This Sunday is Safe Haven Sunday with many parishes across the Diocese of Lansing making available information and resources on how you and your family can defeat the threat posed to you by pornography.
“As the bishops of the United States have stated wisely and clearly, the use of pornography by anyone in the home deprives the home of its role as a safe haven and has negative effects throughout a family's life and across generations,” says Richard Budd, Director of Marriage and Family Life for the Diocese of Lansing, October 5.
“Safe Haven Sunday is a great way of enabling parishes to provide teaching and resources that will support and protect individuals, marriages, and families in making all homes a safe haven.”
Safe Haven Sunday is inspired by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ 2016 formal statement, "Create in Me a Clean Heart: A Pastoral Response to Pornography."
It explains that all pornography is immoral and harmful, and can never be justified, including within marriage. Using or producing pornography is a sin against chastity and against human dignity. It reduces the body to an erotic stimulant. It harms viewers and does grave injury to those involved in its production.
Conversely, the bishops also teach that the virtue of chastity allows us to gain self-mastery in the area of sexuality. It is opposed to lust, which uses a person, and instead fosters genuine love for the other as a whole person. All of us are called to chastity.
Recent research suggests that a child’s first exposure to internet pornography is often during the elementary school years. This often occurs by accident. Hence Safe Haven Sunday aspires to help families to tackle the issue of pornography in a sensible and saintly way.
Safe Haven Sunday has been developed in conjunction with Covenant Eyes who are a Michigan-based provider of internet accountability and filtering software.
* For more information: https://www.covenanteyes.com/safe.../catholic-resources/