Catholic Education Group: Colleges Must Monitor Student Porn Use

LOS ANGELES—A Catholic group that says its mission is “to promote and defend faithful Catholic education is taking aim at porn viewing by college students, especially during the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. According to an op-ed in The National Catholic Register, “Catholic colleges should take the lead in mitigating pornography use on campus, helping students avoid the temptation, and counseling students with addiction.” The op-ed was penned by Patrick Reilly, president and founder of the Cardinal Newman Society, an educational watchdog group for Catholic colleges, universities and schools.  The op-ed followed a lengthy report by the Newman group titled “Fighting Pornography on Catholic College Campuses.” In the document, researcher Peter Tapsak starts from the premise that “pornography is gravely sinful and commodifies the human person; it deeply harms students and impacts every aspect of their lives.” The report goes on to implore Catholic colleges to “strive to prevent pornography use on campus.” If Catholic schools do not crack down on student porn-viewing, the report says, “it would be a huge missed opportunity—and maybe even a dereliction of duty.” The Cardinal Newman report follows a trend of Catholic universities threatening to limit or ban private porn viewing by students in their dorm rooms — efforts that have sometimes come from students themselves. In 2018 a group of 80 male students at the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana, called for the school to install filters that would block porn sites from Notre Dame’s campus wi-fi networks. Then, in 2019, a group of student government representatives at Catholic University of America demanded that the school install filters to bloc the “top 200” porn sites from campus networks, calling porn “a grave offense against chastity” responsible for “grave injury" to the “dignity” of its own performers. Students at Georgetown University, another Catholic-run institution, also took steps to create a porn ban on campus. The pandemic has only amped up students’ desire for porn, Reilly wrote. “Social distancing limitations are difficult for college students, who are asked to avoid gatherings and campus events. Students are spending even longer hours in front of computers and cell phones, because of schoolwork or as an escape from boredom, isolation and loneliness,” the Cardinal Newman founder wrote. “For young people at home and in campus residences, the temptation and opportunity to view online pornography has probably never been higher.” Reilly also cited the often-repeated claim that porn viewing is linked with mental health issues. But according to an academic research study earlier this year, not only is there no documented connection between porn use and mental health issues, frequent porn users are up to eight times less likely to report experiencing such issues, compared to those who claim that their porn use has caused mental health problems. A previous study, in 2018, found that people from deeply religious backgrounds were mode likely to report mental health issues connected to porn, or to describe themselves as suffering from “porn addiction.” “Even though many people who grew up in religious, sexually conservative households, have strong negative feelings about pornography, many of those same people continue to use pornography,” psychologist David Ley said. “And then they feel guilty and ashamed of their behavior, and angry at themselves and their sexual desire to watch more porn.” Photo By Teemu008 / Wikimedia Commons