US bishops highlight pornography’s grip on a lonely, digital society
Thomas Edwards• May 13, 2025
The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) has released a ten-year anniversary preface to its document on the harms of pornography.
Create in Me a Pure Heart: A Pastoral Response to Pornography was originally issued in 2015 to counteract the growing prevalence of internet pornography. It offers guidance to those exploited by the pornography industry, those who exploit others through it, and also to parents, users, spouses, young people and clergy on how to respond to its widespread presence in contemporary culture.
In the ten years since the document’s publication, Covid, the use of artificial intelligence and an increasing dependence on technology have all contributed to the prevalence of pornography. The preface to the 2025 edition notes that modern society is increasingly living in a state of social isolation. The USCCB states that the “loneliness epidemic” can push individuals towards pornography, which “offers a deceptive substitute for real relationships”.
While religious institutions—most notably the Catholic Church and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints—have long denounced the moral and cultural damage caused by pornography, a growing number of studies conducted by secular organisations are also drawing attention to its wide-ranging negative effects.
A 2023 study by Brigham Young University in Utah found that pornography use by either men or women at any level negatively affected romantic relationships, with a particularly harmful impact on relationship stability.
A 2022 meta-analysis published in Human Communication Research concluded that exposure to pornography, particularly violent content, is associated with increased sexual aggression.
A 2024 study in the Australia and New Zealand Journal of Public Health found that early exposure to pornography among adolescents was linked to the development of harmful sexual attitudes and behaviours.
Websites providing pornography are also facing increasing criticism. Pornhub, a porn-sharing site owned by the Canadian multinational Aylo (formerly known as MindGeek), has been found to have profited from the rape of children in hundreds of cases across the world, with the platform often slow to, or refusing to, take down offending videos.
One internal document indicates that, as of May 2020, Pornhub hosted 706,000 videos that had been flagged by users for showing rape, child sexual abuse, or other unlawful content.
Following public backlash and a number of high-profile cases showing the company to have knowingly permitted child abuse material on its platform, the site removed 70 per cent of its content later in 2020. In March 2023, Aylo was acquired by the Canadian private equity firm Ethical Capital Partners (ECP), and Solomon Friedman, a Canadian criminal defence attorney and rabbi, became the public face of the company.
However, the connection with child abuse remains. Friedman has publicly commented on his past work defending clients in possession of child sexual abuse material, and once congratulated another attorney who succeeded in having his client acquitted on a technicality—despite the man possessing 7,730 images of child sexual abuse, including images of infants being raped.
The USCCB calls out for action against this moral evil in the 2025 preface, stating that “there is still a need for accountability for those who allow minors and other vulnerable people to be sexually exploited”, and that “only when there is genuine transparency and authentic repentance can healing take place.”
The full document can be read on the USCCB website and a hard copy can be purchased at Ascension Press.
Photo: Chepko Danil Vitalevich – Shutterstock