Nala Ray is the most well known. The pastor’s daughter grossed $9m in earnings from her sex work on OnlyFans but a growing relationship with a Christian helped her to rethink her life after an encounter with God: “[I thought] what’s the point of all this money, when I don’t have feelings… I don’t have kids, I have nothing but materialistic things that are cold and sitting in my closet?” she told Michael Knowles in an online interview. “I was sobbing, I was looking at my fireplace, I grabbed the Bible… God decided to truly meet me where I was. And it’s not like he was far from me, it’s that I was far from Him.
“I was like, ‘God, I need an answer now, I truly need an answer now’ and he gave me an answer… ‘all you ever needed was Me’.”
In the interview, she described a joyless life as an OnlyFans worker despite the money – numb to emotion and experiencing poor relationships. “I was making millions and I didn’t feel any different,” she said. “I could buy anything that I wanted and I still felt the exact same… all that numbness was emptiness, like complete and total emptiness.”
She says that has all changed since her conversion. She posted a video of her baptism on Instagram on 26th December and has since married, deleted her OnlyFans account and talks often of the change in her life.
Undoubtedly, seeing a video of your beloved spouse having sex with another person is one of the most difficult things to deal with. The images and thoughts they evoke can sometimes be so powerful that they jeopardize the relationship. But what if not just one tape, but 250 such tapes, are still actively being viewed on the internet and on paid television channels all over the world? And what if new and previously uncut footage is still being released? This is the case of Richard De La Mora, a young pastor who met and fell in love with a beautiful woman named Brittni while serving in his youth ministry and wished to marry her. Little did he know that this woman had a sexual history that would make Jezebel shudder. Brittni had recently decided to leave the porn industry and start a new life; however, she had produced approximately 200 pornographic films in addition to working as an escort and stripper.
Despite this, Richard married Brittni, knowing that his life would be severely impacted if this woman became his wife, and they now have two lovely children and are both actively involved in assisting women who want to leave the porn industry.
So, how did Richard do it? Where did he get the strength and courage to forgive and forget his wife’s heartbreaking sexual history, and how does he sleep at night knowing that anyone who so desires can see the most intimate part of the woman he calls his wife with the click of a button? In the video interview below, Richard describes his journey to forgiveness and total acceptance.
Richard speaks about how he overcame Brittni’s sexual past
Richard and Brittni talk about how couples could overcome the high body count of their partners and learn to grow in love with one another. The key is prayer.
Bree Solstad, known previously as a star and “creator” of the pornography industry, has undergone a radical transformation and become a Catholic. Her Baptism took place at this year’s Easter Vigil, marking a significant milestone in her spiritual journey, Solstad, who was usually recognized on the X platform (previously Twitter) as “Miss B Converted,” announced her conversion on January 1, 2024, leaving her previous life behind and giving herself completely to her newly discovered faith. “I cried with great joy after receiving the Body and Blood of Jesus for the first time,” said Solstad to The Daily Signal, expressing the profound impact of this moment on her life. After a decade in the pornography industry, both as actress and as a producer, Solstad decided to leave her sinful past, wealth and self-destruction behind. Her decision wasn’t easy and, as she predicted, she faced criticisms and ridicule from some of the online community. However, her determination to follow Christ and leave her former life behind remained firm. In an exclusive interview with The Daily Signal, she shared the details of her trajectory and journey of faith.
After a childhood in which she was active in the Lutheran Church, she left the faith during her university years, submerging herself in a lifestyle of excess and libertinage. However, a series of transforming experiences, including a visit to Italy and her encounter with sacred art, led her to question her way and look for meaning in her life. The Virgin Mary’s figure, omnipresent in the streets and places of worship she visited in Italy, impacted her profoundly and led her to a path of spiritual redemption and renewal. After returning home, she confronted the emptiness of her former existence and sought spiritual guidance, which finally led her to embrace the Catholic faith wholeheartedly. Reactions to her conversion have been mixed, but Solstad finds consolation and strength in her new relationship with God. Instead of producing contents for adults, she is dedicated to the creation of unique rosaries and Christian jewels, symbolizing her spiritual rebirth and her commitment to a life of virtue and service. Her story has had a profound effect on others, with several former colleagues of the entertainment industry for adults approaching her in search of guidance and support. Solstad hopes that her witness will inspire others to seek the light in the midst of darkness and to find peace and redemption in faith.
In a world that often seems to be dominated by superficiality and hedonism, Bree Solstad’s story is a powerful reminder of the capacity of divine love to transform even the most lost and desperate lives into a story of hope and redemption.
According to an old Cherokee legend, a grandfather told his grandson, “My son, there are two wolves fighting inside us all. One is the devil. It is a combination of rage, jealousy, greed, resentment, inferiority, lies, and ego. The other is good; it is joy, peace, love, hope, humility, kindness, empathy, and truth.” After some thought, the boy asked, “Grandfather, which wolf wins?” The old man replied quietly, “the one you feed.” The story shows that depending on which wolf you feed, you can go from being a good person to a bad person; thus, in order to do good and avoid evil, you must feed the right wolf.
This appears t to be the story of Afrocandy, a Nigerian-born porn actress, who recently revealed that she was once a good homely wife. She shared photos of herself from 2001, dressed in traditional Igbo Christian mother attire complete with scarf and wrapper, and revealed that she was a regular churchgoer and parishioner at St. Leos Catholic Church.
Judith Mazagwu 2001
Judith Mazagwu
So, what exactly happened? How did a Christian mother become a pornstar? How did a well-groomed Nigerian woman become a notorious Afrocandy seductress now poring over the internet in her underwear? Her real name is Judith Chichi Opara Mazagwu, she is an Imo state native, a wife, and a mother of two children, and she has a bachelor’s degree in public administration and a bachelor’s degree in business management.
