What does it mean to be a man? How can society help men become the heroes God wants them to be when society says we should fear masculinity? In this episode, Trent unpacks these important questions with the Diocese of Phoenix’s vicar of evangelization Fr. John Parks.
Speaker 1: Welcome to the Counsel of Trent podcast, a production of Catholic Answers.
Trent Horn: Hello everyone, welcome to the Counsel of Trent podcast. I am your host, Catholic Answers apologist and speaker, Trent Horn. Right now I’m in Oklahoma, getting ready for pro-life training and for an appearance on the Catholic Man Show and giving a talk in Tulsa on defending the domestic church. Very excited by that.
Trent Horn: So while I was gone, I thought I would share with you an interview from the archives with a very special guest. His name is Father John Parks, now he is the director of evangelization for the diocese of Phoenix. And a little bit of trivia, Father Parks and I go a long way back.
Trent Horn: It’s always fun when you know a priest, when you knew a person before they became a father, either pastorally, religiously or biologically and matrimonially, but I knew Father Parks back when he was Mister John Parks, core member, volunteer for our youth group in Arizona, one of the people that helped me to become Catholic. In fact, he was my sponsor when I came into the Catholic church and I’m very grateful for his guidance and leadership during that time in my life, of everything he gave back to our youth group program.
Trent Horn: So I think you’re going to really enjoy the conversation I had with him on authentic manhood. This is part one of my interview with Father John Parks on authentic manhood, what we need in the world today, whether you are a man or you know a man who’s important to you in your life, I think this interview will be very edifying for you. Especially when we live in an age that treats masculinity and manhood as something bad to be controlled, rather than something good to be directed and celebrated.
Trent Horn: And so without further ado, part one of my interview with Father John Parks.
Trent Horn: Hi, I’m Trent Horn, apologist and speaker for Catholic Answers, and today I’m sitting down and talking with Father John Parks. Father Parks is a priest here in the diocese of Phoenix and he’s also a high school chaplain and theology teacher at Notre Dame Prep, so Father Parks, welcome.
Fr. John Parks: Thank you, thank you for having me.
Trent Horn: Well first of all, just tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got to where you are now, being a priest, being a chaplain and teacher at a Catholic high school. Just tell us about yourself.
Fr. John Parks: I was born and raised in Arizona. I’m the second youngest of six children, and I was raised Catholic, so we went to Mass every Sunday, we said prayers before meals, those kinds of things. But it wasn’t really until I got to high school and I encountered this youth group that really changed my life.
Fr. John Parks: And at the time, my brother was a senior in high school, I was a freshman, and he kept inviting me to this youth group. I really didn’t want to go. In my mind at that point, I thought faith was for kind of loser kids, kids who couldn’t get girlfriends or play sports, and I played sports and I at least wanted a girlfriend, so I thought that’s really not for me.
Trent Horn: Which sports did you play?
Fr. John Parks: I played basketball, football, those were probably my two favorite, growing up. And then, so I got to high school, and my brother keeps inviting me to this youth group and I think, all right, I’ll go.
Fr. John Parks: So I’m going, and I remember it was after Mass, I remember walking through the youth group door and being immediately struck by what I saw. It was not what I imagined I would see, there were people my age who were excited about being Catholic. And, as I sort of scanned the room, thinking my 14 year old brain, my hierarchy of values, it had the two greatest values in my mind which would be cute girls and free pizza. It’s like, this is awesome, this is great. This is where I want to be.
Fr. John Parks: And so i decided to come back, so I would go back every week and I began just learning more about my faith, and then eventually this leads to going on retreats and having encounters with Christ through the Eucharist, really seeing the beauty of the Catholic faith, the Mass, and it was a deep well. Just every week I would go back, had a great youth minister. He had gotten a master’s degree in theology from Steubenville. And my faith just kept growing and growing and growing and having that community with these young people at my youth group was so important.
Fr. John Parks: So after that was over, since I was a little kid I’d always wanted to be an actor. And so I’d wanted to be a film actor since I was probably seven or eight years old. And so after I graduated high school, I went to ASU to study theater. And when I was done with college, I thought I would go to, move to Hollywood. I would wait tables during the day, or during the night, rather, and I would audition for plays and movies during the day. Towards the end of college, I got serious about what my vocation was.
