“Sexual pleasure, which is a gift from God, is undermined by pornography: gratification without relationship, which can generate forms of addiction.” This is what the Pope said in the general audience, emphasizing: “We must defend love.” “The fight against Desire to overcome the 'reification' of the other can be a lifelong endeavor,” the Pope added in the catechesis on the vice of lust.
The pope also spoke of chastity, which “should not be confused with sexual abstinence.” It is “the will never to possess the other.” Loving means respecting the other, seeking his happiness, developing empathy for his feelings, empathizing with the knowledge of a body, a psychology and a soul that are not ours and must be considered because of the beauty they bring with them. “Loving is beautiful,” emphasized Pope Francis. But sometimes falling in love “is distorted by the demon of lust, and this vice is particularly hateful, for at least two reasons. Firstly, because it destroys relationships between people. Unfortunately, everyday news is enough to document such a reality. How many have relationships that started in the best way and then turned into toxic relationships, relationships in which the other person is possessed, with no respect and no sense of boundaries?”
Finally, the Pope quoted the Song of Songs, a book of the Bible, to affirm that “in Christianity the sexual impulse is not condemned.”
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