In 2005, she traveled to the United States to meet her husband, with whom she had two children. Unfortunately, the marriage ended in an explosion of infidelity accusations, leaving her stranded in the United States with two children at the age of 36. Desperate Judith first tried acting and modeling, but lacking the skill or talent to make big money, she devolved into racy porn under the alias Afrocandy, something so out of character and shocking to ordinary Nigerians.
Judith aka Afrocandy pornstar (2012)
Today, her Afrocandy production company is the arrowhead pushing Nigerian pornography into mainstream Nollywood, and while she is currently meeting some resistance in the industry because most actors and actresses still have enough self-respect for themselves and their families to avoid crossing the thin red line between the innocuous nudity already present in Hollywood and outright pornography, she must sense that it is only a matter of time before they cave, and she is optimistic.
Hence, some argue that what caused the unassuming Judith to take such a drastic turn was the pain and betrayal of her broken marriage. According to an online magazine, in an interview with the Daily Sun published on September 3, 2010, she said she tried to save her marriage but he wouldn’t take her back:
“There have been a lot of rumors going around about my marriage and only a few people know the truth. The truth is that I did not leave my husband; rather, he left because of some gossip he heard about something that happened in Nigeria before I joined him in the US.
I begged him, and he returned. When he left the second time, I felt compelled to issue him with a restraining order. I really don’t want to go into details because I see that as the past, and I want the past to stay in the past because I’ve moved on; talking about it takes me backward.”
Furthermore, her rumored marriage to an Ibadan millionaire, Chief Kamoru Okiki, did not appear to have materialized in 2011, adding fuel to her downward spiral into the porn abyss. No doubt, all of her setbacks and doubles should be considered when judging this woman; however, with her level of education, she bears significant blame responsibility for allowing herself to be thus manipulated and induced by an excessive ambition and love for glamour. She appears to be someone who is willing to do anything for fame and fortune, including abandoning all decorum and modesty.
As previously stated, everyone has two wolves fighting within them: the wolf of wantonness that we all carry within us, which we must refuse to feed or it will lead us to dark places. Judith aka Afrocandy appears to have fed the wrong wolf her entire life, and it has grown into a werewolf devouring that part of her that was once a good homely Nigerian Christian woman full of decorum and good sense. Nonetheless, she should be aware that this wolf will devour her and everything associated with her. Furthermore, given that she was once a Christian and a Catholic, she should remember that pornography has been linked to harm to children and young people. The widespread availability of pornographic media has been linked to unwanted pregnancies in young people, as well as the spread of STDs such as HIV/AIDS among single adolescents (Ojo and Fasuuba, 2005). According to Nwankwo, about a third of adolescent pregnancies are terminated due to complications such as bleeding, anemia, and exhaustion (1983). And, as a mother, I am sure she understands the grave responsibility that those who create or market pornographic materials bear.
It is a pity that she has allowed herself to be used as an agent and purveyor of a foreign malicious culture alien to Nigerians in order to pollute and corrupt the minds of young people in a country already plagued by poverty, a lack of clean water, a hospital, and food scarcity. It’s a shame that all she has to offer our youth is a bad example. Longe et al. (2007) argue that. In a country where poverty is on the rise, children who sell their wares to help their families make ends meet are constantly exposed to situations that can jeopardize healthy sexual behaviors.
Unfortunately, the Internet, more than any other agent of social change, has contributed in no small measure to the removal of guilt, fear, and shame associated with unconventional sexual activities, and thus these poor Nigerian children have already been swamped and robbed of their peace of mind and African decency by the foreign crude bestial images emerging from dark taverns or Eastern Europe and sordid porn from America one click away on the internet, which they aspire to. Afrocandy has now deprived them of their last line of defense with her Nigerian porn. However, she should remember that those who throw stones should not live in a glass house. If she succeeds in corrupting our youths for profit, she may not like what she sees when the results come in, and the Holy Book says that it is better to tie a stone around their neck and throw them into the sea than to lead children to sin.
In conclusion, the breakdown of her marriage and being abandoned to fend for herself transformed a once homely Nigerian woman into a porn star, proving that everyone has both good and bad passions and must struggle despite the odds to feed the good side of ourselves. Nothing justifies turning to the dark path of pornography, so she must turn and feed the good things in her life, transforming herself into a force for good.
Nwankwo, J. Teenagers Need Protection from Unwanted Pregnancies. The Guardian, (1983, October 6), p.5
Ojo, O., & Fasubaa, O. . Adolescent Sexualityand Family Life Education in Southwestern Nigeria: Responses From Focus Group Discussion. Journal of Social Science,(2005) 10(2), 111-118.
There is a saying that fiction has to be believable but real life may not. Hence, I was barely was able to get through watching the movie “What if (2010)” endorsed by Pureflix as good Christian film, because of the myriads of unbelievable elements it contains. The story is about a business man, Ben Walker (Kevin Sorbo) who, at the peak of his career gets whacked by an Angel into a “future” life he would miss if fails to be faithful to God’s call to become a preacher. The problem is that this life, the life of penny pushing pastor of a small town parish is nothing to compare with the power job he presently has but in the end he ditches it for preacher’s life and left me wondering if this isn’t a mockery Christianity.
