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1 An earlier version of this article was presented on 21 October 2011 at the “Thomistic Circles”conference on “Christian Marriage: Nature and Sacrament” at the Thomistic Institute of the Dominican House of Studies, Washington, D.C. The author of this essay is a husband, father, and university professor. The matters under discussion in this article detrimentally affect the well-being of youth, college and university students, single as well as married persons, and are therefore of concern to all Christians and persons of good will. The author’s state of life as a married lay person suggests in and of itself that the apposite focus of these considerations will be on conjugal chastity and on chastity in the context of a call to the married life. 1 The Thomist 77 (2013): 1-39 THE VIRTUE OF CHASTITY AND THE SCOURGE OF PORNOGRAPHY: A TWOFOLD CRISIS CONSIDERED IN LIGHT OF THOMAS AQUINAS’S MORAL THEOLOGY1 REINHARD HÜTTER Duke University Divinity School Durham, North Carolina [A]ll that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the pride of life, is not of the Father but is of the world. And the world passes away, and the lust of it; but he who does the will of God abides for ever. (1 John 2:1617 [RSV]) Has virtue … lost its good name? Has the virtue of chastity in particular ceased to be respectable? Or is chastity no longer recognized as a virtue? It is not just a question of reputation. The use of a noun, and lip service to it, are not decisive. What matters is whether virtue is made welcome in the human soul, the human will. If not it ceases to have any real existence. Mere respect for the words “virtue” and “chastity” has no great significance. (Karol Wojty»a, Love and Responsibility, 143) T ODAY IN AMERICA AND IN EUROPE, we live in a culture of excess. Food is plentiful in both grocery stores and restaurants; material goods line the shelves of our emporia; videos, movies, and games abound on multiple digital REINHARD HÜTTER 2 2 Frank Rich, “Naked Capitalists: There’s No Business Like Porn Business,” The New York Times, 20 May 2001 (http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/20/magazine/20PORN.html? pagewanted=all). 3 Websites commenting on the issue of Internet pornography frequently offer statistics, but given the difficulties in determining the nature and extent of the use of the Internet for pornographic purposes, such statistics must be acknowledged—as they often are on the websites themselves—with some caution. 4 Catechism of the Catholic Church. Second Edition Revised in Accordance with the Official Latin Text Promulgated by Pope John Paul II (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1997). See also the resources offered at the end of the most pertinent 2007 pastoral letter from Bishop Robert W. Finn of the Diocese of Kansas, Blessed are the Pure of Heart: A Pastoral Letter on the Dignity of the Human Person and the Dangers of Pornography (http://issuu.com/knightsofcolumbus/docs/323?mode=embed&layout=http%3A%2F%2Fs kin.issuu.com%2Fv%2Flight%2Flayout.xml&showFlipBtn=true). devices; and even information flows over us so that we can scarcely recall today what we watched, listened to, or read yesterday. Along with this remarkable abundance comes an equally remarkable wastefulness. Together, abundance and wastefulness make up the excess that marks contemporary Western culture. Excess is both a sign of a disordered appetite and an invitation for the vices of gluttony and lust which encumber proper human flourishing and endanger the dignity of ourselves and the persons with whom we interact. One particular and pressing instance of such excess has been the widening availability of pornography. Twelve years ago The New York Times was reporting that pornography was an industry “estimated to total between $10 billion and $14 billion annually in the United States in America.”2 While exact statistics may be hard to come by,3 it is indubitable that Internet porn is both plentiful and easily accessible to both adults and children who log onto computers without screening controls. Such widespread and easy availability of pornography constitutes a...

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