Trent Horn: And you realized it might be nice to have a roof over your head and food to eat.
Fr. John Parks: Yes, yes, yes. Any time you’re a theater major, yeah, you say, I’m thinking about studying theater and people are like, oh are you minoring in unemployment. And you’re like no, not exactly.
Fr. John Parks: So, I graduated college and basically, I decided to go right in at seminary. I should back up a little bit. In 2000, there was a World Youth Day trip, and on that trip, one of the young men from my parish announced that he was going to seminary.
Trent Horn: Could you explain to everyone who might not be sure, what is World Youth Day?
Fr. John Parks: World Youth Day is an event where Catholics from all around the world come to see the Holy Father, come to see the Pope. And so, in the year 2000, it was in Rome. I went in 2002 in Toronto, Canada.
Fr. John Parks: And so in the year 2000, I didn’t go, my mother and my brother went, but on this trip this young man from my parish announced that he was going into seminary. And he was just an awesome guy, he was really gifted, really talented.
Fr. John Parks: And so people were sort of shocked that he went, and just, sad thing to say, but what it did for me is it planted the idea in my head that God calls regular people. I think up until that point in my life, you meet priests, you know priests, they say Mass, they sort of disappear again. But you know when you were in high school and you would see one of your teachers outside of high school, and you’re almost like, offended that they exist in another reality?
Trent Horn: You’re not supposed to be in the supermarket.
Fr. John Parks: Yes!
Trent Horn: Why are you wearing shorts?
Fr. John Parks: Exactly. You don’t have legs! No one can see the face of God and live, I must turn away, right? So, that’s the idea. And so, I remember just having a regular guy say that he was going into seminary, it was wow, okay, God calls regular people.
Fr. John Parks: And then actually my brother entered seminary the year before me, so I thought wow, God calls regular people, the church must be a little desperate if my brother’s getting in. So I thought, I should really look into this. Through a lot of prayer and reflection, I decided after I graduated from college that I would enter seminary, and I entered seminary at a place called Saint Meinrad, and some of the best years of my life, I spent five years in seminary and then I was ordained just over four years ago.
Trent Horn: Very good. Well today, what we’re going to be talking about is the idea of authentic manhood. You know, what does it mean to be a man, to be a man of God, because I think in our culture that we live in today, a lot of men have a crisis, they don’t know what it means to be a man. They know they want to be manly, you know, you don’t want to be, fail at being a man, but then there’s all these different sources, these different groups saying, this is what it means to be a man, who are we to listen to?
Trent Horn: so I guess, Father, my question for you would be, what does it mean to be a man? Specifically to be a man of God?
Fr. John Parks: So, first thing is that God created men to be men for all of eternity. So I think that’s helpful to remember that when you’re a man, God willed that for all eternity. That’s not an accident, He wanted you to be a man and to glorify Him and honor and love Him as a man. And of course, we have the perfect image of a man in the person of Jesus Christ.
Fr. John Parks: And when we think about Christ, you know, I’m a high school teacher and we recently gave my students this assignment where they had to read the Gospel of Mark, they talk about the reflections of what Jesus is like. And I think we all have these kind of vague notions of what Jesus is like. Sometimes we have this notion of Jesus He’s kind of like a hippie, has long hair, and He wears hemp sandals and He walks around and He’s very nice to people. And Christ was kind, of course. He was very loving, obviously.
Fr. John Parks: But I remember one student wrote this paper and he wrote it for another teacher and she was telling me about it, and he said, you know, my whole life I always got this idea that Jesus was kind of, well kind of a wuss for lack of a better word, you know? He was kind of a pushover, and he said, Jesus said some really demanding things. Some really striking things. So it’s like whoa, He’s a striking figure.
Fr. John Parks: When we think about following Jesus, we think about loving, we have to go the way of Jesus, and Jesus went the way of the Cross. And the Cross is about sacrificing my wants for the needs of others. One of my favorite synonyms for love is the word benevolence. Benevolence literally means to will the good of the other. Sometimes we think about love, we think about cupcakes and rainbows and bunnies and these things that really don’t have any substance to them. When we think about love, we should think about the Cross. That’s the way that Jesus went, that’s the way that we have to go.
