- Bishop Robert W. Finn, Blessed Are the Pure in Heart: A Pastoral Letter on the Dignity of the Human Person and the Dangers of Pornography (New Haven, CT: Knights of Columbus Supreme Council, 2007). Copies can be obtained from the Knights of Columbus, P.O. Box 1971, New Haven, CT 06521-1971 or phone (203) 752-4018. It is also available online at the CatholicCulture.Org website at http://www.catholicculture.org/library/view.cfm?id=7438.
- Professionals in various fields are themselves reflecting on the consequences of pornography. The Witherspoon Institute at Princeton is currently engaged in a two-year project, “The Social Costs of Pornography,” to examine the nature of pornography in its moral and social consequences. In December 2008, they held a study meeting where the most up-to-date research was presented and discussed by leading experts in the fields of psychiatry, psychology, neurophysiology, philosophy, sociology, law, and political theory. The results of this study, with recommendations, are soon to be published.
- I give attention to Augustine’s section on aspects of the will because bad habits can easily become addictions, as we know from habits of smoking, drinking, shopping, and sexual disorders. There is a fine line between bad habit and addiction. Augustine’s habit of impurity came close to sexual addiction.
- Finn, Blessed Are the Pure in Heart, 6.
- Ibid., 6–7.
- Ibid., 8.
- bid., 9.
- Ibid., 12.
- Published by Ignatius Press, San Francisco, 1993.
- Finn, Blessed Are the Pure in Heart, 7.
- Ibid, 14–15.
- The importance of this is explained by St. Ignatius of Loyola in the Spiritual Exercises, rule 13 of his guidelines for the discernment of spirits.
- Published by the Daughters of St. Paul.
- Ibid., 16.
- Published by Ascension Press, West Chester, PA, in 2007.
- John F. Harvey, O.S.F.S., Moral Theology of the Confessions of Saint Augustine (1951; Eugene, OR: WIPF and Stock, 2009), 96.
- Ibid., 97.
- Augustine, Confessions, bk. 8, ch. 1, n. 1.
- Ibid.
- Ibid., bk. 8, ch. 1, n. 2.
- Ibid., bk. 8, ch. 5, n. 10.
- Ibid., bk. 8, ch. 10, n. 22.
- Ibid., bk. 7, ch. 3, n. 5.
- Ibid., bk. 8, ch. 9, n. 21.
- Ibid., bk. 8, ch. 5, n. 10.
The Linacre Quarterly
Volume 77, 2010 - Issue 1