There are facts and truths that "sexual libertarians" don't want society or public opinion to know, that even they don't want to know. To sum up those facts - accumulated in different human cultures and societies - we don't need sex to live a full life and be content. To define one's identity on the basis of our sexuality alone is to reduce our human value and dignity. I am a lot more than just my genitalia, and so are you. G.S.
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My purpose in these posts is to bring together significant and, where possible, representative echoes of our best human efforts to make sense of our lives - and of our human sexuality in particular - also including the voice of Jesus Christ, the one Saviour of the world, and testimonies from his Church, such as through her teaching voice, the Magisterium. The Church has been accumulating much valuable wisdom granted her by Almighty God since her foundation at Pentecost. In this way, wherever there is darkness in our human understanding, it will serve to highlight the bright and radiant truth, which is Jesus Christ: "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you know me, you will know my Father also." John's Gospel 14:6-7
Father Gilles Surprenant, priest & poustinik
👇 Please scroll down to find each section. 👇
For each, go to the link for the complete article.
👉 C. S. Lewis speaks out on Masturbation
By Jeremy Myers - A while back someone submitted a question to me about masturbation and whether it was sinful or not. It is a very … touchy … subject to deal with. So as I was recently reading through the Letters of C. S. Lewis, I was surprised to learned that
(1) C. S. Lewis struggled with the temptation of masturbation, and
(2) he had a pretty good theological answer for it. Here is What C. S. Lewis said about Masturbation:
I agree that the stuff about ‘wastage of vital fluids’ is rubbish. For me the real evil of masturbation would be that it takes an appetite which, in lawful use, leads the individual out of himself to complete (and correct) his own personality in that of another (and finally in children and even grandchildren) and turns it back: sending the man back into the prison of himself, there to keep a harem of imaginary brides.
👉 Hook-up culture is making women miserable, study finds
New York City, N.Y., May 20, 2016 - Leah Fessler considers herself a feminist. And the standard feminist narrative is that women can have, and indeed enjoy, casual sex without consequences – physical, emotional, or otherwise. But when her experience with hookup culture (and that of her friends') in college failed to live up to its empowering promises and left her emotionally empty, Fessler decided to look a little deeper. In an article written for Quartz, Fessler explains her quest to examine what it was about the prominent hookup culture, and the ill-defined, non-committal “pseudo-relationships,” at her Middlebury college campus that were making her miserable. “Far more frequent, however, were pseudo-relationships, the mutant children of meaningless sex and loving partnerships. Two students consistently hook up with one another – and typically, only each other – for weeks, months, even years,” Fessler wrote. “Yet per unspoken social code, neither party is permitted emotional involvement, commitment, or vulnerability. To call them exclusive would be 'clingy,' or even 'crazy.'”
👉 PLAYING THE GAME
A lot of women don’t enjoy hookup culture—so why do we force ourselves to participate? By Leah Fessler - in Quartz - May 17, 2016 - This article is more than 2 years old.
At Middlebury College, I lived a double life. On the surface, I was successful. I was surrounded by diverse, intellectual friends. I led a popular student website and was active in the arts and athletics. I loved learning and made Phi Beta Kappa my junior year. I’m also a white, straight, cisgendered female. If you’re thinking, “Please. Your privileged ass has nothing to complain about,” you’re right. But my internal life was characterized by paralyzing anxiety and depression. I judged myself harshly, to the point of disgust. I drove myself to excessive exercising and near-anorexia. I felt this way because of men—or so I thought. While there was a major gulf between my public self and my private one, the one thing that remained consistent were my politics. I told myself that I was a feminist, despite subjecting myself to unfulfilling, emotionally damaging sexual experiences. And I believed it, too.
👉 Sex on Campus: She Can Play That Game, Too
By Kate Taylor - July 12, 2013 At 11 on a weeknight earlier this year, her work finished, a slim, pretty junior at the University of Pennsylvania did what she often does when she has a little free time. She texted her regular hookup — the guy she is sleeping with but not dating. What was he up to? He texted back: Come over. So she did. They watched a little TV, had sex and went to sleep.
Their relationship, she noted, is not about the meeting of two souls. “We don’t really like each other in person, sober,” she said, adding that “we literally can’t sit down and have coffee.” Ask her why she hasn’t had a relationship at Penn, and she won’t complain about the death of courtship or men who won’t commit. Instead, she’ll talk about “cost-benefit” analyses and the “low risk and low investment costs” of hooking up.
