This is My Confession: What I Wish a Priest had Said to Me Decades Ago about Forgiveness and Healing from Porn.
As someone who has in the past unhealthy compulsive behavior (can be read as “addiction” if that is easier) this is what I wish a priest had said to me decades ago:
Instead what I received from priests in the confessional went something more like this:
Many confessions, I wanted to yell at the priest "I've already tried that, do you think I'd be here if it worked!" What often hurt worse than those well-intentioned and accusatory and compassionless priests were the priests who were silent. It felt as if my sins were no big deal, and that they didn't even care. It wasn't as if I was confessing that I told my mom there was no surprise party when there really was one. I was confession, according to my understanding of sin at the time, serious mortal sin. Even though I might have been the 30th person that day confessing porn and masturbation, and after 20 years of priesthood hearing those sins were no longer a big deal to those silent priests. It was behavior which as a coach and teacher said, “I give up on this person. They will never change.” Maybe they had given up on me, or maybe they had given up on themselves. I don’t know, but what I do know is that those were my sins and they were a big deal to me. The unwillingness to ask probing questions, or in some cases the mere glossing over -- as if the sins were nothing -- did not help to heal but only allowed the brokenness to continue.
Some priests I encountered, as noted in their words at the beginning of this post, seemed to have an inability to be Christ's minister of love -- or maybe they believed in Christ's tough love, I don't know. But, as if I were the person accused by the world, taken before the Priest who was acting in the person of Christ. The world asking Christ for judgment upon me all while I pray that he will stave off those wishing to condemn and protect me from those wishing to pelt me with rock and stone, and all the priest did was join in that condemnation. If I could be back to those moments in the confessional this is what I would like to have said:
I left from those confessions no more free than I entered. Yes, the words of absolution gave me the assurance of forgiveness, and I did really intend to go and sin no more; however, I left more often than not feeling as if the compassionless and/or silent priests said to me, "Your yolk is heavy, and I will make it heavier" with no hope or sight of ever breaking the habit, and the only life I could foresee was one where I was destined to fall and fall and fall again due to this one, or two, sins. Even when I had a regular confessor, he seemed to be at a loss to help me in my recurring sins.
I can't place the full blame on the priests, most parishes at which I have been a parishioner often meant waiting in line for an hour, and the priest has little to no choice as to how much time he can spend in the confessional with a person because the line is so long – a good problem, but still a problem and a problem that made the confessional resemble more of a Starbucks drive-through with an impersonal encounter with the friendly neighborhood barista than an encounter with Christ. The other side of the coin was that I had been dealing with pornography in my life since I was about 11 years old, and from some time after my first exposure it became a regular part of my life and by the time I reached college, I would say I was addicted to it as well as to masturbation -- like with so many men, they are often a joint deal. Sadly, like most addicts, it takes time to realize and admit when a person is really dealing with a compulsion, as there is a blindness to one’s on addiction or at most an intellectual acknowledgment but nothing more, as one believes the lie that we do have control over our addiction and compulsive behavior. I assure you this is only an illusion of control.
For me, the problem originated and remained due to two sources. First, I was fed and/or found a steady stream of porn from friends, my dad, my brother and his friends, and eventually the internet – the internet is really like having a key to the largest porn shop in existence. But, the porn was a compulsion and coping mechanism for me and became a way of acting out when I was unwilling to acknowledge certain stressors in my life. The other part of my problem, I eventually learned and finally acknowledged but not till after great loss and much counseling, is that I grew up in a home where a family member quickly taught me that to love someone meant to be hurt by them, not in the poetic kind of sacrificial sense with broken hearts. Hurt in the sense of emotional and at times physical pain from one particular family member. Let's just say, I learned along the way that I was not allowed to be myself or even share with others what I found enjoyable or funny or important. I was unable to seek advice or share things in confidence without fear of it being broadcasted across the city in some capacity. I'd go into more detail, but now is not the time nor the place for this and what I have shared I think is enough to get the point across. In short, I learned to not trust others and because of this, I was unable to have what people would call real or normal relationships. I circled the wagons to protect myself and my two companions were porn and masturbation. The porn, I came to believe, was always there, and it would not hurt me and it would not judge me or share my secrets to the world or shame me further – it was all a lie, but it was a lie I willingly believed to be true.