Trent Horn: You can love a cupcake but it’s not the same as the love God shows us on the Cross.
Fr. John Parks: Absolutely. That doesn’t cost anything, and the love that Christ shows us on the Cross costs us something. So I think when I say that, if I’m 16 years old and I say okay, I have to embrace the Cross, what does that mean? Well the way we normally embrace the Cross in our daily lives is by being faithful to our daily duty.
Fr. John Parks: So if I’m a son, I’m a friend, I’m a student, I’m a brother. I want to be the best son, the best friend, the best student, the best brother I can be. And so, if I’m a student and I want to be faithful to my duties, you know, I do my homework, I try to be a good student, I don’t cheat, obviously, things like that. To be a good son, I do my chores, I’m loving to my parents, I’m obedient, I try to be a good brother and sister, so on and so forth.
Fr. John Parks: And in all those ways, our will is infringed upon, you know. If I’m playing video games and my mom says hey, can you take out the trash? It’s like ugh. Well if I say yeah, okay, and I pause it and I do it, well then I’m again, loving her. I’m willing the good of the family, the good of the unity. And so that’s a small way of which I embrace my Cross in the daily life.
Trent Horn: When you have your students read the Gospel of Mark and reflect on Jesus, was that specific that you chose that Gospel, because many theologians say that the Gospel of Mark is sort of the comic book Gospel, that Mark portrays Jesus as a man of action. He’s always doing something and showing God’s power in the world, so do you think that’s important for people to see, for men to see that to be men of God doesn’t mean that we just sit around and cry all the time about Jesus, you know, that we can be holy men of action.
Fr. John Parks: Amen. Absolutely. I love when Abraham is called, he says, in one translation he says ready. Yeah. And so he was ready for the call of God and when God called him, he was ready to move. He was a man of action. We have to be men of prayer, we still have to hear what the Lord is saying to us, but from there, prayer moves us to action, you know? Prayer without action is like, you’re rooted but you’re not bearing the fruit that God wants you to bear. So absolutely God wants us to be men of action.
Trent Horn: So I think that leads very well into my next question, I wonder about how men fit in to the life of the church. I think surveys and my own personal experiences seem to show that women tend to be more involved going to Mass or being involved in parish ministry than men. And a lot of times it seems like when we go to Mass, you’ll have men in high school, they go to Mass and they’re with their families, with their parents. And then after they’ve graduated high school, they’re gone. Sometimes they come back, maybe when they get married, but a lot of times they’re kind of MIA for a while. Why do you think that is and what do you think we can do about that?
Fr. John Parks: Well I just want to affirm what you’re saying. That is absolutely true that if you look at parishes, especially parish staffs, they tend to be overwhelmingly women. And I think part of that points to the crisis of masculinity in the church and the world, where there’s a lot of men who are not into their faith.
Fr. John Parks: And if I’m growing up and mom’s into her faith and dad’s not into his faith, especially when I become a young man, a teenager, and I’m trying to understand what does it mean to be a man, what does it mean to be manly. Well, if I see my dad stays home and he watches football and mom goes to church, I think well that’s what men do.
Fr. John Parks: And so then spirituality, faith, is seen as something feminine, you know. It’s seen as something that’s not what a real man does. And of course, that’s the farthest thing from the truth. Where’s men’s place in the church, where’s men’s place in the world, we’re everywhere.
Fr. John Parks: And to go back to what I said before, I think part of that is a misunderstanding of who Jesus is. The person of Jesus. He is such a stunningly striking figure, I mean, Jesus of Nazareth said things like “Heaven and earth will pass away. But not a single one of my words will.” It’s like, what on earth does that mean? This man spoke with such authority, such power.
Fr. John Parks: And I think when men encounter Jesus as a man, it’s the only way to encounter Him, and they see how He embraced the Cross, there’s something in our hearts, because our hearts were made for challenges, that just get inflamed. Like yes, that’s what I was created for, I was created to conquer myself out of love for other people. I was created to be great, to be a man of God, to be a saint.
