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February 27, 2020Safe Haven Sunday March 8
Safe Haven Sunday will take place the second Sunday of Lent, March 7-8. On this particular weekend, parents, grandparents and all families can learn about the harm of pornography, how it negatively impacts marriages and families and destroys the way of life God has commanded.
In 2015, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops issued the formal statement, “Create in Me a Clean Heart: A Pastoral Response to Pornography.” In the document, they encourage pastors to embrace their duty to protect children from pornography. According to the “Dioceses Implementation Guide Year One,” Safe Haven Sunday is meant to equip families with information about pornography and help parents learn how to safeguard children.
“Safe Haven Sunday is a weekend set aside by dioceses and parishes to directly address the harms of pornography in an appropriate way. Within the context of the Mass, dioceses and parishes are able to provide teaching and resources that will support and protect individuals, marriages and families in making all homes a safe haven,” the guide states.
“The use of pornography by anyone in the home deprives the home of its role as a safe haven and has negative effects throughout a family’s life and across generations. Implementing Safe Haven Sunday is accomplished by following step-by-step instructions.”
According to research cited in that document, the average child is first exposed to pornography by age 11 and nearly all boys and more than half of young girls see pornography by age 18.
In Archbishops Coakley’s 2019 letter about Safe Haven Sunday, he states, “The effects of pornography are absolutely devastating: addiction and compulsive behavior, marriage and family break-ups, human trafficking, an increasingly distorted understanding of the meaning and dignity of human sexuality and the loss of respect for persons who become instrumentalized for the sake of sexual gratification.
Very often it is through accidental access by means of a pop-up ad or a typo during an internet search. Digital technology has become a part of our lives. By age 5, half of all children go online daily. By age 13, three-quarters of them have a mobile phone, and children ages 15-18 spend an average of one hour each day consuming media on their phones.”
Alex Schimpf, director of the Office of Marriage and Family Life Ministry for the archdiocese, said, “The tricky thing about pornography, compared to other behaviors that don’t fit with Christian life, is that it tends to hide. The awful thing about pornography, especially the kind of pornography we have in our culture, is it is a habit that is constantly going to escalate to a rougher and rougher and more extreme form. It almost always gets revealed eventually, and when it does, it is experienced in the same way adultery is experienced, as a kind of betrayal. People are wounded by it. People may feel they don’t know their spouse. And, people begin to question their own intimacy.”
Schimpf said Safe Haven Sunday can help in two ways.
“In the primary way, it’s through just starting conversation about it. Pornography is an awkward subject, no one wants to talk about it. The archbishop invites the pastors to talk about it to their parishes in a pastoral way. It gives parents the cover to have the conversation with their children or perhaps with spouses. It is something we normally do not bring up, but we know we have to. Families want to work properly and want to have conversations. Children want to be guided by their parents on these issues. We don’t want them to find everything out from their peers.”
He said the second way he hopes Safe Haven Sunday will help is if someone is struggling with pornography and hears their priest talk about it about it in the homily, it will be the spur they need to bring it to God’s mercy in the confessional.
The archdiocese also has partnered with a company called Covenant Eyes that produces a book for Safe Haven Sunday each year. Covenant Eyes has developed an implementation guide to help parishes across the country reach out to families and educate them on ways to protect their children and loved ones from the evils of pornography.
Last year, the book was titled, “Equipped: Smart Catholic Parenting in a Sexualized Culture,” and it talks about basic practices families can set up at their home to make it safer from pornography – like Google Safe Search or not having smart phones in the bedrooms at night – to name a few.
This year’s book is titled, “Confident,” and it’s presuming exposure has occurred. It coaches parents on how to have a courageous conversation with their children.
Covent Eyes has set up a website for the archdiocese about the subject of pornography called Clean Heart Online. The website has a clearing house of resources dealing with pornography and the addiction.
Jolene Schonchin is a freelance writer for the Sooner Catholic.
Safe Haven Sunday
Find resources to help talk to families about pornography
CleanHeart.online/archokc
Safe Haven Sunday
A Prayer for Individuals and Families
Loving Father,
Thank you for the gift of marriage and family life. We entrust to you our home, where our marriage and family lives and grows. We ask you to make it a safe haven for all who live and enter these walls. May our home truly be a holy place for both young and old to be formed in the truth regarding life, love, sex, and marriage. May each of our members be protected from and guided in seeking to avoid pornography, while embracing the freedom and purity of life in Christ.
If there are past wounds that have occurred due to the availability of pornography on our family's devices, lack of awareness of parents, or because of indifference, we ask you to send forth your Spirit to heal, bless, renew, and consecrate this home as a safe haven with your son Jesus Christ at the center of our lives, today, tomorrow, and always.
We ask this through the intercession of the Holy Family of Nazareth, Saints Joachim and Anne, the Sacred Heart of Jesus, and the Immaculate Heart of Mary. Amen.