One thing I can say for certain is that the lifestyle I was living was damaging for my relationships with others. I allowed it to influence my understanding of what a healthy relationship was and I noticed that the more frequently I used porn, the more self-centered I became as a person. By turning inward and focusing on me, I was not able to turn outward and give of myself to others even in simple ways. Friendships were always strained and distant at times, and dating was a mess.
While in college, I would go to retreats and conferences, and I would hear amazing stories about guys who were able to rid themselves of porn and masturbation in a way that seemed like a one and done miracle -- like Aquinas' special graces he received after chasing the prostitute from his room with a red hot poker. I would pray to God for these kinds of moments. They never happened. It would on occasion lead me to question God's existence. If God existed, and I keep asking for him to take away my problems with porn and masturbation and he never does, then does he really exist or at most if he does exist does he even care? To say the least, I was lost and felt hopeless.
Fortunately, I never gave up on God and the sacraments. Even often time I felt like I was making little to no progress I still kept going back to reconciliation and still praying my rosary and still going to Mass, but I had resigned myself to believing that I would forever have to live with this unhealthy compulsion duo of porn and masturbation.
What changed? One year, I fell into a rather stark and clear depression, and I luckily had the wisdom to see what it was, but during this time, I became an emotional wreck. The depression led me to seek out a professional counselor, one reason I went to a professional counselor was due to the fact that the priests in my parish were always too busy, and I didn't have 3-4 months to wait for a meeting. The counselor was more than willing to help me with my problem, and he was very respectful of my Catholicism as well. After a few session, he helped me realize why I was acting out (his phrase for porn and masturbation), and that I had compulsions, and there was or is a way out. I started working through the 12-step program taking as much time as needed to get through each step.
The biggest thing that the counselor did for me is that he did nothing to add to my shame, and he showed me that it was possible to break the compulsive behavior as he had helped many people change their behaviors. He extended to me compassion, something priests rarely showed me, and he helped me to realize again what it means to need a savior and what it means to be loved unconditionally and loved by that savior. Please note this was not a religious counselor. He was very secular, but he spoke truth here. The counselor provided me the missing piece of the confessional. The priest was able to forgive my sins, but the counselor helped me realize the
love and forgiveness of self. He helped me see my unhealthy habits, my own moral sins, and that fear really was the driving force of those sins. What casts out fear? Well, of course, love – which is what I learned in the counselor's office.
On a side note, my experience in the counselor's office allowed me to see certain things that I had learned in the past and even knew very well like new again -- Particularly the writings of John Paul II's Theology of the Body and Love and Responsibility as well as many of the passages of scripture that spoke of God loving his people even after his people treat him like garbage. I found myself being emotionally moved by the celebration of the Eucharist as well as a rekindling of devotion to my confirmation saint, Saint Joseph.
If you are a priest, and someone confesses porn or masturbation, please, please, please spend some time with him or her and determine the kind of problem it might be.
If you are currently addicted to porn and or masturbation, don't give up. The struggle means you are still alive. Dead things don't struggle. Be deliberate in your communication with the priest, seek out spiritual direction and even counseling. Expect healing to take time and do not expect a miracle. If God wants to give give you a miracle of healing and purity, he will, but do not expect it. Also, I have benefitted more from a short (in comparison to the time I've been going to confession) stint in counseling for breaking free from porn than I had with decades of priests in the confessional. Maybe I met some bad priests, maybe they were ignorant of how to help me. I do know there are many priests who are good and want to help.
Resources:
Integrity Restored
Covenant Eyes
"I'm sorry. It wasn't supposed to be this way. This evil has entered into your life and you did not seek it out, but it found you, and you had no idea of how to protect yourself from it, and the people who were supposed to protect you didn't. They might not have even known, and if they did they failed to see the seriousness of it. I am sorry. But, you don't have to continue in this. I will forgive you every time you come into the confessional. But with Christ's love, spiritual direction with me, and the help of a counselor we can get you back to where you need to be. It will take a long time, and it isn't going to be easy, but it will be worth it. And I love you."