Are the makers of this movie really saying that you can’t be a successful business man as well as a good Christian? Are the two really incompatible? If that is so, then no should be surprised when Christianity is scorned in intellectual and artistic circles. But even more seriously, it would negate the very words of Jesus, “Go you therefore and make disciples of all (Mathew 28: 19), which would be impossible if only pastors could be good Christians. How about when Jesus talked about trading with the talents God gave us when he told the story of the man who about to engage in travel called his servants and entrusted them with talents with the expectation that they would trade and make profit (Luke 19:13) It would be impossible if all the talent that needs trading was that of a pastor. Furthermore, it would also negate the life of the early Christians many of whom where business people like Priscilla and Aquila(Acts 18:2-3), or Joseph of Arimathea (Mark 15:43) and many high ranking members of the Roman society who later converted to Christianity.
Consequently, I would argue that the producers of this film misunderstand the basic tenets of biblical Christianity and that their misunderstanding has its roots in the crises of Christian division and disunity that became definitive in the 15th century with the protestant Reformation led by Martin Luther who broke with the Catholic Church (the only church exiting in the world since the time of Apostles) and founded the Lutheran church with separate doctrines and teachings. As a consequence, today, there is probablly perhaps up to 50 thousand different Christian sects all with conflicting interpretation of scriptures a great obstacle to understanding what Christians really believe. And this incoherence introduces a profound dysfunction such that Christians end up producing movies that are contradictory to scriptural teachings.
In the movie, for instance, an angel who happens to be a mechanic and who delights in whacking people over the head to get them do what he wants kidnaps Walker and forces him to become a pastor, with wife and kids he does not want all in the name of a God who is love? How in the world would atheists watching this film ever take God or Christian faith seriously. How I long for Christian films like Hollywood’s greats like the “Ten Commandment (1956)” by Cecil Be De Mills with masterful dialogue and great stories. In contrast, “What if”, though styled like “It’s a wonderful life (1946)”, is simply artistic dwarf.
As the movie progressed, Walker easily ditches his successful life and accepts his new life as a pastor and his pastor’s wife (Kristy Swanson) all smiles she wakes up to find him reading the bible, a transformed man. The problem is that real life does not work that way, it takes much more than that to get someone to change his life. Usually, such transformation is a slow and painful process. Besides it can be argued that there is really no reason for Walker change. His life as a successful business man was fascinating, even altruistic and progressive, and there was no real mission or great commission he had in abandoning it to become a pastor, and besides according to St. Josemaria Escriva, the founder of Opus Dei, every noble human work can be a path to holiness
In the final scene, Pastor Walker goes to the hospital to save the soul of a dying man, telling him to repent. Usually this is the ultimate price, or golden globe of spiritual life for every pastor, but the moment was marred when the dying man looks up and seeing a man with a bible and thinking him to be a catholic priest says to him, “I did not ask for priest.” Walker replies “I am not a priest— same league different teams”. Walker meant that as a protestant pastor he was playing the same leagues as a catholic priest but in a different team. Pastor and the priest both profess the same Christianity yet have opposing views, different doctrine and different teachings.
When the dying man, a little embarrassed, says to Walker, “How are we going to do this”: what if I repent, how are you going to forgive me if you are not a priest? Only the Catholic church claims the power to forgive sins in the name of Jesus based on the power that Christ handed down to his apostle in John 20:23, ” Who so ever sins you forgive they are forgiven and who sin you retain they are retained”. The Catholic Church teaches that this power is transferred down through apostolic succession to the Pope and bishops in communion with him and the bishops delegate this power to the priests.
Walker says to him “I believe that God knows your heart and he can forgive you.” I think this is a pitiful assurance to give to dying man in place of powerful sacrament of reconciliation as instituted by Jesus Christ and contained in the deposit of faith uncontaminated and unchanged for 2000 years in the Catholic church . Christian disunity is the reason that Christian teams are consistently losing out to the worldly teams in the all the game of life, politics, movies, science and arts, as Jesus predicted and leaves one wondering: What if Christians were one?
In Alfred Hitchcock’s movie “I Confess (1953)”, a priest, Fr. Michael Logan would rather face death than violate the sanctity of confessional when falsely accused of murder. In such movies, one learned something of the dedication and firmness of the conviction of those who are called to the catholic priesthood. In today’s Hollywood however, all a priest has to do is open his mouth and you realize he knows nothing about the priesthood, the church or the Christian altogether and his words are filled with shallow and pathetic clichés. Today, Hollywood script writers feel no need or obligation to truthfulness and accuracy regarding the priesthood and bend over backwards to present priest as fools, clumsy and dimwitted. Thus when I watched Bishop Baron sterling review of a movie “Calvary (2014), about a priest who threatened with death went on to offer his life as an offer of love and forgiveness, I wanted to watch the movie “Calvary” to see if Hollywood has finally got it right.
The story is set in Ireland, a priest, Fr James Lavelle (Bleedon Gleeson), is accosted in confessional by a very bitter man who threatens to kill him in 7 days time, because he was abused by a priest, and thus wanted revenge. The angry man would not give his name but told the priest that he will give him seven days to put his affairs in order at the end of which he would meet him at the beach for the kill. The next seven days tried the nerves of the priest who had to resist the temptation fleeing and brace up to meet the killer on the appointed date.
Yet, in spite of Bishop Barron’s excellent review, and in spite of great cinematography, I was left once again with a hint of disappointment by the scripts portrayal of Fr James character. He comes across as a frustrated man. Granted that post sex abuse scandal Ireland is a difficult place for a priest, and his cynical parishioners often mocked him, nevertheless, he lacks deep knowledge of theology and ability to refute errors so beloved in St. Thomas Aquinas and he is often tongue tied when he comes up against the postmodernist arguments of his cynical parishioners.
