Priests and nuns have been watching porn on their phones, and The Pope is not at all amused.
Amongst the things we’ve learned this week is the perhaps not-entirely unexpected news that Catholic priests and nuns watch porn – and the Pope is not happy about it. In a statement on Monday, Pope Francis instructed clergy to remove “the temptation of digital pornography” from their phones, lest it allows the Devil in through the back door.
Given the nature of Catholic clergy, we should probably point out that the Pope is talking here about legal, ‘normal’ pornography and not criminal child abuse imagery – though, for the record, he also condemns that. The Pope – who some of the more simple-minded non-religious people were practically hero-worshipping a few years back because of a few vaguely liberal pronouncements – noted that “it is a vice that so many people have — so many lay men, so many lay women, and even priests and religious sisters”, and warned worshippers “if from your cell phone you can delete this, delete it, so you won’t have temptation at hand. And if you can’t delete it, protect yourself properly so you don’t have access to this. I tell you, it weakens the soul.” He went on to add that “the devil enters from there. It weakens the priestly heart.”
Let’s be clear – he’s being literal here. The Pope of 2022 believes in a literal Satan who physically exists rather than being a mere metaphorical figure. The Catholic church also still believes that masturbation is a mortal sin, so unless those clergy have been watching porn simply to see how awful sinners could be, we might reasonably see this as yet more religious hypocrisy at work. The church sees porn as “a grave offence” that “immerses all who are involved in the illusion of a fantasy world” – something you could say about fictional cinema and TV, novels and video games. Let’s have all those things condemned too if we are being consistent. It also claims that porn injures the dignity of participants and “perverts the conjugal act, the intimate giving of spouses to each other”, which of course is a moral judgement rather than a statement of fact.
I didn’t, of course, expect the Pope to come out and give porn the thumbs up. But this is simply another example of religious guilt-tripping based on a doctrine built around shame and control. Like all religious criticism of adult entertainment, it should be seen for what it is – an attempt to make people see any sort of sexual expression, sexual pleasure and sexual activity outside the church’s narrow level of acceptance as sinful, corrupt and dangerous. It’s a way of thinking that has depressingly filtered into the mainstream, with extreme religious anti-porn organisations adopting Radical Feminist and anti-trafficking rhetoric to hide their real agenda. Don’t be fooled.
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‘lest it allows the Devil in through the back door’ – amused me greatly, thank you!