First off, I apologize for taking so long to write again. Hopefully one of these days, this will be more regular. I hope that this blog finds you doing well and I thank you for taking the time to read. As always feedback is welcomed and I invite you to tell your friends and follow!
Let's go ahead and get started by diving right into today's topic. There are a few things I had the chance to witness these last couple of weeks that inspired this so bear with me. I want to specifically touch on the subject of pornography, but hopefully the lessons will extend beyond just that.
You know, it used to be that topics like pornography were taboo. And by that I mean it wasn't publicized as much and if men looked at it, it was a personal thing that no one needed to know about. When you look at the history of this billion dollar industry, you will see in it's beginning, with publications such as Playboy and Hustler, that society as a whole had different standards and people stood up against it. Somewhere along the lines though, society has changed, so much that now pornography is no longer something that is hidden, but rather something that is glorified and touted as normal. In the past few years alone, hardcore pornography has passed over from just a cult-status niche ( like comics or Anime,as an example) into mainstream media. Movie studios use "famous" porn stars in roles to attract more viewers. Mainstream movies (usually touted as "comedies" in order to make it easier to accept, I presume) feature stories ABOUT making a porn i.e. "Zack and Miri Make a Porno". By the way that is an actual movie title starring Seth Rogen, I'm not joking. Even mainstream NEWS outlets write stories promoting the industry. I saw last week on CNN's website where they had an article covering the Adult Video Awards and had features such as "the 12 hottest porn stars". CNN people!!
Now comes the hard part of this blog to write. I will be honest, as a man ( even a christian and even after my Catholic conversion) I struggled with this. I will be honest and say that even now it is still a struggle sometimes. It started like most boys, discovering dad's playboy magazines ( not my dad's but friend's would discover their dad's stash and show me). From there it went from seeing scandalous pictures to wanting to see more. I have been able to deal with it better by having an amazing priest for confession and accountability buddies, which are HUGE tools with help battling stuff like this. But to be honest, the biggest thing that has helped me, believe it or not, was the invention of Facebook and Twitter. How is that do you ask? Most people, if you were to offer them the ability to let people they know see what goes on in their heads, they would be ashamed to right? You wouldn't want your parents to know what you have seen or "enjoyed". For most people that would be embarrassing right? I can say from experience, unfortunately, that along with the push to become mainstream, pornography websites offer the ability to not only press the "like" button. But also to publicly share what you just watched! Not only is it no longer taboo, not only is it presented in mainstream news like the CNN articles, but it is encouraged to let other people see and share it as well. To be honest, after seeing that a couple of times I can tell you I was "shocked" out of wanting to partake in it anymore. It is no longer merely a personal sin that doesn't hurt anyone else. To be clear, it never was, but is only now becoming more apparent. Which brings us to the next part.....
This week I was able to witness two events dealing with pornography that was handled in two opposite ways. The first one was a movie I watched called "Fireproof". If you have not seen this movie, I would highly recommend it. It is a story about two non-Christians who are married and their marriage is crumbling to the point of divorce. One of the big contributors to the breakdown, is the husband's addiction to adult websites. The husband desperately wants to save the marriage, and without giving away too much of the story, he has some conversions and specifically gets rid of his computer. At one point, the imagery is so intense and I love the director's choice to do this, he takes the computer outside and literally beats the hell out of it with a baseball bat. Now I don't think that has to be the answer in all situations, but the imagery was awesome. I will let you see the movie to get the rest of the story because I don't want to ruin it for anyone so that's all I will say about it now. I just wanted to show you that particular instance, in the way pornography was dealt with.
Now for the second incident. This was a real life incident involving FOCUS missionary, John Leyendecker, and his exchanges with a professional athlete by the name of Chad Ochocinco (wide receiver for the New England Patriots). These exchanges happened via Twitter where Ochocinco has 3.2 million followers and yet he specifically decided to respond to John's posts, which by itself is kinda awesome. Click HERE for the full exchange, which I encourage you to do because John goes on to say some wise words about pornography as well. The exhange started with a twitter follower asking Ochocinco about a porn website. Chad responded by tweeting, " @ochocinco A very interesting site, I get most of my creative ideas from there to keep HER guessing what's next." John Leyendecker saw this tweet and decided to take courage and try to help a fellow brother out. He then tweeted to Ochocinco this tweet. "@johnleyendecker: @ochocinco you claim to be Christian, yet look at porn? You are a joke. Be a man. Honor your God and women. Kids look up to you." Chad Ochocinco saw this post and responded with"@ochocinco: I tend to back slide every now and then kind sir." And this is where potentially more problems come in because now, what can Chad say to the person that started this exchange? He has lost credibility on both sides because he pulled a politician move and reversed his position by saying the former statement or actions were a "backslide". It is one thing, when we are with non Christian friends and make mistakes with what we say. It is another thing altogether when it's a public statement to both our non Christian as well as our Christian friends. Now, not to bash Chad's intentions because I fully hope that he meant what he said, but here was an opportunity for a person claiming Christianity to do the right thing and he fumbled. (Pun intended)
I share all this to bring us to the point of today's message. This is a lost world and even if only unconsciously, people know there is something more out there. Last week was "Super Bowl week" culminating in the big game that was played in my hometown of Indianapolis. For those of you who have not experienced a "Super Bowl week", it is pretty much a week long festival of events, concerts, parties, entertainment what have you. My home parish, St John the Evangelist Catholic Church, was in the middle of all these festivities. Our priest, Fr. Rick Nagel, saw a huge opportunity for us to be witnesses to the world that came to our city. So he initiated (quite literally because our weather was unseasonably warm) the Open Wide the Doors for Christ mission in which hundreds, if not a thousand or more, people were in and out of our Church every day. I had the opportunity to be there myself for quite some time about 4 or 5 days that week. I saw firsthand for myself the desires and curiosities of people, some catholic, some not, some not even Christian. There were three things that struck me about the people when they came in. One, they immediately marveled at how beautiful the Church itself was. Two, that was immediately followed by awe of how old our Church is ( its the oldest Catholic Church in Indianapolis and is 175 years old). Throughout the day, it wasn't surprising to see people come in and just sit down to take it all in, or to pray. The only time people weren't asking questions or going on guided tours through the Church was when Mass or Adoration was going on. Which brings me to the third thing that struck me ( and possibly the biggest thing). The amount of respect and reverence that even non-Christians/Catholics had for what was going on. I'm not aware of any incidents where people who came in were loud or disturbing the sanctity of what goes on during Mass and Adoration. The people I saw that came in, when they found out what was going on they immediately hushed themselves and a lot of them just stared and watched what was going on. Outside the building I saw people walking by asking what adoration was, conversing about what was happening inside during those times. We had a cardboard cutout of Pope Benedict XVI that was set up so you could take your picture with him. It was a huge attraction, especially among non-Catholics, and I think it was probably more of a novelty item for them. But the truth is, the whole time I was there, every picture taken was respectful and reverent. Occasionally someone would jokingly do bunny ears before the actual picture, and I think I saw two people Tebowing at one point, but for the most part, nothing was disrespectful about it. In a world of Facebook where people post crude poses with statues and stick their tongues out or what have you, that didn't happen here, that I am aware of. In a world full of darkness, I saw the awe and wonder of people when they came close to the light. To quote THIS blog, "In the end, evangelization is not an option; it is a requirement of our Baptism and Confirmation." We as Christians, as Catholics, whether we have millions of followers like Chad Ochocinco, or are single students living with their parents, like me, we have, not only an opportunity, but a responsibility to be witnesses, to be a beacon of hope in a lost world. To be a Light in the Darkness......