In the movies opening scenes, Fr. James worries about a very promiscuous woman parishioner who was often beaten by her lovers, in one instance she comes to church with bruises on her face, he tries to get her to say who did it but she wouldn’t tell, so he asks her husband who is a butcher but he says it wasn’t him but a black man who is her latest boyfriend. So he confronts the black man and tells him not to do it again, but the man gets angry and throws a cigarette butt at him practically telling to shove off and mind his own business. It can be argued that as a priest, Fr. James overstepped his boundaries there and should not have taken the path of confrontation, of playing the neighborhood policeman but rather should have restricted himself to praying and administering the sacraments of penance to this woman, hoping that she will of her own accord change her ways.
That is what Jesus would do isn’t it? Take for example the case of Mary Magdalene. Jesus did not go chasing down all the men with Mary Magdalene and having a word with them. Rather he spoke to Magdalena, and his words brought her peace and encouragement and she finally decided to change her ways. Similarly, Christ spoke in dept with his flock and was not afraid of telling them difficult truths even if they wished to kill him. It is not difficult to see that there were many of Fr. James’ parishioners who needed to hear healing but Fr. James seemed strangely incapable of providing that healing perhaps out fear of rejection. This perhaps denotes a lack of faith typical of the modern clerics as well as too much reliance on human logic.
In another scene, Fr. James goes to visit a serial killer in prison, yet again he failed to initiate the type of conversation that could lead to repentance and in the ended up screaming accusations at the sinner. He should have helped this killer ask God’s mercy or does he not believe in the power of prayers himself? Then there is the issue of the drinking. Towards the end of the movies, when his time was almost near, and knowing that time is running out, Fr. James took to drinking, this is of course is very bad for a priest, whisky and prayers aren’t the best of friends; it is either one or the other. Compare this with what Jesus did during his last hour, Christ rejected the cup of sour wine offered to him on the cross, but even more, he prayed for those who where crucifying him. This is what I would have expected Fr. James to do if he wished to portray the image of true priest rather than a caricature.
I believe a priest can triumph even in an environment of great cynicism through prayers, fasting and penance bringing about the conversion of hearts because the Holy Spirit is the one that acts. That is how Cure of Ars was able to covert his whole parish in post- French revolution France. He had long conversations in spiritual directions with his parishioner helping them examine their souls and resume a relationship with God.
Finally, the theme of Calvary is forgiveness, a much underrated virtue in modern society, as father James told his daughter, Fiona. Christianity brought forgiveness to the world and it is the first thing the world chunks out when it throws Christianity out the window and thus its cities are full of people locked in a vicious circle, men like Jack Brennan (Chris O’Dowdy) threatening to kill Fr. James, because he cannot forgive, and has grown old in angst because of an evil that happened years past, when he was a child and which he has allowed to consumes his present, such that he is ready to kill, not just the guilty party, but anyone. As unspeakable as the clerical abuse scandal in Ireland and elsewhere was, it is still staggering that in a society where sex is promoted as a commodity for recreation, its abuse by a minority of unfortunate clerics calls for the killing of the name of every good priest to satiate the thirst of unforgiving hearts, yet to err is human and to forgive is divine. Thus Fiona’s visiting him in prison after he had killed her father embodies for him the superiority of Christian forgiveness and hope.
Those who think that the US election is about Trump are missing the big picture because they are successfully being manipulated by the mainstream media. No, rather, the elections are about life of the unborn, the future of religious freedom, the family and more. According to Dan Zeidler, a prominent pro life advocate, the Democratic Party not only promotes the expansion of legal abortion, but proves a significant obstacle to any attempt to provide any type of legal protection to children born alive after attempted abortion. He claims that a million or more children are killed each year in the US alone through abortion. This is what the Democrats are pushing relentlessly. If you wish to understand the mainstream media, negative and unrelenting attacks on Trump, then you must look at the mainstream media negative reporting and unrelenting attack on the life of unborn children, on marriage, on religious freedom, freedom of the press, and freedom of parents to educate their children.
We all saw a few years ago when the Little Sisters of the poor, a group little women, who have given their lives to serve the needy and abandoned in society dragged into court because of their religious beliefs. The so called Biden/Obama-care had as a major clause, an insidious attack on Catholic institutions, businesses and hospitals and that clause is that all employers must provide coverage for contraception and abortion for employee or face huge fines and if they default, their business would be foreclosed by the government. It was a veiled attempt, similar to those Christian persecution of the 2nd Century, similar to the persecution in atheist communist Russia, to force Christian, especially Catholics to choose between their faith, the violate their conscience and do what is against their faith and morals such as sterilization, abortion and contraception.
Law suits and legal challenges forced the democratic government of Obama/Biden to offer the nuns a compromise, a form they could sign so someone else could provide the abortion. The nuns said no, because that would be facilitating something that is against their faith. The case was in Supreme Court when Trump came and rescinded the government’s decision and told them to back down. If you imagine that Biden/Obama could do this to nun, little nuns who take care of sick old people, what do you think he would do to Christian businesses, Churches, priest, convents, and monasteries all over America, owners of small businesses who are practicing Christians?
It is would not be significantly different from the age old threat of renounce your faith or die heard in the Roman amphitheaters back in the early days of Christianity. With Biden’s presidency, the attacks would probably continue if not intensify until all freedom are eroded, freedom of parents to educate their children, freedom of speech, freedom of priest to preach the Christian faith in churches…and many more. Trump is simply the last Frontline before the capitulation of the entire human society. The smokescreen attack on Trump, but in truth they are after you, and your freedom. Some say that Trump is a racist and that why they hate him. Let’s be honest, Trump has never been characterized as racist until he became president. He was best friends with many black celebrities. In the hay days when our beloved Michael Jackson was under attack by the so called left media all because he was a successful black man, Trump was his friend and gave him the best wing at his Trump Tower to live with his wife Lisa Presley. The race card played by the today’s Democratic Party is simply a ploy to get black votes they need to beat Trump, but they have even proven that they don’t need anyone’s votes because the world is witnessing what people thought was possible only in Africa, election rigging.
