Churches mobilize against pornography
Efforts to fight pornography have been getting increased attention in recent months. The latest: Churches in the Kansas City area are petitioning six county governments in the region to convene grand jury investigations into sales of pornography. They also are seeking enforcement of Missouri and Kansas obscenity statutes. Stories are in both The Catholic Key in Kansas City, Mo., and The Leaven in Kansas City, Kan.
If you’ve not been following it, this is only the latest Catholic press coverage of the issue. Some examples:
- A Missouri bishop writes a pastoral letter warning of pornography’s assault on dignity.
- In Texas, the Diocese of Austin forms an Anti-Pornography Task Force.
- Denver’s archbishop pleas for an urgent end to pornography’s poison.
- Another Colorado paper publishes a special section on pornography and sex addiction.
- The Leaven (see above) publishes articles on how pornography’s “perfect storm” corrodes marriage, family life and on how a “secret” addiction can carry a not-so-secret price tag.
In addition, Archbishop George H. Niederaur of San Francisco, chairman of the U.S. bishops’ Committee on Communications and a member of the Pontifical Council on Social Communications, spoke this month in Salt Lake City (his former diocese) and said the Internet has made pornography an “electronic tsunami” that has taken the problem well beyond simply movies and magazines. You can read coverage of the speech in the Intermountain Catholic of Salt Lake City. Subscribers to Origins, the CNS Documentary Service, can read the full text in Origins’ May 31 edition.