👉 The Brain Science of Porn Addiction: How You Got Here
BY THE RECLAIM TEAM - #R008 - Engaging in unwanted sexual outlets (porn, masturbation, live sex chat, escorts, paid sex) or even streams of short-term, meaningless relationships can create a great deal of shame, despair and self-loathing. Most struggling individuals don't understand that specific brain processes that have developed their behaviors through specific stages over time. If you are struggling with pornography, sex addiction, masturbation, or other unhealthy sexual behaviors, these insights can help you better understand how you got here.
👉 Brain Structure and Functional Connectivity Associated With Pornography Consumption Original Investigation - The Brain on Porn - July 2014 - By Simone Kühn, PhD1; Jürgen Gallinat, PhD2,3
Abstract - Importance Since pornography appeared on the Internet, the accessibility, affordability, and anonymity of consuming visual sexual stimuli have increased and attracted millions of users. Based on the assumption that pornography consumption bears resemblance with reward-seeking behavior, novelty-seeking behavior, and addictive behavior, we hypothesized alterations of the frontostriatal network in frequent users.
Objective To determine whether frequent pornography consumption is associated with the frontostriatal network.
👉 5 Proven Ways Pornography Warps Your Mind
The following is an excerpt from Your Brain on Porn: 5 Proven Ways Porn Warps Your Mind and 3 Biblical Ways to Renew It - Book Review
👉 Introduction: Porn is Everywhere - The Great Porn Experiment
👉 Finding #1: Watching Porn Decreases Sexual Satisfaction
👉 Finding #2: Watching Porn Disconnects Us from Real Relationships
👉 Finding #3: Watching Porn Lowers Our View of Women
👉 Finding #4: Watching Porn Desensitizes Us to Cruelty
👉 Finding #5: Watching Porn Makes Us Want to Watch More Porn
👉 Temptation Can Be Beaten - Accountability Works
👉 He’s Not Afraid of Evil, but Young People are Scaring This Exorcist
Patti Armstrong - As an exorcist, Father Patrick is sensitive to influences that are brushed off as harmless. Looking into the faces of teenagers these days, Father Patrick worries. Father Patrick is not his real name, but to keep his work as a parish priest manageable, his work in exorcism and deliverance is hidden to the general public. He has been a designated diocesan exorcist for 6 years. The bishop refers cases to Father Patrick if they are deemed legitimate. Although full-fledged possessions are rare, he said the numbers are increasing with more and more, people — especially young people — dabbling in the occult. “They often open a door they cannot close on their own,” he said.
👉 Internet porn is the 'neon colosseum' of the digital age, expert says
By Elise Harris - Rome, Italy, Oct 4, 2017 - It's well-known that in ancient Rome hundreds of thousands of people would pile into the stacked layers of stone seating in the Colosseum to watch gladiators fight to their death, cheering on as the warriors met a bloody and often drawn-out end. However, while being a “gladiator” in modern Rome has mostly become a way pick up extra cash in photo-ops with tourists, there are some who argue that the gruesome nature of the ancient battles, in which people would essentially celebrate and take pleasure in the pain of others, hasn't gone away, but has rather taken on a new, less obvious form in the digital world: pornography. When it comes to internet pornography, Dr. Donald Hilton Jr. of the University of Texas Health Science Center said we as a society have to learn to ask the “uncomfortable questions about our culture, why we're so easily voyeuristic to watch people being harmed.” While pornography has always been a problem, the new widespread access offered through the digital world has led to a culture that enjoys “watching women being hurt on screen,” he told CNA. Hilton recalled that in a tour of the Colosseum, his guide explained that throughout the centuries of its of operation, the structure “had up to several hundred thousand animals and gladiators dying in the colosseum with people watching them and enjoying watching their pain.” Now, “I think we have a neon colosseum, a colosseum of screens where far more, now, are watching people being harmed. And people are enjoying it,” he said, adding that in his opinion, “we're no better than the ancient Romans in that.” “In fact, in some way I think we're worse, because at least they did it openly, but we hide behind our screens at night and do it, and tell ourselves it's okay.”
While I was service the Diocese as Family Life Chaplain - from 2013 to 2020 - I first put together this short list of Internet services offering to help anyone seeking to be rid of their addiction to pornography use and the related sexual behaviours. I have just now, in early 2021, updated and expanded the list.