They rigged the elections to give Joe Biden 80million votes, the greatest number of votes in US history, surpassing even celebrities like Barrack Obama. As videos evidence emerge that the recent US election was anything but free and fair, people are wondering how the US fell so low. The simple answer is the Democrats who have lost all form of decency and self respect and are willing to do anything to hold on to power. Trump’s four years in office has brought out the Democrats in their true color as nothing else has in the past. They have shown they can lie, libel and cheat. The invented a Russian hoax that cost the American public 30million USD and when the Robert Mueller report came out there was nothing credible in it. Next they tried to impeach the president for an honest phone call and that failed. They tried to block Justice Kavanaugh, the President’s Supreme Court pick, inventing lies and accusation that did not work. At last the pandemic gave them a good cover to try to steal the election with the mail in ballots, and here we are a month after the elections and no one know who the president would be and no end in sight.
Some say that they support Biden to become president because he is a good catholic. But that is an oxymoron, he is a catholic, no doubt, but a good catholic, I would argue no. A good catholic is someone willing to defend, teach and follow the most essential teaching of Christ and the church. “Thou shall not kill the innocent.” A good Christian defends the life of others ready to even lay down their own life “Greater love than this no man has that he lays down his life for others” (John 15:13) .Many saints have shed their blood for less important teaching, but not Biden, this year he was part of the senate democrats who defeated the Republican led born alive infant protection bills that would ban most late-term abortions and threaten prison for doctors who don’t try saving the life of infants born alive during abortions. Recently, Democratic governor of Virginia Governor Ralph Northam’s defended infanticide and argued that in the case a healthy baby is delivered during an attempted abortion, that baby would be kept alive and comfortable, while the doctor and its mother decide if the baby should be killed.
He does not support abortion, so he claims, but he is willing to obstruct any legal means to protect the unborn. He is like someone who does not support murder but obstructs anyone attempting to stop murder. If that is not hypocrisy, I don’t know what is. This is moral relativism; no he is arguably not a ‘good’ catholic, and perhaps not even a Christian. The blood of millions of children, innocents poured out each year is something that someone will recon with on judgment day and I would not wish to be that person. Anyway, like in the novel “Lord of the Ring,” Strider finding himself out numbered went soliciting the help of the dead to defeat the army of Mordor. We too have to solicit the angels of the millions children killed in abortion, begging them to fight for us to defeat the dark forces of irreligion liberalism threatening the world.
Many are troubled by recent utterances of Pope Francis about homosexuals deserving a family as he call for their freedom and choices to be protected by law. There is no doubt that for many, this may be disconcerting, perhaps even alarming since we all know that this act is explicitly condemned in the bible and the teaching authority of the Church right from the beginning. Thus, many may be asking, what does it mean and what is the Pope saying here. Well for those looking for answers on what the Pope is saying, they need look no further than his newest encyclical, Fratelli Tutti. In the first few pages, he makes it clear that he is calling all Christians back to the fundamental primacy of charity as the distinguishing mark of the Christian. In all things, and especially to those most in need, the poor and the wounded of this world, Christians must show charity.
He narrates in Fratelli Tutti, the story of the Good Samaritan who of all the people that came alongside the man dispossessed by robbers was the only one who had it in his heart to help him. The Samaritan realized that this man needs a friend and a family and decided to be one to him. What is a family but people who accept and a company one another in their wounds, take care of one another, spend time with one another. Time is one of the most challenging things to give to others, the Pope continues, and for sure, the Samaritan must have had other plans that day, and had to give them up, making drastic changes in order to accommodate the wounded man, pour wine and bandages on his wounds, he had to make a u-turn and find an Inn.
The Samaritan became a neighbour to the wounded Judean. By approaching and making himself present, he crossed all cultural and historical barriers. Jesus concludes the parable by saying: “Go and do likewise” (Lk 10:37). In other words, he challenges us to put aside all differences and, in the face of suffering, to draw near to others with no questions asked (pg. 21).
Fratelli Tutti
In Fratelli Tutti Pope Francis carefully draws our attention to those who Jesus said rejected the wounded man, those who on sighting him crossed to the other side. They were religious people! The very people with an obligation to help, to live charity, and they failed miserably in this regard.
It shows that belief in God and the worship of God are not enough to ensure that we are actually living in a way pleasing to God. A believer may be untrue to everything that his faith demands of him, and yet think he is close to God and better than others. The guarantee of an authentic openness to God, on the other hand, is a way of practising the faith that helps open our hearts to our brothers and sisters (pg. 19).
Fratelli Tutti
The Holy Spirit is calling Christians to return to the roots of Christ charity, which came, not for the righteous, but to call sinners to repentance. Christ condemns sin, but never the sinner; ask that we do not judge.
Perhaps in their hearts, those Levites, priests that passed to the other side were judgmental like those disciples who asked Jesus whose sin it was that made blind the man born blind. Jesus gives the answer, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned, rather it is so that God’s power may be made manifest” (John 9:2). Those born blind to the true nature of sexuality, can be likened to the man born blind. Many homosexual are so not by their own choosing, and yes each is born with his melancholy basic temperaments, ill temper, and sanguine. But born that way has never means living that way. We all have the obligation to struggle against self defeating urges, and the adulterous, must cease using his passion, and the glutton desist from gluttony.
