This young Catholic man makes a lot of sense. At least he would, if we were not so turned on to pornography. But, maybe there is a reason here to look at it differently, and to step away from those things that excite us, while destroying out souls. Here is his latest missive. Sounds pretty spot on to me.
I did some quick calculations:
There are about 25.5 million teenagers in the USA (ages 13-19). On average, each one spends 87 hours per year looking for or at pornography online. That means U.S. teens spend about 2.2 billion man-hours on pornography per year.
There are about 230 million adults in the USA (ages 20 and up). On average, each one spends 40 hours (extrapolating from the Brits) looking at pornography. That means US adults spend an estimated 9.2 billion man-hours on pornography per year.
So, all together, US adults and teens spend 11.4 billion man-hours per year on internet pornography alone.
We also spend over $13.3 billion on pornography in the United States every year. And that number is even a few years old.
Here area few other things we could do with that same time and money:
With that same amount of time (man-hours) we could…
Build the Empire State building…1,628 times.
Visit every single one of the 1.5 million U.S. nursing home residents, every single day of the year, for 20 hours a day…and still have free time left over.
Visit every single one of the 2 million prisoners in the United States, every single day, two people at a time, for 8 hours.
Have every single person (310 million) in the U.S. spend an extra 36 hours in prayer.
Spend 3 extra hours per week with each and every one of the 75 million teens and children in the United States.
With that same amount of money we could…
Provide, prepare and serve 7 billion school lunches. That’s enough to feed over 38 million students every school day of the year.
Pay for 1.9 million four-year college degrees.
Build 190,000 Habitat for Humanity homes…in Orange County, CA. Or we could build 7.25 million of them in India.
Give $13.3 million to one thousand different charities each.
Feed 1 billion people a meal…70 times.
And this says nothing of all of the other negative side effects that would be avoided if we could give up our porn – the loss of sanctifying grace being chief among them.
How many marriages are stressed by it? How many families broken? How many addictions formed? How many marital unions defiled, nullified and deeply scarred? How many abusers made callous to the dignity of the human person? How many brains are re-wired to objectify rather than dignify? How many innocents are spoiled?
How many problems would be improved or solved if we could only give up our porn? What a waste.
Whoa, mate, whoa. That post really does speak for itself.
ReplyDeleteNot only do we have porn as it is, we have shows passed off as pretty harmless TV series and/or emissions which can be passed off as soft porn. Which leads me to the question, what if all those people spent all that time watching porn in a different way, and used it for prayer and loving people instead ?
Wonderful post. Keep on writing. God bless you !
Matthew;
ReplyDeleteThank you so much for focussing on this problem. I can tell you first-hand where porn can lead you, and I'm in the fight of my life trying to recover. Keep hammering away, maybe someone like me might catch this addiction before it catches them.
God bless you and your family
Jim
I am sorry if I left the impression that this was my own writing and not the writing of a young Catholic man named Matthew Warner.
ReplyDeleteIt was an excellent piece, and though I linked it here, I also copied it in its entirety, since I could find no way to stop part way through.
So, Jim and troisnyx, I offer this prayer for you and for me as well:
Sacred Heart of Jesus, I trust in your love for Jim and his family, troisnyx and his, me and mine and all men who may be lured by the intrigues of pornography to look at things that are not in fact uplifting, to be drawn into the net of lust that distracts us from our call to follow you. Help us to see as troisnyx does that this lust comes at us from many corners that are not as blatant, but are pre-cursors to the lust that awaits us if we but open the door to it.
Sacred Heart of Jesus fill us with your blood.
Thank you for your courageous comments Jim, and for your thoughtful ones as well troinyx.
God Bless You both.
I apologize for the delay in responding to your comments. I was having a bad health week, and was distracted from responding properly, though I take responsibility for my tardiness.
Sorry troisnyx. I see that I made a gender faux pas. My apologies. I thank you for your thoughtful comment none the less, and do wish you the very best.
ReplyDeleteI appreciated that you have been following my sometimes fatuous ramblings from all the way over in Malaysia.
God Bless You
Michael Brandon