THE CHURCH ON THE FRONT LINE

It was heartening reading this week to learn that the Church of England is considering withdrawing the large financial investments it has in Internet Service Providers like Virgin Media, BT Broadband, AOL and Sky unless they take more serious steps to curtail the huge and unregulated flow of internet pornography and especially where it might become available to children. This is in line with the Church’s policy not to help fuel the very problems which it is seeking remove from society. I very much hope that the church authorities will act very strongly here, even if it can only bring partial pressure.

It’s a move which has certainly helped to highlight the enormity of a very nasty and corrupting force in the modern world of communications. The most immediate and glaring example of this problem is that presented by the Dutchman, Tabak, who was convicted of murder in the recent high profile case. He was shown to have trawled through an internet site which boasted 58,000 videos and 50 categories of pornography hours before committing his crime. His crime mirrored what he had been looking at.

There are plenty of statistics which bear out a very grim picture of the appalling impact of this internet pornography. It is an “industry” worth £60 billion annually, and reveals the enormous numbers of people who have no compunction in making money out of it. Even more disconcerting, apparently “sex” and “porn” are among the top five search items for children under 18. A third of British teens say they learned about sex from looking at internet pornography. Around 11,000 pornographic films are made every year in the U.S. with most for internet use. Pornography is viewed by 35.9 per cent of U.K. internet users. These sort of facts really take the lid off our society.

The cumulative influence of this on human society and its adverse impact on wholesome and genuine loving relationships between men and women does not bear thinking about. Yet the internet providers are not keen to act, and neither are the police keen to investigate, which renders even current legislation against pornography virtually impotent. But lurid pornography remains one of the most destructive and corrosive forces in society. The church needs to act strongly wherever it can, and if it can make its money “talk” then it should do so.


At the same time that the Church of England made its welcome stand on the issue of pornography, St Paul’s Cathedral clergy also faced a front line problem with its anti-capitalist squatters. Unhappily the clergy have been torn apart and three, including the Dean, have resigned. This, as the Bishop of London said, is a great tragedy. However, it has only arisen because there were those at the Cathedral who wanted to give genuine space for genuine protest and there were those who saw long tern dangers in allowing unaccountable occupation to get a hold, and whose fears were confirmed. The tragedy is that they did not close ranks together and battle through to a solution together. What does remain, however, is the fact that the Cathedral authorities were very aware of the economic and financial injustices that the modern world is presenting and were looking for proper debate on the issue. We can only pray that the Bishop of London, a strong man with real political gift, may get those authorities back on track. We desperately need those in high places to be speaking out about those injustices that the financial world is imposing on our society.




Bob




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