Consequently, charity demands a moderation of language. Homosexuality is an issue so many people are so passionate about today unlike in the 19th century when homosexuality was relatively hidden and obscure and considered by a wide section of people as wrong and improper. Things are totally different today, and it’s accepted by most advanced societies, and even celebrated in the media, thus charity demands that the sensitivity of so many people be taken into accounts when issuing statements at the risk of antagonizing, and hence closing hearts permanently to the saving word of God. It must be kept in mind that meeting someone midway may be the beginning of leading him out of it as long as you bear the light and know the way. And thanks to the unchanging teaching of Christ and his Church, every Christian bears the light and knows the way.
Those who fear that concessions are slippery slope to changing the church’s teaching on homosexuality often cite the gradual caving of civil laws in different countries in West as evidence of how concession to civil union ends with full endorsement of homosexual acts and even acceptance of homosexual marriage as the equivalent of marriage between man and woman. Those who entertain this fear need to make an important distinction between Church and civil society. The church is a supernatural society whose laws come outside of her and revealed by God and thus no one can change those laws. Civil societies have laws coming from within men prone to change. Thus the Church has nothing to fear in getting as near as she can to the sinner to save them because she is well anchored on solid rock.
Research shows watching onscreen sex and pornography is more addictive and harmful than tobacco, yet Hollywood keeps escalating use of onscreen sex and pornography in blockbusters. Why? This article would argue that the permissive attitude of Hollywood and other social media to onscreen sex, nudity, and pornography, is a deliberate attempt to supplant Judeo-Christian sexual ethics with moral relativism, in addition, this paper would argue that the promotion of the theology of the body of St. John Paul II as the best measure to counter this agenda.
According to George Gerbner’s cultivation theory, people often imitate what they watch. To avoid imitative smoking by their teenage viewers, big studios prohibit cigarette smoking in PG-13-rated movies. Paul (2013) citing studies conducted by the Annenberg Public Policy Center and the University of Pennsylvania claims that Hollywood successfully cut onscreen smoking down from roughly 68 percent in 1985 to 21.4 percent in 2010 and onscreen Alcohol use from 89.6 percent in 1985 to 67.3 percent. Unfortunately, onscreen sex and pornography remained at 80 percent high all throughout the period (Paul, 2013).
Why is Hollywood determined to ignore science when it comes to onscreen sex and pornography? Research confirms that onscreen sex and pornography harm teenagers. Brown & Newcomer, (1991) found that teenagers who watch intense sexual content begin having sex earlier than that those who do not. While Eyal & Finnerty, (2009) confirm that among public health professionals, escalating sexual content in movies and social media as a growing concern driving the surge in teenage risky sexual behaviors. In addition, research by the Institute of Medicine (1997) confirms that one in four sexually active teens in the US has STD, and of the 19 million STD infections diagnosed annually, half of them are teenagers and young adults between ages 15-24.
Pornography fuels human trafficking. Peters, Lederer, and Kelly (2012) cite instances where women are kidnapped, coerced, and forced to perform sex acts while being filmed and uploaded to porn sites for real-time views. Cybersex camps springing up in the Philippines with kidnapped and indigent girls enslaved for commercial sex, live streamed to paying customers in the US.
The authors allege that pornography is the leading cause of objectification of women and violence against women.”A study by FBI researchers of 36 serial killers revealed that 29 were attracted to pornography and incorporated it into their sexual activity, which included serial rape-murder (Peters, Lederer and Kelly, 2012 p. 13).”
Furthermore, they assert that pornography is breaking down in marriages, men addicted to onscreen sex and pornography wishing to replicate their fantasies, finding their wives willing, seek out prostitutes, leading to family problems. In addition, law of diminishing returns demands that addicts often require more deviance from hardcore pornography to get the same level of arousal, leading to greater and greater perversion (Peters, Lederer and Kelly, 2012). They also claim that pornography fuels the trafficking of women to produce pornography and consumption of pornography escalates deviant sexual appetite in men who seek out trafficked prostitutes to live out their fantasy, thus pornography drives prostitution and prostitution fuels sex trafficking.
One common theory that tries to explain the use of sex in movies is that it makes movies profitable, in other words, sex sells movies. However, studies by Cerridwen & Simonton (2009) disprove this theory, showing that there is little correlation between a movie’s box office performance and sexual content. Egan(2000) however disagrees, arguing that pornography is indeed a multi-billion dollar industry, tied with many American corporate names. The author claims that DirecTV, a General Motors subsidiary buys nearly $200 million a year in pay-per-view sex films. Egan confirms that international brands like AT&T Corporation are neck deep in selling hard-core sex channels to millions of hotel rooms in Marriott International and Hilton. Mahlburg (2020) discovered that each year, 42 billion users visit the largest pornographic site in the world called Pornhub, where research has revealed every type of criminally deviant porn can be found even with minors. While Asher of Vivid Entertainment Group argues that obsessed people are sources of income, and hotels make up to 90 percent of the profit from streaming in-room porn.
Nevertheless, it can be argued that profit alone fails to explain the proliferation of onscreen sex. After all, Hollywood and other social media willingly lose out from $8.4 billion dollar bounty that the US tobacco companies spent in 2018 in advertisement and promotion because of their anti-tobacco stands.
Thus, Charles (2014) asserts that the primary objective of Hollywood’s proliferation of onscreen sex is to subvert the Judeo-Christian morals of their viewers. Alberto and Eliana (2009) detail other research that supports the use of onscreen sex to undermine Judeo-Christian sexual ethics. The authors cite the Brazilian military government’s agenda of legalizing divorce, in the ’70s, using television series inundated with sex to little by little deform the consciences of millions of viewers, this successfully resulted in a spike in divorce rates among women across Brazilian municipal areas.