Fr. John Parks: So I think when men who know Christ are very intentioned about discipling other men, they meet them, they’re in relationship, you and I had some involvement with youth ministry and you know, they say in youth ministry, three most important things are relationships, relationships, relationships.
Fr. John Parks: You form relationships with young men as an older man, you mentor them, you try to show, this is what Christ is like, you show them the word of God. Jesus was a stunning figure, He’s the son of God and He’s calling us to follow Him.
Trent Horn: When you were talking about the crisis of masculinity in the church, I think that’s something I’ve seen also, this idea. And it wasn’t always like this, that worship or religion has to have a kind of feminine quality to it. I know there’s kind of a joke that a lot of praise and worship songs, if you just take out God and put in, you know, girl or baby it could sound like a love song you wrote for your girlfriend.
Trent Horn: Whereas hymns that were written two hundred years ago, Be Thou My Shield, and you know, these other hymns. A man could sing them and they have a very kind of manly quality to them. Where do you see this crisis of masculinity and men feeling kind of left out?
Fr. John Parks: That’s a good question, I think, you know I read an interesting article that said a lot of men were leaving the Christian faith and looking into Islam, and the reason why is because of what you’re talking about. Sort of this call to obedience, this call to greatness. God doesn’t want our favors, he wants our obedience.
Fr. John Parks: And we think of obedience, it can seem as a particularly masculine virtue, you don’t think about, sometimes men are really drawn to like the armed services, to the Army. There’s a very clear structure. Yes sir, no sir. There’s an obedience, and it has to run on obedience. We think about loving God and doing His will, Jesus says if you love me, you will keep my commandments.
Fr. John Parks: So I think there’s a lot of factors that attack the identity of men, you know. Video games aren’t a bad thing but obviously that culture can kind of overwhelm a young man. Obviously the prevalence of pornography in our culture can also attack the identity of young men, it can kind of emasculate us, because it requires no sacrifice from us. So I think in those two things.
Fr. John Parks: Also the breakdown of the family, you know, there’s a lack of father figures a lot of times. A lot of times, a father is not present or if he’s present he’s not fully present. And there are things that as young men we should learn from men. Because again, that’s how we understand that this is a masculine thing to do.
Fr. John Parks: And so when you know my father wakes me up early in the morning on a Saturday and he says we’re going to do housework, we’re going to do this, that’s teaching me what we do as young men. And then I want to apply that to my faith, you know, that God is asking something of me as a man and I want to be obedient to that call.
Trent Horn: So I think that’s important, so for a lot of young men in the church, you’re saying like, when we’re saying to them you know, you’re called to love the Lord and they think of love as just this sappy sentimentality, am I just supposed to sit around with my guitar and sing love songs to God all day? Why am I doing this?
Trent Horn: No, it’s important to pray and have that intimate communion with God but it seems to me what you’re saying is that part of my loving God is get up, do the right thing, God has this mission for you, you need to get it done, son. Get up and do it.
Fr. John Parks: Absolutely.
Trent Horn: And men respond to, like you said, yes sir, I’m on my way.
Fr. John Parks: Yes. One of my favorite movies about masculinity is a movie called Cinderella Man, which is about a guy named James Braddock who is a boxer and he’s just such a family man.
Fr. John Parks: You think about a good father, I mean what does he do, he gets up early in the morning, that alarm clock goes off, I don’t know if he wants to get out of bed, but he does. And he goes to work all day and he works for his family and he comes home and he loves his wife and his children and he’s a good man and he sacrifices and he does all these things out of love for them, and that’s not easy and it’s not soft as you’re saying. But it’s what’s required of us as men. So that the people around, especially women and children, can flourish.
Trent Horn: So let’s talk then a little bit more about some of these challenges. You mentioned a few briefly but I want to go into them as just what a lot of young men might be struggling with. And I think one there might be the lack of male role models in life. A lot of young men come from broken homes, from a dad who is either physically absent or maybe emotionally absent. What is the damaging effect, what particularly does that do to a young man and how can young men who might be in a position where they don’t have a lot of male role models, what can they do? So what is the damage that it causes and what can really be done about that? What would you say to that?
