This sounds like yet another crazy Episcopalian story, and it kind of is, but it's more sinister. A California man who was until recently a pornographic film star has decided that he wants to be an Episcopal priest. The San Francisco diocese is all for it, even though it sounds like the man is not sure he has anything to repent of. Mind you, Christianity is all about second chances, and new life. There's no reason why a former porn star can't be a good priest. St. Mary of Egypt, one of the giants of the early Christian Church, was formerly a whore. This man, Ronald Boyer, might become a great saint. But it seems that the prudent thing to do is to have him strive to live a holy life before accepting him to holy orders. This is not especially confidence-building:
He has tired of performing in sex movies, but even now doesn’t condemn it. “Not one time did Jesus refer to pornography, or homosexuality,” he observed on the Internet show, which he began as a co-host in May. “Jesus could have commented. He didn’t.”
Here's where the story gets creepy. Despite being a hardcore porn star, Boyer got freaked out by the dark turns the industry is taking:
Asked about this, Mr. Boyer acknowledged, “When it comes to sexual acts, I’ll do anything.” But in recent years, he said, “my view of morality in this business has changed.”He was speaking on the floor of the sex industry convention in Las Vegas last January, where he was interviewing people for a documentary about spirituality, and where, in a sign of the contradictions in his life, his wife had been nominated for best supporting actress in a sex film for 2006.
“When I got into porn,” Mr. Boyer said, “everyone in the business was kind to each other, loved each other, came together in crisis. It wasn’t some 1970s kumbaya, but people generally cared. Now you see devil signs, Satanism and horns everywhere.” He gestured at a passer-by with “Hail Satan” on his T-shirt. “That’s disturbing me a lot,” he said. “I see more of an evil influence in the business.”
He told anecdotes of being asked by directors to defile the flag or the Koran in sex scenes; he has resisted what he sees as a trend to choke or hit women during intercourse, or use what he considers degrading language.
So, the mask comes off, and the real face of this inhuman industry is exposed. Culture of death indeed.
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Isn't this a direct (meaning, not cliched) example of holier than thou?
As a non-Christian (and having never been one, not an ex-C), this is an aspect of dogma that keeps me perpetually confused. I find it, most of the time, in direct contradiction to other aspects like forgiveness and salvation.
One comparison point that comes to mind is the Jewish high holy days Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. Every year, Jews seek atonement for sins against both God and their fellows.
I'm not attempting to create parallels or invidious comparisons. I'm just drawing attention to something I find less than constructive, and that's establishing a tradition of forgiveness and then judging people who have done wrong and later seek to start anew. It seems to me, observing from the outside, that a once and done criminal like a murderer is somehow easier to forgive than the porn star cited above.
Franklin, it's not a simple question of forgiveness. This guy was a great sinner, and may turn out to be a great saint. He is not entitled to be a priest just because that's what he's decided he wants to be. If he wants to help people spiritually or otherwise, fine. But to be an ordained priest means he will take on enormous responsibilities by virtue of his office. A priest stands for something. Seems to me that he should demonstrate that he really has turned from his former life before he takes up the ordained ministry. To be sure, I have never lived like this man, but I wouldn't be suited for the ministry, though I at one time considered the priesthood.
It's like this: say that this guy had been a poisoner, but turned from his former profession in January, and by summer said he wanted to join your staff as a chef. Would you think it wise to hand him the keys to the pantry and a toque so soon?
If the porn guy has genuinely changed course then be assured that trumpets in Heaven are a-blarin', and choirs of angels are a-singin', and we should be rejoicing right along with them--whether he should be a priest or not is another matter. But I wanted to comment more on Rod's point that pornography is a profoundly evil enterprise, and I'd suggest it was even before the guys in the business started wearing around their Hail Satan T-shirts and goat leggings and such. We tend to gloss over it as not so big a deal and more and more it gets mainstreamed and for cryin' out loud Hugh Hefner is just a cuddly fuzzy bear--who will probably have a state funeral when he dies--I can just see the E! Channel documentaries now... But in all seriousness, imagine how it is that the pornography enterprise wrecks souls:
We are created in God’s image, and more than anything that means we are created to love, to put the good of others first, above our own good, to love others as Jesus showed us that he loves us. The essential temptation, man’s condition really, is to put ourselves first, in the center, and the other’s purpose becomes to serve us one way or another. The other becomes an object for us to use. We are all on a vector—gradually moving toward being able to love like God, or gradually moving away from that.
The greatest evil of pornography is that it trains us to objectify others. With each pornographic image, after each image, after each image, we are training ourselves to see the other person not as a person, as an embodied soul, but as an object, an object whose sole purpose is our gratification. And the more we are trained in this way the more we become this way, and the more it spills over into our relationships so we come to see those around us as objects, whom we are less and less able to love. With the pervasiveness of pornography (something that’s new, never in history has it been like this), God only knows how many souls are having the ability to love gradually sucked out of them.
And the models and actors, same thing. They know well that they are being used, but that’s fine, they’re getting paid—so they are happily using those who are using them. And those behind it all?—pure business—trafficking in the bodies and souls of others for pure hard cash. In all aspects of the whole enterprise people are commodities, objects to be used for one’s own gratification—sexual, financial, whatever.
And the end result for an individual wrapped up in it, regardless of what part he or she plays—viewer, model, or businessman—is a steady day-after-day training, continual reiteration, that people are objects to be used, until, finally, the person has become unable to love, and unable to receive love, and that is Hell.
All of Evil’s efforts have this same aim and this is just one salient among many, but it’s not a small one, and I’d suspect it’s not an unsuccessful one.
It's deeply sad, really. Remember that all of these folks--however they participate--are God's children, with potential destinies so beautiful. But all under attack, all gradually having their capacity for love taken away. I imagine God looks at this enterprise--consuming his children--with the same horror that we would view child pornography--his beautiful children's souls tormented, bewildered, pulverized.
Interestingly, not a single culture has maintained a TFR=2 (replacement rate) after embracing Rock'n Roll.
And the misuse of statistics, currently at 87.42%, is at an all time high.
"...But to be an ordained priest means he will take on enormous responsibilities by virtue of his office. A priest stands for something. .."
Paul? Augustine?
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