Dear Jed:

I praise God that you persevered in chastity for so long. I presume you have been to confession since the brief sojourn into the porno world is a sin.

I applaud your healthy and Godly perspective on marriage. It is refreshing to hear someone express this Godly approach.

The pornography world is amongst the most vile, disgusting, and evil sub-cultures on the planet. Things go on that are literally too disgusting to even mention that are far, far worse than the mere having sex on camera.

As St. Paul said, "(Ephesians 5:3-4a)  But fornication and all impurity or covetousness must not even be named among you, as is fitting among saints. Let there be no filthiness, nor silly talk, nor levity, which are not fitting..."

That last sentence firmly condemns almost all comedians today who seem to think that filth is what it takes to be funny.

As for demon possession, some of the people in the porno industry may be possessed, but possession is not required to participate in evil. We cannot say, "the devil made me do it." We can get ourselves in trouble and we can commit horrendous evil without any help from the devil.

With that said, there are certainly demons hanging around anyone in the porno industry, and around anyone who consumes pornography. So there is always a spiritual element, but this does not mean possession necessarily.

As for the Holy Spirit and wisdom, when we are baptized we are given certain gifts that are not given to those who are not baptized. These seven gifts are listed in Isaiah 11:2-3. They are wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety, and fear of the Lord.

The Catholic Encyclopedia explains:

• The gift of wisdom, by detaching us from the world, makes us relish and love only the things of heaven.
• The gift of understanding helps us to grasp the truths of religion as far as is necessary.
• The gift of counsel springs from supernatural prudence, and enables us to see and choose correctly what will help most to the glory of God and our own salvation.
• By the gift of fortitude we receive courage to overcome the obstacles and difficulties that arise in the practice of our religious duties.
• The gift of knowledge points out to us the path to follow and the dangers to avoid in order to reach heaven.
• The gift of piety, by inspiring us with a tender and filial confidence in God, makes us joyfully embrace all that pertains to His service.
• Lastly, the gift of fear fills us with a sovereign respect for God, and makes us dread, above all things, to offend Him.

These gifts are not virtues and are not human talents or abilities. They are supernatural gifts.

While these gifts are given only to the baptized, we can squelch these gifts by living in sin. Each time we fall out of a state-of-grace we are deprived of the graces of these gifts until we return to a state-of-grace. For most of us, this falling out of a state-of-grace, is very short-lived (lasting only until we say a Perfect Act of Contrition followed by the Sacrament of Confession at the next opportunity).

But, if one is living in sin for a long time and not repenting, not receiving Confession, the graces of these gifts become very distant and a person can find themselves entrenched into a pattern of sin that can be hard to extricate oneself.

Those who persist in sin even further can end up with hardened hearts so solid that they commit the unforgivable sin, which is to have one's heart so hardened that they reject God permanently, even at the point of death. This sin is unforgivable because the person dies rejecting God. After death there is no repentance possible.

As we remain in a state-of-grace, with only brief falls perhaps, and become closer and closer to God, growing in the faith and in intimacy with God, our falls into grave sin should be less frequent and the seven gifts should become stronger in our lives.

Many, if not most Christians do not have the fullness of these seven gifts because they do not fully live the Christ-life. While non-baptized people never received these gifts, they may still operate on the normal human virtue and capacity for wisdom, understanding, etc.

When baptized people fail to live out their baptism, or when non-baptized people fail to live out normal human virtues, possession is rarely the reason. Possession is still very rare, although it is increasing in recent decades. Lower forms of demonization, however, are pandemic.

As mentioned, human beings can get into all sorts of trouble without the devil's help, thus people can behave in evil ways without being possessed or demonized. Nevertheless, when evil is done you can expect a demon to be around somewhere at least egging on the evil behavior.

We do risk becoming demonized, however, as we continue to push away from God, and live in sin.

God Bless,
Bro. Ignatius Mary