Instead what I received from priests in the confessional went something more like this:
"Try doing something else. Do you have any hobbies?"
"Distract yourself. Go learn something new."
"That's sick. That's really really sad."
"You need help kid."
"You can't fight it. You'll never be free of it. So, go for a run, take a cold shower and try not to do it again."
"Pray the Rosary every day, and it will go away."
"Try hanging pictures of the Blessed Virgin Mary all over your room."
"Just stop."
Many confessions, I wanted to yell at the priest "I've already tried that, do you think I'd be here if it worked!" What often hurt worse than those well-intentioned and accusatory and compassionless priests were the priests who were silent. It felt as if my sins were no big deal, and that they didn't even care. It wasn't as if I was confessing that I told my mom there was no surprise party when there really was one. I was confession, according to my understanding of sin at the time, serious mortal sin. Even though I might have been the 30th person that day confessing porn and masturbation, and after 20 years of priesthood hearing those sins were no longer a big deal to those silent priests. It was behavior which as a coach and teacher said, “I give up on this person. They will never change.” Maybe they had given up on me, or maybe they had given up on themselves. I don’t know, but what I do know is that those were my sins and they were a big deal to me. The unwillingness to ask probing questions, or in some cases the mere glossing over -- as if the sins were nothing -- did not help to heal but only allowed the brokenness to continue.
Some priests I encountered, as noted in their words at the beginning of this post, seemed to have an inability to be Christ's minister of love -- or maybe they believed in Christ's tough love, I don't know. But, as if I were the person accused by the world, taken before the Priest who was acting in the person of Christ. The world asking Christ for judgment upon me all while I pray that he will stave off those wishing to condemn and protect me from those wishing to pelt me with rock and stone, and all the priest did was join in that condemnation. If I could be back to those moments in the confessional this is what I would like to have said:
"Yes, Father. I am sick, and I am broken, and I don't know how to fix it. That is why I am here. Have compassion on me and extend to me Christ's love and healing. I need to know that I am loved as I feel not loved by others and that God has not given up on me. It is impossible to just stop. Exercise doesn't work. Distracting myself doesn't work. Hanging pictures of the Blessed Mother in my room doesn't work. Nothing works. I need Christ’s love, which I can’t seem to see or find right now."
I left from those confessions no more free than I entered. Yes, the words of absolution gave me the assurance of forgiveness, and I did really intend to go and sin no more; however, I left more often than not feeling as if the compassionless and/or silent priests said to me, "Your yolk is heavy, and I will make it heavier" with no hope or sight of ever breaking the habit, and the only life I could foresee was one where I was destined to fall and fall and fall again due to this one, or two, sins. Even when I had a regular confessor, he seemed to be at a loss to help me in my recurring sins.
I can't place the full blame on the priests, most parishes at which I have been a parishioner often meant waiting in line for an hour, and the priest has little to no choice as to how much time he can spend in the confessional with a person because the line is so long – a good problem, but still a problem and a problem that made the confessional resemble more of a Starbucks drive-through with an impersonal encounter with the friendly neighborhood barista than an encounter with Christ. The other side of the coin was that I had been dealing with pornography in my life since I was about 11 years old, and from some time after my first exposure it became a regular part of my life and by the time I reached college, I would say I was addicted to it as well as to masturbation -- like with so many men, they are often a joint deal. Sadly, like most addicts, it takes time to realize and admit when a person is really dealing with a compulsion, as there is a blindness to one’s on addiction or at most an intellectual acknowledgment but nothing more, as one believes the lie that we do have control over our addiction and compulsive behavior. I assure you this is only an illusion of control.