Fr. John Parks: Well I think the damage that’s done is there’s a crisis of identity. I mean, every young man wants to know, do I have what it takes? Am I really a man? We started this conversation you saying there’s this crisis of masculinity and what does it mean to be a man, you flip through the channels, you think, I think six pack abs, that’s what it is. That’s what it means to be a man. Is it something external, something internal, and Saint Paul says that God wants to build up within us the inner man.
Fr. John Parks: When I have a good father figure, he teaches me about sacrifice, he teaches me about prayer, he teaches me how to love other people, he teaches me how to love women. And so I see that, that’s modeled for me. So I think when I don’t have a strong father figure, at the core of who I am there can be a profound insecurity. And I am then looking for anything that I can grab onto that can tell me how to be a man, and whatever that is.
Fr. John Parks: And you know, there’s images of masculinity from every car commercial to every food commercial to sitcoms on how men are. And usually men are portrayed on television as being sort of uninterested, lazy, don’t really know the needs of women, they’re not sensitive, they’re not strong, they’re weak, they’re pushovers and so on and so forth.
Fr. John Parks: So I think that can be the great problem is this crisis of insecurity, what should I be and what should I do. Christ wants to heal our hearts, and in every man’s heart there’s a wound that Christ wants to heal and so we want to come to Him and have Him do that for us.
Fr. John Parks: I think for some of us men, I didn’t have a real strong father figure when I was growing up, my parents got divorced when I was younger, and when I actually applied to seminary, I remember that was one of the questions they had, they said sometimes young men want to be priests because they want to provide for other young men and women what they didn’t have. They wanted to make sure that I wasn’t doing it out of, that I had sort of worked that healing process.
Fr. John Parks: And I know, so for me, nobody has a perfect father figure, but to go through that process of, if we feel like, my father really could’ve been better, to really forgive him. Forgiveness is a miracle and that sort of breaks that cycle, you know, of starting to blame other people. Because we can have that mentality our whole lives, we could have this victim mentality of I should’ve had a better father figure. I didn’t, I’m upset, I’m going to then live this certain way.
Trent Horn: And this is why I can live how I feel like, because I was hurt and I didn’t deserve to be hurt. Which is true, but that doesn’t justify going down a self destructive path.
Fr. John Parks: Yes. And you know, every young man, every woman deserves to have a good father, who loves them, sacrifices for them, but we live in a broken world. And that’s not the truth. And what Jesus is doing on the Cross is He’s taking on all the dysfunction of the world, and He’s conquering it so that we can be free of it. And so part of that is forgiving those who have hurt us, and then to begin again. To say what is it that I can do to be a good man. To your question, I would say there are good men in the world, and if we’re serious about being mentored, we should find a good man and ask him, hey, could I meet with you occasionally? Once a week, once every two weeks, could we talk about what’s going on in my life? Could we talk about my prayer life? Could we talk about how I’m struggling, how I could be doing better? Being honest, being accountable with that mentor, that older man, can absolutely help us grow in discipleship.
Trent Horn: Yeah, so maybe you know like a teacher, a priest. I remember growing up, my family, you know I’m a convert, and so my family is not Catholic, so what ended up happening is I would essentially adopt other Catholic dads, and they become like a second dad. And so it’s nice to have a dad you can relate to, and I remember one who would always give me advice because he had 11 children of his own, and so well why not add 12, number 13, 14. And you know probably who I’m talking about, it’s easy just to find that, whether it’s someone who’s a father metaphorically like a teacher or a priest or even another biological father to other children who wants to reach out and help someone else.
Trent Horn: So, going a little bit, I think you mentioned this briefly in a lot of these challenges facing men and understanding their masculinity, that we get these distorted messages. And I think the biggest one that distorts and cripples men’s ability to understand themselves is going to be pornography. So why don’t you help us, as a priest I’m sure you probably hear this a lot just in confession from men, one of the biggest things that they battle with. What is the big problem with this? When some men listening might think well, I don’t see the big problem. What is the big problem and what can men do about this?
