Pope Francis has said that sexual pleasure is a gift from God although it is undermined by pornography.
Speaking to his general audience in the Vatican on Wednesday, the head of the catholic church added that sexual pleasure should be disciplined with patience.
He asked members of the catholic church to abstain from pornography and other forms of satisfaction that can lead to addiction.
“Sexual pleasure is a gift from God that is undermined by pornography. Unrelated satisfaction that can generate forms of addiction. We must defend love, love of the heart, the mind, and of the body,
“How many relationships that started out in the best way have later become toxic relationships?” he posed.
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Pope on Possession and Lust
The Pope also highlighted the importance of tenderness condemning possession and toxic relationships.
According to him, lust does not want to listen to the other and only focuses on its own needs and pleasure.
“Pure love is giving to each other and that is the beauty of sexual intercourse. Tenderness is better than bowing to the demon of possession.
“Lust plunders, it robs, it consumes in haste, it does not want to listen to the other but only to its own need and pleasure; lust judges every courtship a bore, it does not seek that synthesis between reason, drive and feeling that would help us to conduct existence wisely,” he added.
Earlier in October 2022, the pope admitted that he knew priests and nuns who watched porn, warning against it noting that the “devil enters from there.”
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“If you can cancel it from your phone, then cancel it, then you won’t have temptation in your hand,” he said at the time.
Cardinal Victor Manuel Fernández on Sensuality
Similarly, the head of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of Faith, Cardinal Victor Manuel Fernández, was criticized for authoring a book in the 1990s on Mystical Passion: Spirituality and Sensuality.
Although many claimed the cardinal was unfit to lead others in the faith, he defended himself saying that he wrote the book while young and would not write it now.
The book discussed human sexuality, providing detailed descriptions of male and female experiences during intercourse.