November 7, 2015, 6:35p.m. – AN AUSTRALIAN Catholic speaker on Friday urged young men to shun pornography, saying it is not an exercise of freedom as it eventually “enslaves” those who consume it.
Matt Fradd, founder and executive director of The Porn Effect, a website about overcoming addiction to pornography, said increased exposure to porn leads the user to rationalize its consumption.
“The further entrenched in sins we are, the more rational inanity seems,” Fradd said during the “Real Love Revolution” seminar at San Carlos Seminary in Makati last Nov. 6.
“A man might see porn because he’s lonely and he wants to feel intimacy, but what happens is he becomes isolated. He might see it because he wants to feel free, but instead he gets enslaved by his addiction to it,” Fradd said.
Porn affects not just spiritual life, but also the social, physical, and neurological aspects of an individual, he said.
Fradd urged young men to lead a Christian life and practice chastity. “It is the duty of every man to uphold the dignity of every woman,” he said.
‘True manhood’
In another talk at St. Mary’s College of Quezon City, Fradd said a mistaken notion among men is that giving their life to God will lessen their manhood.
“God has come so that we may have life to the full. It is sin that dulls us, makes us uninstresting, narrow-minded, boring individuals,” Fradd said in the forum organized by the group Filipinos for Life.
True manhood, he said, is about looking up to Jesus.
Fradd said God’s commands are not in conflict with a man’s desires. “When you think about it, what God is demanding you as a man is in fact who you want to be.” K. N. A. Sevilla and L. M. P. Vicencio
