RECOMMENDATIONS

The following recommendations are offered in light of developments subsequent to the original publication of the document.

• Make efforts to receive ongoing faith formation, especially in the realm of family and sexuality. • Form your children in the development of their faith (including prayer life, conscience, virtue, and frequent participation in the sacrament of reconciliation, and the imagination).15 • Provide opportunities for your children to establish healthy relationships with their peers and build community to avoid gravitation towards loneliness and isolation, which can often contribute to habits of viewing pornography. • Discuss chastity and the nature of human sexuality in age-appropriate ways over time, instead of waiting to have one difficult “talk” with them. • Encourage critical thinking and apply skills to determine whether digital media are trustworthy. • Discuss the importance of safeguarding mental health and reducing peer pressure with other parents. • Set a positive example for your children by decreasing your own time and dependence on mobile devices. • Intentionally build a regular routine of non-digital activities to do together. • Encourage your children to speak with you or another trusted adult when they come across misleading, harmful, or restricted websites. • Discuss the importance of rules for technology use with your children.16 • Some suggestions for family rules include:  Technology-free times, such as dinner or every Sunday.  Daily and weekly screentime limits and curfews, such as one hour before bedtime.  Screen-free zones such as the bedroom.  Monitoring software, parental controls, time limits, and content filters on all internet-capable devices.  A formal technology contract with your teen before giving them an internet-capable device.  Delay the use of smartphones until high school at the earliest, preferably later.17  Consider alternatives to smartphones. • Find resources here: Help for Those Struggling with Pornography (Help for Parents).18

• Articulate the transforming power of the Gospel as it relates to technology, sexuality, and community. • Provide pastoral support to those struggling with loneliness and isolation as well as print resources to parents at key times (e.g., first communion prep, confirmation prep, enrolling in parish school or CCD) on the dangers of porn and how to keep kids safe. • Preach and offer faith formation on the harms and addictive consequences of pornography, such as Safe Haven Sunday.19 • Help parishioners discern whether their level of technology use is appropriate, aiding them in their vocation, their growth in holiness, and their well-being. • Sponsor support groups focused on chastity and recovery from pornography addiction to meet at your parish or other awareness type events. • Keep a list of trusted mental health professionals in your area who work clinically with pornography problems in a way that upholds Catholic teaching. Refer to them often. • Find resources here: Help for Those Struggling with Pornography (Help for Men and Women).20

Develop opportunities for people to share their questions, fears, and stories related to their own or their loved ones’ use of pornography. • Offer support networks and/or therapists to those in the community experiencing loneliness or seeking to address their own pornography issues. • Host programs or activities that address the issue of pornography, as well as the joyful witness of Christians who live with sexual integrity. • Offer targeted outreach to youth and young adults who may be especially vulnerable to pornography addiction. • Find resources here: Help for Those Struggling with Pornography (Help for Men and Women).21

• Prohibit all use of mobile devices during school hours, or at least prohibit their use for non-emergency purposes in the classroom. • Teach the importance and life-giving benefits of chastity and responsible living, using resources such as a Theology of the Body curriculum adapted for appropriate ages. • Be mindful and pastoral with students, parents, staff, and volunteers exhibiting signs of loneliness, isolation, or other symptoms of unhealthy private behavior. • Offer school-sponsored, parish-sponsored, or diocesan-sponsored events to parents on keeping kids safe online. • Teach about the harms of pornography as a public health hazard (along the lines of tobacco and drug use) starting in middle school.

Civil authorities should prevent the production and distribution of pornographic materials.22 Recognizing the grave violation to the dignity and truth of human sexuality, we urge legislators to renew federal and state efforts to address the scourge of pornography and the lack of meaningful safeguards against it. The rise of artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies bring this issue to the forefront with a new urgency. We encourage civil leaders to consider the following policy recommendations: • Require age verification requirements on pornographic websites to protect children who are particularly vulnerable to exposure at earlier ages than ever before. • Respect the family as the central social institution of society and support the authority of parents to protect their children online, by ensuring that they have the tools necessary to monitor their children’s online activity. • Ensure that social media platforms do not permit abuse by predators or undermine the rights of parents to protect their children from harm. • Address the emergence of artificial intelligence in the production of pornography, especially in the case of ‘virtual child pornography.’ An additional development of the last decade requires our attention. It cannot be ignored that there is still a need for accountability for those who allow minors and other vulnerable people to be sexually exploited, either in secular society or in the Church.23 Story after story has become public when it was too late to stop the harm from being done. It is cooperation with profound evil to allow abusers and their accomplices to evade justice and continue in influential roles to preserve reputations. The words of our Lord hold just as true for those who shelter abusers as they do for those who get youths addicted to pornography: “Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone hung around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.” (Mt 18:6) Only when there is genuine transparency and authentic repentance can healing take place. Until then, perpetrators who need God’s mercy will remain with hardened hearts, unwilling to receive Christ’s words: “Neither do I condemn you. Go, from now on do not sin any more.” (Jn 8:11)

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Create in Me a Pure Heart: A Pastoral Response to Pornography

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