How to Cleanse Your Mind of Porn Images

One of the sins against the virtue of chastity is viewing pornography.  Pornography, the Catechism tells us (2354), "consists in removing real or simulated sexual acts from the intimacy of the partners, in order to display them deliberately to third parties."  It harms those who act/pose in it, those who sell it, and those who consume it.  And, today, it is all around us.

Pornography acts like a poison that twists how we see others and how we see ourselves.  And it is a poison that can stay:  the images you view can stay in your memory long after you want to forget them.

Can you get rid of them?  Can you cleanse your mind from these past images?  Author Matt Fradd has a suggestion for responding to these memories that is beautifully rooted in chastity-- in seeing others as real persons worthy of love and protection.  When he remembers an image... he prays for the people in the images!

Now, whenever I remember an image (which, I should say is rare), I don’t just pray against the temptation, I pray for the temptation. That is, I surrender this woman, who I have spiritually adopted, into the care of Mary Immaculate and pray for her.

Read more at How to Cleanse Your Mind of Porn Images.