography (free speech, psychological effects), but neither does the author it seems.
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