Fr. John Parks: Yeah, just to sort of contextualize first of all the problem itself. You know, lust and struggling with temptation is as old as human beings, right? I remember one priest said sexual temptation ends about ten minutes after you’re dead. So, in other words, as long as you’re living, it’s part of the deal, it’s part of the struggle that you have to go through.
Fr. John Parks: I also think it’s helpful to remember that purity, purity of heart, purity of mind, purity of body, is a journey not a destination. So we’re always in this process of trying to get better, trying to be pure, nobody has it perfectly. The question is am I fighting, am I seeking to get better today. And to be better today than I was yesterday.
Fr. John Parks: Now having said that, that sexual temptation’s always been there, with the digital age, with iPads and iPhones and all these things, there’s a prevalence of pornography that, at no other time in human history, has it been this prevalent.
Trent Horn: Yeah, I remember even just 15 years ago, when I was in junior high, you know, we had essentially, you had internet, but it was a dial up modem, you couldn’t really get anything. You turn it on and it goes … just like well, I’m bored, I’m going outside. People would have to still smuggle magazines into school. And now, you know, junior high, you go there, kids have iPads and iPhones and say hey, check this out online. It’s everywhere.
Fr. John Parks: Absolutely. It’s a different world, and it’s changing so fast. And what online pornography has is what’s called the triple As, which is what makes it so addictive which is it’s affordable, it’s anonymous, and it’s accessible. You know, if you have an internet connection, you could find access to hundreds of images and it’s anonymous, no one really knows. And it’s accessible, again with this internet connection, you could get all the stuff for free.
Fr. John Parks: Which is why it can be so easy to get addicted to it. A lot of the times, you know, you can be online looking for something, and you’re not looking for anything and it finds you. And suddenly you’re like, gosh, how did I get on this thing?
Fr. John Parks: Why is it so destructive? There’s been tons of research and there’s lots of great books written on it like Your Brain On Porn, that talk about how it affects your brain. And it shrinks your frontal lobe and has a similar affect on your brain that very serious drugs like heroin have. And sort of rewires your brain, you have serotonin and dopamine which are kind of the happy centers, these things that get released when we have a happy encounter. And it restructures our brain that we want to go to use pornography to get that response, these happy-
Trent Horn: And you said it shrinks your frontal lobe, that’s the part that controls your decision making.
Fr. John Parks: … Yes.
Trent Horn: So that’s not good.
Fr. John Parks: Yeah, that’s not good. And so that’s really where it can sort of bind you, you know, Jesus says all who sin are enslaved to sin. Well, we see in a very real way physiologically how pornography can do that.
Fr. John Parks: But you know, Trent, you and I, as men, all men, we’re created to love. And as I said earlier, to love is to embrace the Cross. It’s to sacrifice my wants out of the needs of others, and if I really want to love, if I’m called to be a priest one day, if I’m called to get married one day, I need to learn how to sacrifice, and what sacrifice does pornography demand from me? Nothing. Nothing at all.
Fr. John Parks: And so, C.S. Lewis has this great line where he says you know, when a man has a lot of pornographic images in his brain, he says it’s like these shadowy figures. He says it’s almost like he has this harem, a harem is like where prostitutes go, in his brain. And they demand nothing from him.
Fr. John Parks: So it can become this sort of alternate world that a man can get caught up into, and again, he’s learning how to love in a disordered way, right? I mean he’s learning not how to sacrifice out of his beloved but rather how they have to sacrifice themselves out of love for him.
Trent Horn: So, yeah, what kind of effects can this have? I think some men might think well you know, I look at this stuff now, but if I get married in the future, I won’t. This is just something now that helps me out. But I think we can see that that’s probably a myth, that it really does hurt a man’s ability to relate to women.
Trent Horn: I know even some secular groups that are not religious have tried these challenges where they encourage men not to engage in pornography or masturbation for 30 days, and the men have said, I am so much better at relating to women now, because before I was just really awkward around them. Have you seen this, that pornography damages men’s ability to relate to women? And if so, how does it do that?
Fr. John Parks: Absolutely. You know, from what you just said, there was a man, his name was Chris Farley, he was on SNL for many years, and he-
Trent Horn: Fat man in a little coat!
