Porn wounds the soul, and when it becomes an addiction, those wounds can become long-lasting even if we overcome the addiction itself, and this is true especially in Catholic marriages where one or both spouses cannot help but bring this woundedness into marital intimacy. This is never easy to grapple with and it raises a lot of questions about how we integrate our sexual identity in all of its woundedness into a healthy and chaste marital relationship. Many wonder, for example, if there is anything worth preserving in how sexuality is portrayed or expressed in pornography, especially if their sexual desires have been shaped or molded by it. They recognize the immorality of using pornographic images or videos, but still wonder if it would be okay to dabble a bit in sexually explicit literature or in reading material aimed at spicing up intimacy whether it be through exploring fantasies, preferences, techniques, etc. There is a tendency especially among some wives to think that if we can’t watch or engage in porn, then “I should be his porn.” Let’s analyze this from a Catholic moral lens.

First, contrary to the conventional wisdom of the Supreme Court, I believe it is actually important to define pornography before we tackle this question. Without precise definitions, morality quickly becomes a race to whichever moral judgment “feels” right, which can in very short order lead us down a road of either presumption or despair. The Catechism of the Catholic Church defines pornography this way:

“Pornography consists in removing real or simulated sexual acts from the intimacy of the partners, in order to display them deliberately to third parties. It offends against chastity because it perverts the conjugal act, the intimate giving of spouses to each other.” ¹

Therefore, in all pornography, two things are always going on. One, sexual expression is removed or abstracted from the shared intimacy between spouses. For two, there is some direct or indirect involvement or inclusion of a third party in this sexual expression. Strictly speaking, therefore, I do not think it is possible to evade the Catechism’s definition if you are directly and intentionally deriving sexual enjoyment from the writings of a third party because this is to treat a third party’s sexual expressions as a direct object of your pleasure. That would be pornographic, and therefore would not be permissible. 

That said, spouses would certainly be invited to write sexually exciting things to or about each other. This could be a wonderful way to invite the other spouse into a dimension of your sexuality that is far deeper than the mere satisfaction of physical urges and can therefore strengthen the bond of marital love by putting person before pleasure.

All the same, the rejection of distortions of sexuality and eroticism should never lead us to a disparagement or neglect of sexuality and eros in themselves. The ideal of marriage cannot be seen purely as generous donation and self-sacrifice, where each spouse renounces all personal needs and seeks only the other’s good without concern for personal satisfaction. We need to remember that authentic love also needs to be able to receive the other, to accept one’s own vulnerability and needs, and to welcome with sincere and joyful gratitude the physical expressions of love found in a caress, an embrace, a kiss and sexual union.²

Therefore, spouses should absolutely be encouraged to satisfy each other’s sexual desires and preferences so long as they are chaste. Now this being said, care must be taken so that in the pursuit of pleasuring the other spouse, you are not catering to any immoral sexual practice or any sexual fantasy that would signify something immoral, for the sinfulness of sexual desires between spouses is proportionate to the sinfulness of the act carried out that is desired. For example, if one spouse harbors a desire for having sex with a prostitute, then it would be mortally sinful for this to be carried out in the form of role play or in the form of a sexual fantasy, and its gravity would be proportionate to the sinfulness of the act of actually having sex with a prostitute. For this reason, there may be some sexual desires which may have been inherited from a prior pornography addiction that simply must be sacrificed before the Cross of the Lord. This is not to say that every sexual practice that merely appears in pornography is necessarily one of these desires, but this is why we have the wisdom of the Church’s marital theology to be our guide in discerning which specific practices are congruent with or contradict what the Sacrament of Marriage was meant to signify from the very beginning. 

Furthermore, care must also be taken to avoid feeding into a sexual tendency whereby the spouse is used solely as a means of gratifying the sexual urge. To even use the word “porn” to characterize or to analogize marital sexual relations indicates that this could be a real danger, for people only have recourse to pornography for the sole purpose of gratifying an urge. Spouses are not to be used in this way, and while, per Innocent XI³, it is a venial sin to engage in marital relations for pleasure alone, we should be always striving to root out even venial sin in our lives, and the more we do this within our marriage, the more intimate your union will be with your beloved spouse. The more we keep steady on this path, the more room we leave for the grace of God to work in our marriage and finally eradicate the last remnants of woundedness left in us by the scourge of pornography.