Pornography, Confession, and Amendment of Life

Recently I saw online a video of a priest preaching about folks who go to confession over and over with the same sin—in this case, pornography—and how they may be 'abusing' God's mercy.

Certainly pornography is a serious issue. Any priest who hears confessions knows that it has become a serious public health crisis. It has the potential to deform imaginations and consciences and to weaken and even destroy real relationships.

And it’s true enough, to go to confession without any contrition or willingness to ‘amend my life’ (as we say in a common version of the Act of Contrition), would be something sacrilegious and a sin of presumption on God’s mercy.

But is that what is going on when people come to confession over and over, especially in the case of this particular problem? In my estimation, no. Or at least it must be rare. I think what is usually the case is that someone wants to make a change, to find freedom from the emptiness and ennui of this problem, but doesn’t know how to begin to succeed.

They want to make amendment of life, but fail. Why?

Kneeling Crucified

Today is the feast of St. Leopold Mandić, OFM Cap., (1866-1942), a Croatian who ended up as a noted confessor in Padua. I was reading Pope St. John Paul II's homily for his canonization, and came across this striking paragraph:

What remained for St. Leopold? Whom or for what did his life serve? He was for his brothers and sisters who had lost God, love, hope. Impoverished human beings, in need of God, who called out, imploring his forgiveness, his consolation, his peace and serenity. St. Leopold gave his life to these ‘poor’, offering his own sufferings and prayer for them, above all in celebrating the sacrament of Reconciliation. It was there that he lived his charism and there that his heroic virtues expressed themselves. He celebrated the sacrament of Reconciliation, carrying out his ministry as if in the shadow of Christ crucified. His gaze was set on the crucifix, hanging on the penitent’s kneeler. The Crucified was always the protagonist. ‘It is he who forgives, he who absolves!’ He who is the shepherd of the flock ...

Italian doesn't make a distinction between the noun crucifix and the adjective (or nominalized adjective, as in this case) crucified. I decided to translate both ways in different instances according to what seemed to me the simplest sense of the text. But I can't help but think that John Paul II meant to indicate a connection between a crucifix displayed in the confessional and the crucified humanity of Christ 'hanging' on the kneeler in the person of the penitent.

As a priest it's one of the things that strikes you with awe and your own unworthiness, becoming a witness to the suffering Christ in the penitents who come to you.

I had a wonderful spiritual director right before I entered the Capuchin Order. One time I asked him where God was when I was committing a sin. He looked at me like I didn't know anything.

"He's suffering with you on the Cross."

Full text of the homily (in Italian) here.