Prostitution, Promiscuity, and Pornography

Readers of this blog will know that I have been slowly going through a 185 page book titled Pope John Paul II's Theology of the Body in Simplified Language. Recently, inspired by Gabriel Blanchard, (on Twitter he uses the screen name snarkangel and the address @MudblodCatholic) I have started reading the original book (in which the text runs to 553 pages). This morning, I came across a section which made the point about what's wrong with prostitution, promiscuity, and pornography clear to me.

     Analyzing the accounts of creation in the book of Genesis, Pope John Paul II sees creation as a gift of God to humanity. The culmination of that gift is Adam and Eve as gifts to each other, not only as God's gift to each, but then as their gift to each other.

     It says that man is created in the image and likeness of God, and this applies both to body and spirit. Within the Trinity, there is total love and mutual self-giving. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit belong completely to one another in love. Our bodies enable us the give a physical image of the spiritual reality that is God. We are created male and female: sexual. We recognize our bodies as the means of expressing the total gift of self and the total receiving of the gift which we are called to as the image of God. "It is not good for the man to be alone." He needs someone to give himself to in love. Just as God's self-giving is loving and irrevocable, so should ours be.

     Our sexual bodies are made to show the mutual self-giving in love that images God. In other words, sex is created to be an expression of the complete self-giving of each party to the other in love.

     But that is what is lacking in prostitution, promiscuity, and pornography. Instead of giving oneself to the other, those who engage in these things use the other person for their own purposes. There is no loving commitment to the other. The prostitute does it for the money, the customer for the physical pleasure. The pornstars do it for the money and possibly for the physical pleasure, the viewers watch for the pleasure. The promiscuous are only seeking the physical pleasure, without love or commitment. So they all falsify the image and likeness of God which their sexuality is supposed to show. If they have any feeling toward the other(s) involved, it is lust, not love.

     Contemporary culture seems widely to regard sex as merely something one can enjoy. There is no idea, in many quarters, that it should be meaningful. So the slogan is that as long as nobody is hurt and it's consensual on both sides, it's okay. But a Christian needs to view it within the context of creation, as an important part of God's plan which exists for a purpose — to enable us to be like God.