👉 Free Ebook: Hope After Porn
4 women share their heartache...and how their marriages were saved. Today, over half of divorce cases involve one party having an obsessive interest in internet porn. More and more men withdraw from real intimacy with their wives and into digital worlds of fantasy. In this free ebook, Hope After Porn, you will read stories from four women who have personally known the devastation pornography can cause in a marriage. They give readers a glimpse of the betrayal, the hurt, and the choices they made to try and make a difference. In this book these four women talk about:
(1) Their husbands’ constant withdrawal into porn, and their deception and unfaithfulness.
(2) When their husbands reached a breaking point and started to make changes in their lives.
(3) How they learned to trust their husbands again, in spite of years of betrayal and lies.
👉 Hope After Porn: Our Marriage Would Never Be the Same
The following is chapter 1 of the book, Hope After Porn: 4 Women’s Tales of Heartbreak and How Their Marriages Were Saved. Download the whole e-book for free right now.
By Mary Rezac Denver, Colo., Apr 19, 2016
Clay Olsen speaks to thousands of youth about a subject most people would rather not touch: pornography. As the founder and CEO of 👉 Fight the New Drug, an organization that educates people about pornography addiction, Olsen travels the country giving presentations to young people about how pornography is affecting their brains, their relationships and ultimately the world. Olsen told CNA that after one particular presentation, a young man asked a question that perfectly illustrates how drastically pornography has changed. “He asked me very sincerely whether Playboy was pornography or not,” Olsen recalled. “His definition of pornography had shifted so dramatically...that Playboy doesn’t even make the cut.” Importantly, this young man is the rule of his generation, not the exception, Olsen said. The effects of constant access to the Internet, made possible by the availability of personal laptops, tablets, and smartphones, has drastically changed how young people consume pornography in a way that many adults dangerously underestimate.
By Mary Rezac Denver, Colo., Jun 11, 2017
One of music artist John Mayer's most signature songs is “Daughters,” a sweet and simple tribute to the importance of parents' influence on their little girls. Here's the refrain: “So fathers, be good to your daughters, Daughters will love like you do. Girls become lovers who turn into mothers, So mothers, be good to your daughters too.”
But when John Mayer isn't crooning about your beautiful daughters, he's looking at naked pictures of them, sometimes hundreds at a time before he gets out of bed in the morning. In fact, he often prefers that to an actual human being, according to his wildly controversial 2010 interview with Playboy magazine. “You wake up in the morning, open a thumbnail page, and it leads to a Pandora's box of visuals. There have probably been days when I saw 300 (naked women) before I got out of bed,” he told the magazine. Unfortunately, Mayer's morning routine is not unique to him. Studies show that easy access to free internet pornography is having devastating effects on real-life relationships.
Written by Dr. Randall F. Hyde & Mark B. Kastleman - #R004
The mountains of clinical data and visual evidence as millions continue their out-of-control porn use despite consequences of divorce, loss of employment, destroyed reputations, prison time, etc., shouts the obvious: “YES, PORNOGRPAHY IS ADDICTIVE!” And just in case there are still a few stubborn hold-outs, research is being conducted by some of the world’s leading experts in the neuroscience and neuropsychology fields that will provide the clinical evidence required to officially enter sex and pornography as “addictions in the DMS (Diagnostic Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders).
👉 Your Brain and Masturbation
By the RECLAIM Team - #R015
In the midst of the battle with masturbation, struggling individuals don't usually stop to consider the brain science—why is masturbation so powerful, addictive, and hard to stop? Masturbation triggers the brain into releasing a flood of internal chemicals like dopamine, endorphins, and serotonin.
These natural "drugs" can give a quick, temporary escape and relief from stress, insomnia, difficult emotions, and other struggles. Masturbation rapidly evolves into a "drug of choice" for instant pleasure, self-medication, and escape. Contrary to the false claims of popular culture, masturbation is not a healthy outlet. RECLAiM will teach you the truth about masturbation—the brain science, underlying causes, and how to break free.
👉 What's the most convincing argument vs porn? Science.
