I know I was not a believer while I worked at that place — however much I wanted to be one.

Neat.

I have always been "Catholic", but not always practicing. I can remember the times I did not practice, and like you, I seemed to be surrounded by the seediest, immoral people (oddly, I also spent a lot of time hanging out in the Village in those days...hmmmm). But I never had the perspective of what it was like to go from being kind of nothing to seeking out a faith. I am in awe of people who do it all on their own.
Pansy Moss | Homepage | 07.17.06 - 6:28 am | #

His return to that life would reflect his beliefs, which are founded & grounded in sand.

A lot of those pagan man-made "religions" embrace an unholy physical lifestyle as "natural love" or something like that. Weren't there a lot of gurus who took advantage of naive young girls while $elling them their brand of $pirituality?

Same thing. Now, however, there is more of a slant to convince womyn that they are "empowered" & superior to, not equal to, men. Yet, the ultimate goal is still the same unholy alliance! How "reverse psychological" can you get?

That said, more than once, I have seen these womyn's very unhappy reaction when their partner has decided to experience a "natural spontaneous occurence" with someone other than them.
Faith | Homepage | 07.17.06 - 8:31 am | #

I vote for this person to play you when your autobio becomes a movie:

http://www.mtv.com/music/artist/...ee/ artist.jhtml

Hit the play button for "Invisible"...
Faith | Homepage | 07.17.06 - 9:19 am | #

Thanks Dawn for posting Mike's story, and his follow-up. I'm glad to see that he's not foreclosing himself to the possibility of coming back - just as I didn't, and I've been rewarded with a strong and beautiful faith.

My experience has been that my defects of character constantly recur, and that the things that got in the way of my relationship with God have been slow to be lifted. My own story proves it.
Fallen Sparrow | Homepage | 07.17.06 - 2:40 pm | #

Interesting that Mike did not feel he could resume the drugs and alcohol, but did resume the "eyeballing nudies".

In my opinion, most of what is wrong with the pornography industry is its exploitiveness and its degrading treatment of sex.

Edited By Siteowner
Wally | 07.17.06 - 4:14 pm | #

Wally, now that you've made your comment, I ask that neither you nor any other commenter here use this forum to personally criticize Mike or his avocation. Thank you for your cooperation.
Dawn Eden | Homepage | 07.17.06 - 6:45 pm | #

Hope this doesn't enrage the site owner but a hollow laugh escapes me when MM claims "God doesn't hate my predilection for eyeballing nudies, I concluded, nor anybody else's."

Would Mike eyeball these nudies if they were a member of his immediate family? Wife, Mother, Sister, daughter? Would he? Really???

There's a real dislocation in his values system somewhere.
Another Steve | 07.17.06 - 7:37 pm | #

Don't be so hard on the lad you guys.

St. Augustine lived a pretty rough and tumble life; he admitted that for some time after his conversion, he remained a tutor of rhetoric, which in his mind was a dirty job. He was fully conscious of being divided between what he knew to be true and how he lived.

In conversion, there is such a thing as an in-between period, sometimes lasting years. I recommend a classic book by William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience, based on his Glasgow lectures, where he describes fascinating commonalities in the phenomenology of religious conversion.

I think MM is on track to become a saint.
doctor J | 07.17.06 - 8:47 pm | #

Point taken Dr J but sometimes it doesn't hurt for people to know the opinions others hold on them. Knowing what others think can definitely be part of the saint making process. St Paul had plenty to say along those lines - he never equivocated.
Pax
Another Steve | 07.17.06 - 8:54 pm | #

Dawn, I'm not sure I made myself clear. I was not trying to criticize Mike, I think you may not have read what I wrote carefully. I remarked that it was "interesting" that he gave up the alcohol and drugs completely, but merely moderated his involvement with pornography. There was no irony or sarcasm intended here -- in Mike's case there may have been excellent reasons for this difference (for example, his use of "nudies" may not have been addictive, just as alcohol can be used non-addictively by some people). I don't maintain that there are clear moral parallels between porn, drugs and alcohol (and I believe that SOME of what would be called "porn" by some people is in fact innocent artistic nudity containing no element of exploitation or degradation).
Wally | 07.17.06 - 10:56 pm | #

Dr J - I can appreciate the difference between what we are and what we may yet become; yet St Augustine would be the first to tell you that this division did not help him. But (thanks be to God) to be wholehearted eventually puts the rest of us right in the end.
Nightfly | Homepage | 07.18.06 - 1:52 am | #

I get a bit restless when well meaning believers simply - addictively - wish for the 'happy' predestined ending of someone becoming the Christian... at least the Christian they believe is the correct type.

Mull the intricacies of people's grappling with the grey lines of faith - or no faith. I think you miss the important lessons on how people come to a faith when you immediately pray for their standard conversion. If it's not a continued fascination with porn or alcohol - it might be doughnuts making them stumble in their faith.

