how Catholic networks participated in the mobilization

Gwenaëlle was only 12 years old when she discovered pornographic images for the first time. She quickly becomes “addicted”. “One afternoon, while watching videos, I felt like going to watch pornography, says this young woman in her twenties on the Christian site SOS Porno. And at that moment, I felt a power coming from the sky and I shouted “no!” I knew I was delivered. »

SOS Porno thus offers dozens of testimonials from people who have come out of this addiction thanks to faith and are actively campaigning against pornography. It is one of the many Christian structures, in particular Catholic, such as the network of Catholic Family Associations (AFC), Alliance Vita or Lights in the dark – which created the SOS Porno site –, mobilized for a long time against pornography.

Spearheads

A file which the government took up by announcing in mid-February its desire to fight against minors’ access to pornography. A digital “certificate of majority”, using an independent platform, will thus be tested from March.

This concern is, of course, not the prerogative of Christian circles. Other associations are also very committed to the subject. Thus, Ennocence has been fighting since 2015 against the exposure of children to pornographic content on the Web and “undertakes to offer parliamentarians and institutions concrete avenues for reflection to put in place a new legal framework”.

However, according to Pascale Morinière, the president of the AFC, Catholics have clearly been among the spearheads of this movement. “In the beginning, the fight against pornography was mainly a right-wing and ‘Catholic’ subject,” she says.

Books, conferences, forums

Among the notable initiatives, she cites a symposium on “child protection” and “access to online pornography” organized in September 2016 at the National Assembly on the initiative of deputy Jean-Frédéric Poisson , then chairman of the Christian Democratic Party. For Pascale Morinière, it helped to raise awareness far beyond the more than 250 people participating.

Other initiatives launched by Catholics are part of this mobilization. Thus, the book by Father Éric Jacquinet of the Emmanuel community, Libre pour amour, sortie de la pornographie, published in 2016, and the accompanying course inspired by it have met with some success.

In 2018, Catholic philosopher Martin Steffens published True Love, where he denounced pornography as a caricature of love. In January 2022, a group brought together by the AFC published a column in La Croix which worries about the “psycho-educational disaster” of pornography among young people and explores some possible solutions.

Other actors mobilized

In parallel with the mobilization of Catholic networks, other actors are taking up the subject. Socialist senator and former minister for families, children and women’s rights, Laurence Rossignol notably published in September 2022, with three other parliamentarians, an information report entitled Porno, l’enfer du décor.

Eventually, this activism led to government action to better block minors’ access to porn sites. “It is the first time that a minister has said such strong words,” said Catholic François Billot de Lochner, president of the Stop Porn association, who wrote to President Emmanuel Macron in November 2019.

In France, two-thirds of children under 15 have already had access to these sites. “A scourge,” insists François Billot de Lochner. The consequences of these images are disastrous. »

Caroline Roux, Deputy Director General of Alliance Vita, which works to defend human dignity, remains cautious about the government’s measure: “It’s going in the right direction, but I remain circumspect about its effectiveness. real, without a global policy. This association insists more broadly on the “violence” that pornography spreads throughout society and which “seriously impacts adults”.

“Even if this measure does not give results, judge François Billot de Lochner, the movement is launched”.

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