Mary Rezac San Francisco Mar 26, 2017
In 2013, Beyonce Knowles topped GQ’s list of “The 100 Hottest Women of the 21st Century.” That same year, the “definitive men's magazine” that promises “sexy women” along with style advice, entertainment news and more ran a shorter listicle: “10 Reasons Why You Should Quit Watching Porn.” The list included reasons such as increased sexual impotence in men that regularly viewed pornography, and a reported lack of control of sexual desires. It was inspired by an interview with NoFap, an online community of people dedicated to holding each other accountable in abstaining from pornography and masturbation.The site clearly states that it is decidedly non-religious. Matt Fradd, on the other hand, is a Catholic. Fradd has spent much of his adult life urging people to quit pornography, and developing websites and resources to help pornography addicts. But even though he’s Catholic, Fradd’s new anti-porn book, “The Porn Myth,” won’t quote the saints or the Bible or recommend a regimen of rosaries.
👉 Physical Effects of Masturbation
BY THE RECLAIM TEAM MEMBER—Dr. Bernell Christensen, PhD. - #R006
With repetition, your brain can learn to prefer sexual fantasy and masturbation to real sexual intimacy with a real person. In fact, your brain's "arousal circuitry" can become so dominantly wired for "self-sex" that physical intimacy with a real person— your spouse—can become increasingly difficult and eventually virtually impossible.
Sexual Fantasy & Masturbation = Impotence In my clinic, I often work with individuals, both men and women, who suffer from sexual impotence. A common situation among men who engage in compulsive masturbation and sexual fantasy, is they have increasing difficulty becoming aroused by their partner.
👉 You Can Replace Masturbation With Healthy Outlets
By the RECLAIM Team - #R012
Through repetition over time, the pleasure center of your brain has learned to escape to masturbation as one of its favorite outlets for self-medication. Through RECLAIM, you will learn how to recognize your "triggers" early—the people, situations, and emotions that drive you to seek escape through masturbation. You will learn how to choose healthy pleasure outlets and literally "retrain" your brain so that masturbation ceases to be a problem in your life.
👉 Creating a ‘Safe Haven’ From the Pornography Pandemic
CULTURE OF LIFE - JAN. 22, 2018 - By Judy Roberts
On Feb. 17-18, the Archdiocese of New Orleans will inaugurate a new program to alert parents, educators and clergy about the harm posed by explicitly sexual material and arm them with protective tools. NEW ORLEANS — When New Orleans Archbishop Gregory Aymond heard within a week three tragic stories about pornography’s impact on people in his archdiocese, he knew it was time to seek divine direction. “As I prayed about it, I said, ‘Okay, Lord, it’s a problem, but if I don’t do anything about it, it’s still a problem.’” Archbishop Aymond responded by assembling a team that is developing a five-year pastoral plan to educate parents, educators and clergy about the threat pornography presents and to give them the tools to protect themselves and their families. The plan will be introduced to the faithful Feb. 17-18 with “Safe Haven Sunday,” a weekend set aside to address the issue within the context of the liturgy. Homilies and prayer petitions will deal with the pornography problem, and parishes will distribute the book Equipped: Smart Catholic Parenting in a Sexualized Culture, which tells about a free sevenday email program offering practical tips on creating safe digital environments in the home. Anyone can enroll in the program by texting the word “secure” to 66866.
👉 What can priests practically do to combat the porn epidemic?
By Mary Rezac Washington D.C. Jun 14, 2017
Online pornography is one of the fastest growing addictions in the United States, on par with cocaine and gambling. Once confined to the pages of a smuggled Playboy magazine, pornography can now be in the hands of anyone with a smartphone, and is more prolific and anonymous than ever. PornHub, one of the world’s largest sites with porn video streaming, reports that it averages 75 million viewers per day, or about 2.4 million visitors per hour.
In 2015 alone, the number of hours streamed from the site was double the amount of time human beings have populated the Earth, according to TIME Magazine. And while pornography used to be a simpler problem for priests to address in the confessional – consecrate yourself to Mary, go to weekly adoration – the growing level of addiction makes it a much more complex problem for the Church to address. That’s why Fr. Sean Kilcawley, the program directory and theological advisor for pornography ministry 👉 Integrity Restored, has started to put on intensive trainings for clergy, providing them resources and practical tips for how to address the growing crisis of pornography addiction.
© 2006-2023 All rights reserved Fr. Gilles Surprenant, Associate Priest of Madonna House Apostolate & Poustinik, Montreal QC
© 2006-2023 Tous droits réservés Abbé Gilles Surprenant, Prêtre Associé de Madonna House Apostolate & Poustinik, Montréal QC
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