So, as icky as a porn fetish can be, it might be the thing that a guy like Mike has to grapple with for the duration. It makes me see why AA would drop the specifics of a religious order to examine the mechanisms of addiction, rather than spin wheels in the condemnation corner.

He's quite a guy to come back and apologise!
middlegal | 07.18.06 - 3:05 am | #

If it's not a continued fascination with porn or alcohol - it might be doughnuts making them stumble in their faith.

"... the only thing that matters is the extent to which you separate the man from the Enemy. It does not matter how small the sins are, provided that their cumulative effect is to edge the man away from the Light and out into the Nothing. Murder is no better than cards if cards can do the trick."

— C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters
Dawn Eden | Homepage | 07.18.06 - 3:16 am | #

Have to second Sparrow -- thanks for posting both pieces -- it was very generous of Mike to share his views and his struggles with us.

I began to wonder: if his work has helped many longing souls make it through lonely nights...has given people bereft of mates a feeling of some sort of connection with the rest of humanity...has provided solace and distraction to those bruised by the cruelty of the outside world...could he be doing, somehow, good?

When I read Dawn's stunning quote, I realized that this had pretty much answered the question.

Still...any thoughts? Can anything in the sex industry ever be virtuous? For instance, I know a single older man with severe cerebral palsy. He told me that he was so lonely on the Fourth of July that he hired an escort. By driving out to his messy apartment to offer him a little human interaction on a holiday most spend with their family and loved ones, was this woman, in some way, doing a good deed?
Sarah | 07.18.06 - 5:31 am | #

Our culture makes it too easy to fall away, with its 'if it feels good, do it' mentality. Which has proven very profitable...

I agree with Another Steve that if more people thought of others with the same dignity & respect that we give to our sons & daughters, or brothers & sisters- the porn industry would fade away.

God bless your friend. No judgement is intended toward him- he is definitely headed in the right direction...

Recommended reading: The Unmasking of Oscar Wilde by Joseph Pearce.
Faith | Homepage | 07.18.06 - 7:28 am | #

Coming from a similar situation as Mike, I will say this: at the root of it, to drink (or use drugs) is to die; it can happen almost immediately (as it did for a friend of mine who got a bad bag of heroin last summer) or slowly and painfully. As he said, we "trudge". This involves a lot of stumbling, but, for the alcoholic, as long as we don't drink, there is a chance.

My own experience has shown me this: after I got sober, things that I never thought of as problematic when I was drinking (such as smoking, promiscuous sex, pornography, laziness at work) suddenly became problematic. In time some of those things have been removed, while others persist.

Nonetheless, I seek the consolation and forgiveness of Christ when I fall, and I resolve to do better. That is the key difference between the person I was 4 years ago and the person I am now. Oh, and I don't drink, too.

Interestingly enough, St. Augustine's Confessions ("Matters are so arranged at God's command that every disordered soul is its own punishment") and William James's Varieties of Religious Experience were two books that informed my early sobriety.
Fallen Sparrow | Homepage | 07.18.06 - 10:56 am | #

Sarah I read your comment last night just before bedtime. I wanted to sleep on any response. Here it is.

I think we all stand condemned by leaving the vulnerable and the sick alone. Jesus welcomed into Paradise these people.

For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in,
Matthew 25:34-36

He condemned those who ignored the lonely, the naked, and the hungry. Jesus condemns anyone who knowingly leaves the stranger unnoticed. Who are we to condemn that man you know or the woman he hired to keep him company?

Those without sin...you know the rest.
Another Steve | 07.18.06 - 4:26 pm | #

I have known a couple of people who had jobs like his. They became branded as porn ghetto guys, and could never get out. To get out meant not being a journo anymore, which was something hard to take for them.

Here's one guy who did redeem himself:

americandigest.org
OK, I admit I'm a lib | 07.19.06 - 8:58 am | #

Another Steve, your response was of such depth and compassion that I was extremely touched by it. Thanks also for relating the passage, which was new to me but so profound in its implications that it could easily be a main guiding principle for one's life. I will remember it often.
Sarah | 07.20.06 - 2:18 am | #

Another Steve,

I think that those who are truely condemned are those who,at the time of their corporeal death, are looking away from God.

Which, in any event, is always a good reason to pray for people.

And we can always say St. Gertrude the Great's prayer for those in Purgatory.

Not to mention that if you say the Rosary every day you will be saved or if you even say The Chaplet of Divine Mercy just once,Jesus has said in a vision to St. Faustina Kowalska that even the most hardened sinner will recieve grace.
P. Edward Murray | 07.20.06 - 10:24 pm | #

WUZ Part 25 and beyond... when can we expect that?

Inconoclastically yours-

Sir Net Pest
GW | Homepage | 12.06.06 - 2:35 pm | #