Furthermore, Charles (2014) cites Michael Catt, senior pastor of Sherwood Baptist Church in Albany saying, “We’ve always heard that Hollywood is about making money, but I think it’s really about an immoral or amoral agenda to promote lifestyles, relativism, compromise, and shades of gray with no black and white. There is a force in that community. Michael continues, “more important than making $100 million is to plant seeds in the minds of young people that will take them away from Judeo-Christian ethics.”
Gordon Pennington, a successful marketing consultant in Hollywood adds, “Whoever controls the image of culture controls the culture.”
In addition, according to West (2014), they are willing to risk everything, even lawsuits from the #metoo movement of female actors forced to perform sexual content, as conditions of employment. Back in 1953, In an era when an NC-17 rating for X-rated films well known to lead to box office failure, West argues, Hugh Hefner was willing to lose money to destroy by founding playboy magazine, and the adult movie industry to spite Judeo- Christianity. Luckily, the invention of the video cassette recorder (VCR) ended up making him a lot of money, because “The first thing that a lot of people did when they got their VCR was rent or purchase an adult movie (Porn in the USA , 2003).”
Furthermore, other evidence of anti-Judeo-Christian bias emerges with a cursory look at Hollywood’s blockbusters over a thirty-year period. Greydanus (2020) claims that Hollywood consistently links Christianity with murderous violence, like the rosary-clutching villain in the Legend of Tarzan and the murderous villain called “the Butcher” who wears a T-shirt with an image of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Wanted (2008). Again, you have Tom Hanks’, Irish Catholic hit man packing a rosary and automatic weapons in the Road to Perdition (2002). Going further, recall the butchery and cold-blooded murder in Gangs of New York (2002) and The Godfather (1973) all carried out by religious people.
Even more scandalous are depictions of ordained ministers, priests, bishops, and popes as bloodthirsty murderers (Greydanus, 2020). The Albino monk assassin in The Da Vinci Code a blockbuster released in 2006 as another poignant evidence, and V for Vendetta (2006): a depraved bishop who is complicit in Mengele-like human experiments and who indulges a sexual penchant for very young girls or the Catholic-themed killings in Seven (1995) and The Glimmer Man (1996) (Greydanus, 2020).
It can be argued that onscreen sex and pornography in particular strikes at the heart of Christian sexual ethics. Houck (2009) asserts that Christian moral code exalts decency, modesty, and purity of heart as a basic prerequisite to seeing God. “Blessed are the pure of heart for they shall see God” (Matthew 5:8). However, on-screen sex and pornography excite lustful thoughts and attacks cleanliness and purity of heart. Seghers (2018) argues that for a Christian, sex is holy and linked generation of new life.
According to West (2015), in John Paul II teaches in the theology of the body that Christ spilled blood on the cross and gave Christian life to believers within the Church, in the sexual act, a husband spills his blood on his wife, and gives new life, a new human person. Furthermore, Christians consider the human body as the dwelling place of God, not to be degraded as a sexual object for commercial consumption. West (2015), expounding on the Theology of the body of John Paul II said that if Heaven is the dwelling place of God, then a woman’s womb is heaven on earth since God took flesh on the womb of a woman, Mary. Thus, the author continues, it is by God’s design that in sexual art, a man enters the heaven of a woman’s womb and spills out his life the way Christ spilled his blood for the Church (West, 2015). “Coming together in the profound partnership of marriage, man and woman live for the other in mutual love and deference. This union is expressed concretely in the couple’s bodily sexual bodily gift of themselves to one another in sexual intercourse. Here they speak a profound language of total self-gift and unconditional fidelity (Grabowski (n.d).”
Onscreen sex and pornography break the fidelity between marriage and sex, introducing complexity, selfishness, and lust, into a perfect act of mutual and exclusive self-giving between married spouses.
In summary, with pervasive onscreen sex and pornography, Hollywood is not showing too much sex, rather they are showing too little, and they do not go far enough. Sex is much more than physical bodies, it has an eternal dimension. They treat sex pornography as a consumer product because of the huge profit coming in from it, but also with a primary agenda of subverting Judeo-Christian ethics. Yet the remedy to this destructive distorted view of sex lies in the proper understanding of the Theology of the body of John Paul II
References
Alberto,C., & Eliana, L. (2009).Television and divorce: Evidence from Brazilian Novelas( Working Paper No. 651). Retrieved from Inter-American Development Bank Research Department website:https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/51502/1/591278979.pdf
Peters, R.W, Lederer, L.J and Kelly,S.(2012).The Slave and the Porn Star: Sexual Trafficking and Pornography. The protection project: Journal of human right and civil society
Debate between Cardinal George Pell and Richard Dawkins turned comic when someone asked Dawkins to explain how something can come from nothing.
The audience roared in laughter at his rambling attempts and a visibly angry Dawkins asked, “What is so funny?”
“It is funny when you try to explain nothing” retorted the half amused Cardinal
The debate is masterpiece for learning how to debate on difficult topics and against those who deny first principles and those who claim that two contradictory propositions can be true and false at the same time in the same manner.
Due to its poor quality and portrayal of Jesus as gay, Netflix, the largest streaming service, has lost its customers.
The portrayal of Jesus as a homosexual and Mary as a weed-smoking troll in the film “The First Temptation of Christ” offends over 2.18 billion Christians worldwide.