For me, the problem originated and remained due to two sources. First, I was fed and/or found a steady stream of porn from friends, my dad, my brother and his friends, and eventually the internet – the internet is really like having a key to the largest porn shop in existence. But, the porn was a compulsion and coping mechanism for me and became a way of acting out when I was unwilling to acknowledge certain stressors in my life. The other part of my problem, I eventually learned and finally acknowledged but not till after great loss and much counseling, is that I grew up in a home where a family member quickly taught me that to love someone meant to be hurt by them, not in the poetic kind of sacrificial sense with broken hearts. Hurt in the sense of emotional and at times physical pain from one particular family member. Let's just say, I learned along the way that I was not allowed to be myself or even share with others what I found enjoyable or funny or important. I was unable to seek advice or share things in confidence without fear of it being broadcasted across the city in some capacity. I'd go into more detail, but now is not the time nor the place for this and what I have shared I think is enough to get the point across. In short, I learned to not trust others and because of this, I was unable to have what people would call real or normal relationships. I circled the wagons to protect myself and my two companions were porn and masturbation. The porn, I came to believe, was always there, and it would not hurt me and it would not judge me or share my secrets to the world or shame me further – it was all a lie, but it was a lie I willingly believed to be true.
One thing I can say for certain is that the lifestyle I was living was damaging for my relationships with others. I allowed it to influence my understanding of what a healthy relationship was and I noticed that the more frequently I used porn, the more self-centered I became as a person. By turning inward and focusing on me, I was not able to turn outward and give of myself to others even in simple ways. Friendships were always strained and distant at times, and dating was a mess.
While in college, I would go to retreats and conferences, and I would hear amazing stories about guys who were able to rid themselves of porn and masturbation in a way that seemed like a one and done miracle -- like Aquinas' special graces he received after chasing the prostitute from his room with a red hot poker. I would pray to God for these kinds of moments. They never happened. It would on occasion lead me to question God's existence. If God existed, and I keep asking for him to take away my problems with porn and masturbation and he never does, then does he really exist or at most if he does exist does he even care? To say the least, I was lost and felt hopeless.
Fortunately, I never gave up on God and the sacraments. Even often time I felt like I was making little to no progress I still kept going back to reconciliation and still praying my rosary and still going to Mass, but I had resigned myself to believing that I would forever have to live with this unhealthy compulsion duo of porn and masturbation.
What changed? One year, I fell into a rather stark and clear depression, and I luckily had the wisdom to see what it was, but during this time, I became an emotional wreck. The depression led me to seek out a professional counselor, one reason I went to a professional counselor was due to the fact that the priests in my parish were always too busy, and I didn't have 3-4 months to wait for a meeting. The counselor was more than willing to help me with my problem, and he was very respectful of my Catholicism as well. After a few session, he helped me realize why I was acting out (his phrase for porn and masturbation), and that I had compulsions, and there was or is a way out. I started working through the 12-step program taking as much time as needed to get through each step.
The biggest thing that the counselor did for me is that he did nothing to add to my shame, and he showed me that it was possible to break the compulsive behavior as he had helped many people change their behaviors. He extended to me compassion, something priests rarely showed me, and he helped me to realize again what it means to need a savior and what it means to be loved unconditionally and loved by that savior. Please note this was not a religious counselor. He was very secular, but he spoke truth here. The counselor provided me the missing piece of the confessional. The priest was able to forgive my sins, but the counselor helped me realize the
love and forgiveness of self. He helped me see my unhealthy habits, my own moral sins, and that fear really was the driving force of those sins. What casts out fear? Well, of course, love – which is what I learned in the counselor's office.
On a side note, my experience in the counselor's office allowed me to see certain things that I had learned in the past and even knew very well like new again -- Particularly the writings of John Paul II's Theology of the Body and Love and Responsibility as well as many of the passages of scripture that spoke of God loving his people even after his people treat him like garbage. I found myself being emotionally moved by the celebration of the Eucharist as well as a rekindling of devotion to my confirmation saint, Saint Joseph.
If you are a priest, and someone confesses porn or masturbation, please, please, please spend some time with him or her and determine the kind of problem it might be.
If you are currently addicted to porn and or masturbation, don't give up. The struggle means you are still alive. Dead things don't struggle. Be deliberate in your communication with the priest, seek out spiritual direction and even counseling. Expect healing to take time and do not expect a miracle. If God wants to give give you a miracle of healing and purity, he will, but do not expect it. Also, I have benefitted more from a short (in comparison to the time I've been going to confession) stint in counseling for breaking free from porn than I had with decades of priests in the confessional. Maybe I met some bad priests, maybe they were ignorant of how to help me. I do know there are many priests who are good and want to help.
Resources:
Integrity Restored
Covenant Eyes
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