Fr. John Parks: … yes! And he was, he struggled a lot with pornography and he struggled a lot with drugs and I remember there was an actress who acted across from him in movies, and she said the only time he looked me in the eye was on air. Was in the movie. Other than that, whenever I encountered him outside, he could never look me in the eye. And I think that part of that would be the effect that this is having on him.
Fr. John Parks: We know deep down that we were created to love, and I think you know, to your point, that some men we think, is it really that big of a deal, but we wouldn’t want to be remembered for it. We wouldn’t want that to be on our gravestone. This man watched this many hours of pornography in his life. We know part of it’s like, it’s not a really masculine thing, because it really doesn’t demand sacrifice. We see a man who’s strong or he’s swole, he’s ripped, right? We think well, that probably took a lot of sacrifice to get to that point, we can see that in a physical way. And we also know like, as I said earlier about the inner man, what requires sacrifice of us interiorally to become that person?
Fr. John Parks: To your point, that’s so true about if we get, if we look at pornography, get addicted to it, it really inhibits our ability to love women. Women are real, and they’re glorious in all of their challenges, and all of their blessings, and encountering a real woman is a great thing. And it calls us to guide ourselves out of love for them. Pornography doesn’t teach us to do that.
Fr. John Parks: And to look a woman in the eye is a difficult thing if I’m used to just looking at their bodies and just seeing them as objects rather than as persons. And to look them in the eye reminds me that this is a person, with all of her dreams, her goals, her loves.
Fr. John Parks: John Paul the Second famously said the problem with pornography, it’s not that you’re seeing too much of the woman, but you’re seeing too little. All you’re seeing is her body. And a woman is incredibly more complex and beautiful than that. And to really know that mystery and [inaudible 00:26:18] that is to try to not look at pornography and to really start to encounter women as women.
Trent Horn: So what would your advice be if there’s a young man listening who is trying not to look at pornography and it just always seems to catch back up with him when he’s in a weak moment. Feels like this is something he can’t get over, it’s just really hard. Yeah, what advice do you have for someone who feels they’re compelled or have a pornography addiction?
Fr. John Parks: Just hang in there, brother.
Trent Horn: It’s hard!
Fr. John Parks: It is hard, amen. And you know, at the core of it, it’s a spiritual battle. It’s a spiritual battle, we’re fighting for, we want Christ to have victory within our hearts that we would be men. Saint Paul says our contention is not with flesh and blood, with the powers [inaudible 00:26:59] those are choirs of angels, those are fallen angels, those are demons, those are temptation we’re struggling against.
Fr. John Parks: The first thing is you cut it out of your life. You know, Jesus said that if an eye causes me to sin, pluck it out. If my hand causes me to sin, cut it off. He doesn’t mean that literally, He’s using hyperbole, right. Then He says it’s better to enter Heaven maimed than to enter Hell with all my members, my eyes, my arms, my legs intact.
Fr. John Parks: So, if we were to sort of put that into modern context, we could say it’s better to enter Heaven without wifi than enter Hell with wifi. So in other words, if there are things or areas that make me fall into sin, if having internet in my room alone makes me fall into sin, then I got to be real honest with myself and say I shouldn’t look at the internet alone in my room. I should have it in a public place. If I’m with my girlfriend and that makes me fall into sexual sin when we’re in these situations then I need to avoid those situations. So the first thing is I want to cut it out of my life. If I have pornography I want to delete it off my computer, if I have magazines, I want to throw them away. And I want to start fresh.
Fr. John Parks: Second thing, to find somebody who can hold you accountable. We have to have people who know we’re an addict. Going to confession often, super important. Having that accountability through confession, through confessing to a priest, it’s really helpful if you have the same priest who kind of knows your struggles and what you’re going through. But I also think we need men outside of that who are trying to live the life too, that can help us. I know in my own life, that has helped so much. Even when I was in high school, I had young men who wanted to be pure and we were doing this together. We tried to hold each other accountable, that was so helpful.