A homosexual is shown as a romantic partner of Christ in the movie, while the disciples are shown as drunks and troublemakers, according to Citizen.org. The Virgin Mary is presented as an adulterous woman who has sex with God the Father. Until recently, the anti-Christian works by the small Brazilian producers of the movie were published on their YouTube channel. But this year, Netflix has decided to buy their production and distribution rights in clear agreement with the group’s blasphemous works.
Why would Netflix want to promote a film that they know offends so many of their customers? A movie based on lies and falsification of historical facts about the life of Jesus Christ? Jesus lived and died in 6 BC–33 AD. There are historical records of people who lived with him, but no such record exists that he was a homosexual. Not even the Pharisees who hated Jesus so much as to kill him charged him with such. So why would anyone, 2000 years later, wish to offend billions of believers with such an obvious lie? But it’s only a movie, they say, nothing serious, a satire, and no one should get upset. Really?
Christians have lost lives and properties defending their faith, thousand have died at the guillotine; tens of thousands were thrown to the lions for not denying their lord and savior Jesus Christ. Netflix and Porta must be stone cold crazy. And their past streaming of hundreds of genuine Christian movies doesn’t make them less culpable for pandering this false narrative, much like a man is not less culpable when he commits murder because he saved hundreds of lives.
They wouldn’t do that to Muslims though
Netflix’s recent outrage has sparked the age-old debate on how Christians can get people to respect what they believe. Muslims have successfully won a fearful respect for their sacred through violence and bloodshed. Christians, on the other hand, are bound by cast-iron rules of non-violence, exploited by vicious men bereft of decency to trample on their feelings with impunity. CitizenGo, a Christian advocacy group, has received two million signatures condemning the movie—significant, but hardly enough. Christians must stop and contemplate Jesus’ holy anger when he sees people misusing the things of his Father. What a lesson for us never to be indifferent or cowardly when others fail to treat the things of God with due respect.
Of course, violence has been tried by emperors and kings in centuries gone by and it utterly betrayed the Christian faith despite the good intentions of the people who deployed it.
Yet a man has the right and duty to defend the honor of his mother even if it means coming to blows. Those who go about heaping scorn on the values people cherish best beware that every man has his limits and sooner or later patience wears thin and they must have themselves to blame for what happens.
If being civilized means behaving reasonably and politely and avoiding hurting other people’s feelings, then Netflix’s actions are barbaric.
Two sides of the same coin
A woman writing in the punch newspaper, in words couched with thinly veiled disdain for the Christian said that the uptick in false narrative about Christianity is tit for tat for century old false narratives pandered by Christian to destroy ancient pagan religions.
But that’s a muddle up understanding of history of pagan religions. Most pagan practices actually rely on of satanic powers to achieve their purpose, and not a few practice sacrifices of blood of animal or even humans. Their code of ethics is nothing but primal instincts that often strays into outright errors, even evil. Truth does not molest falsehood when it corrects it, knowledge cannot tolerate ignorance. The Christian faith does not denigrate pagan religion, but perfects and purify them from error to lead men to truth. The Christian faith by purifying pagan rituals from twins, virgin sacrifices and cannibalism brought about civilization.
Women the world over are enjoying the fruits of the untiring of works of Christian missionaries in educate young girls and give them opportunities denied them in traditional pagan societies.
Voodoo and Afro-Brazilian pagan religions are so replete with fetishes and unhygienic cavorting with dead bodies that sanitary laws demand censuring such practitioners. Still, it must be pointed out that Christian ethics demands that errors of paganism be corrected with charity. To do otherwise would go against Christ’s teaching. The truth is sacrosanct, and promoting a deliberate falsification of historically verifiable facts about Jesus’ life and teaching even as a joke is mischievous. When art misrepresents history, it is not illuminating but confusing.
Breaking a norm of decency is not freedom and progress, but that is a caricature of true freedom. A motorist, who thinks he is freer when he breaks traffic laws, is most likely to eventually kill himself and others. Those applauding the wholesale ditching of good manners may find out that they have ditched civilization itself.
The Christian faith never needed to resort to violence because she never needed violence. Rather, she has been a counterforce against the violence in every man, urging the imitation Jesus Christ who, like lamb that was led to the slaughter, opened not his mouth, who though being God, became man, and went lower still accepted death on the cross, in other to redeemed man.
Those who commit violence in the name of Christ know they are violating the faith they profess. Nowhere in Christ’s teaching is any form of violence toward others encouraged; rather, Christ commands love of enemies and doing good to those who hate. The power of the Christ’s message is the only valid defense of the Christian faith. When Christians put the teachings of Christ into practice, they will convert the world, and today’s Christians must convert the world by truly striving to be saints, for this world’s crises are crises of saints.
A powerful proof of forgiveness, boy hugs officer who killed his brother.
“I forgive you, I love you, ” he said.
Watch this video of true forgiveness.
It was the last thing anyone was expecting.
Former Dallas police officer Amber Guyger had just been sentenced to 10 years in prison for fatally shooting a black man, Botham Jean, in his own apartment. Jean’s younger brother Brandt Jean was on the witness stand Wednesday, giving a victim-impact statement, when he turned to the judge and made a most unusual request. “I don’t know if this is possible, but can I give her a hug, please?” he asked. What happened next stunned both the courtroom and the nation. Jean stepped off the witness stand and stepped over to Guyger. The two hugged for nearly a minute. “I forgive you. And I know if you go to God and ask Him, He will forgive you,” Jean told Guyger. “I think giving your life to Christ is the best thing Botham would want for you.”(source CNN)
Video of Amber Guyger, former cop being sentenced to 10 yrs for killing a man.
Authors-choice: Hope & Revival 