As a fairly new re-minted Catholic, I'm discovering the truth of something I read in a C. S. Lewis book: you don't know what sin really is until you try not to do it. Lewis' contention, which I now heartily agree with, is that evil people don't really know evil the way good people do - awash in sin, people tend to think in terms of "at least I'm not as bad as that", rather than thinking of how much better they could be. I've now been trying, and mostly failing, to keep my sins under control - keeping in mind that most sins, and especially the worst sins, are those which go on in the deep recesses or our souls. But I have learned, at least to an extent, what a creep I've been my whole life.

Do you lust after members of the opposit sex? I'm not saying "do you have sex" with them - do you just lust after them, even for a moment? I am a happily married man - I love my wife, very much...but I can't walk down the street without seeing some woman and, whammo, lust raises its ugly head. I do not - and will not - ever follow these lust...but that makes no matter, I've already done all the sin I need to do. And the sin I've done, the horrible thing I've done, is that I've viewed one of my fellow human beings and didn't see a human being, but saw an object.

That oftentimes the person has objectified themselves doesn't matter - it is I who failed to control myself. That they have done wrong doesn't help the fact that I've done wrong, too. We're pretty much geared towards such things these days as our society is entirely soaked in pornography. And pornography isn't just pictures of naked people...it is also people dolled up to look like tramps, or sexy depictions of violent actions...all words and pictures which ignore the innate dignity of the human person, that is pornography. And we are awash in it - heck, we hardly even notice it anymore...at least, I didn't, until I tried to stop watching it.

I do believe that this over emphasis on the pornographic has had large, deletrious affects on our society. I do believe that the rampant displays of violence as "cool" have made us more violent. I do believe that the displays of sex as a commodity have made us less faithful, and more demanding of personal sexual gratification, regardless of cost. Please understand - I don't think that if you watch a Schwarzenegger flick that you'll go out and machine gun passersby, nor do I think that after watching a pornographic movie that you'll rape the first woman you meet - but the aggregate affect of so much pornographic sex and violence simply must have an affect on the human mind.

Think of how many people are convinced that there was a conspiracy to kill JFK - there is zero evidence of such a thing, but I'll bet that nearly half of all Americans will assert stoutly that such is the case. If people can be convinced of what isn't there, how hard would it be to convince them of what seems to be there? Show someone sex and violence 10,000 times and try to tell me that they won't be affected in some way - and likely in some bad way unless they are a person of rare strength.

I don't know if we can control the amount of pornography in our society, but I do believe we must try. Standing outside of it for the first time since I was a child, I can finally see just how large and nasty a beast it is. It does no one any good, it does many people great harm...and we, for the most part, refuse to even acknowledge its existence. We're already a long way down the road to social disaster, and it isn't "progressive" if all you're doing is going further down the wrong road. It is time we turned back, and turned our backs on this nasty, destructive thing.

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