Trent Horn: I think that accountability is important. It reminds me, you know, when I’ve had certain sins I’ve struggled with in the past, if it’s recurring, you feel like oh, not this again. And so I’ve been tempted, given in to, kind of priest shopping, okay? I haven’t been to this parish yet, so he doesn’t know me, and this guy doesn’t know me, and I’ll just keep going around. But if you see someone, especially if it’s a priest, consistently and he knows you, then that can encourage, you know I’m not going to, I don’t want to have to show that I’ve given in the skin, but he can always keep building you up instead of looking for a quick fix. I think another important thing on accountability is I’m sure you’re probably familiar with is accountability software. Stuff like Covenant Eyes. Why don’t you explain to our listeners kind of what that is?
Fr. John Parks: So Covenant Eyes is a program that you sign up for it, and then you have an accountability partner, and that partner sees every week, all of your internet activity. All your keystrokes, and Covenant Eyes, what it will do is automatically flags for that person what could be problematic sites.
Fr. John Parks: So what that does is, as I said before, the three As: affordable, anonymous, accessible. It cuts the anonymity out of it. It’s saying, I know that my brother in Christ or this other person is going to see all of my internet activity. Do I want to look them in the eye knowing that I have accountability to them and to say, yeah I looked at that site.
Fr. John Parks: And so it cuts that out and it makes this really have that accountability and it can be so helpful for staying pure.
Trent Horn: Yeah, I think that’s important to show some people who would scoff and say I don’t think pornography or fantasy is that big of a deal, then to ask them well would you be okay if everybody saw what you visited or if your mental fantasies could be projected in a theater for your friends to watch. They go, oh, hmm, wouldn’t want people to see that. Then you know, okay, then there is something wrong with it if you wouldn’t want other people to see that.
Trent Horn: I think the issue of pornography though really goes back to more of a core issue. And that would really be the issue of chastity. That men are called to live a chaste life. But I think when people hear the word chastity, especially men, they don’t understand it. They just hear chastity and think oh, you mean abstinence. You mean no. Just saying no to sex. But it’s really so much deeper than that, so really, what is chastity? And why should young men care about it?
Fr. John Parks: Well chastity is a virtue by which we integrate within ourselves our sexual desire, but really what chastity does, it just frees us to love. So chastity is a virtue by which I am able to love fully according to my state in life. So everyone’s called to chastity. I’m called to chastity as a celibate priest, you’re called to chastity as a married man. High school young men are called to chastity as single men.
Fr. John Parks: And what it does, again, is it just frees me to love. Sexual desire is an extraordinary gift. God creates us good, that’s what the book of Genesis teaches. And so, it is very good. So God’s not trying to destroy my sexual desire, He’s trying to perfect it.
Fr. John Parks: And so often the world, we think about sexual desire. And I remember being in high school and it seemed so powerful at times, your sexual desire. It’s like, this is unbelievable, does God know that He’s doing this to me? To be so attracted to young women. God, do you know what you’re doing to me? He does.
Fr. John Parks: And I think when we have that, we have what we think are just two options, I can repress it. Not think about it. Which of course, doesn’t work right? That’s like telling somebody don’t think about pink elephants. What are you thinking about?
Trent Horn: Pink elephant.
Fr. John Parks: Yeah. You shouldn’t have done that.
Trent Horn: I know. It’s right there.
Fr. John Parks: I know. Repress it. Right? So I can repress it, or I can indulge it, which is obviously what the world says, kind of the narrative that you’re saying about like, oh it’s not that big a deal, pornography, masturbation, all those things. But Christ gives us a third option which is to redeem it. And that I can use my sexual desire, that being attracted to women is a beautiful thing, it’s a great thing. It just has to be regulated within me, it has to be integrated into my whole person. It actually frees me to love them in a more profound way. To love them as a man, with my sexual desire.
Trent Horn: And that was part one of my interview with Father John Parks. Part two on authentic manhood will be available tomorrow. Thank you guys so much for supporting the podcast and do consider becoming a premium subscriber at trenthornpodcast.com, and say a little prayer for me and my family as we’re engaged in pro-life work and building up the domestic church in Oklahoma right now. You all are great and I hope you have a blessed day.
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