"Don Jon" Christianity

"Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of profaning the body and blood of the Lord. Let a man examine himself, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For any one who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment upon himself. That is why many of you are weak and ill, and some have died."
 - 1 Cor. 11:27-30  

In the movie Don Jon starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Scarlett Johansson, the main character is a womanizing porn addict who has the temper of a lunatic. There are only few things he cares about in life: His body, his pad, his ride, his family, his church, his girls, and… his porn. He does seem to care a whole lot about the Church. He goes to a Catholic church every Sunday and he goes to confession every week. A whole lot more often than most Catholics. His confessions are always the same: consumption of pornography, masturbation, and fornication. But on his way to church, he would display a sort of malice that is unheard of among drivers, even in New Jersey. Yet such sins of malice go unmentioned in the confessional.

The movie is a raunchy movie filled with crude humor. But I recognized that there are good lessons to be extracted from the movie. It criticized how men are looking for one-sided relationships based on sexual satisfaction and how women are looking for similar one-sided relationships based on the desire to fill their narcissistic vanity by hunting for marriage as opposed to discerning marriage. But I saw another criticism in the movie: Just how underdeveloped Christian moral conscience currently is, and just how much it focuses on carnal sins when spiritual sins are of graver matter.

The movie, intentional or no, criticized how Christians (I suppose Catholics specifically in the context of the movie) are so attached to sexual sins that they fail to recognize other sins in their lives, that if they simply confess of their sexual sins, they have no other mortal sins to confess. Like Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s character, they are prone to not feel remorseful or even recognize acts like malice as a sin.

Consider the words of the great Doctor of the Church St. Thomas Aquinas: “Wherefore a sin which is about the very substance of man, e.g. murder, is graver than a sin which is about external things, e.g. theft; and graver still is a sin committed directly against God, e.g. unbelief, blasphemy, and the like: and in each of these grades of sin, one sin will be graver than another according as it is about a higher or lower principle.” Summa Theologica Q73A3.

In expanding further, St. Thomas Aquinas notes that “Spiritual sins are of greater guilt than carnal sins.” Summa Theologica Q73A5. For spiritual sins are directed at the spiritual things, which are of higher order than the material things, they are of graver moral weight.

Note that the Scriptures affirm this view (if you believe that all sins are of equal weight, check John 19:11; Christ literally points out to who has the greater guilt). The original sin was not consumption of pornography, masturbation, or even fornication. The original sin was betrayal of God’s trust in Man and Woman, fueled by concupiscence corrupted by Pride The immediate proceeding sin committed by Adam was betrayal against Eve, accusing her of greater sin, playing the blame game. Where he ought to have maintained his loyalty for her and owned up to his wrongs, he offer her up to God in hopes of mitigating his own wrongs. In both betrayals, they are directed at spiritual, immaterial things that are of higher order than that of carnal, material things. Betrayal against God damaged the spiritual bond between humans and their Creator, and betrayal against spouse damaged the spiritual, intimate bond between a man and his wife.

Note also the fact that the creatures that are considered irredeemable and unable to be saved are Satan and his horde of demons. The reason they cannot be saved is because they are highly intellectual beings able to perceive of things atemporally, meaning they are able to see simultaneously the past, present, and the potential futures and know of the consequences of their betrayal against God. Despite knowing the consequences, they deliberately betrayed God. For they are without bodies to have carnal appetites, demons rendered themselves irredeemable through their sins of the intellect and the spiritual. Thus, their irredeemableness shows how the spiritual sins are of graver matter than carnal sins like how St. Thomas Aquinas said.

Dante’s Inferno paints for us the moral theology of Christianity through his imagination. In his vision of hell, the lower circles of hell punish sins of graver matter. The first circle is Limbo, where pagans who were virtuous and the sinless unbaptised reside. There is no particular punishment apart from being a lowered form of heaven. For their virtues they have received their award (the existence of Limbo is not doctrine).

The second circle of hell is for the lustful. The third circle of hell is for the gluttonous. Recognize here that Dante already exhausted all the carnal sins in the first two circles of “actual” hell. The fourth circle is greed, an expanded version of the two previous sins, but one that has great spiritual consequences.

Beyond the fourth circle, the separation between the carnal sins and the spiritual sins sharply divide. The fifth circle is for the wrathful, the sixth circle is for heretics, seventh for the violent (for both against man and God), the eighth is for fraud, and, the ninth circle, the gravest of all, is for traitors. There is the Devil, the Great Betrayer himself, along with the likes of Judas and Cain. Under the moral theology of St. Thomas Aquinas and Dante, a loyal whore is a better friend than a chaste traitor. This was true of Christ's friends. 

The things Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s character confesses, then, are of relatively lower form of sin, even though mortal, for they are purely carnal. If we consider further his addiction to pornography, one can argue that his struggles with pornography is merely venial. The things he does not confess, such as his malice, are of spiritual sins. Do we not see this all the time? How many of us have skirted the line between venial sin and mortal sin in lies, fraud, pride, and wrath? How many of us believe that we have not mortally sinned just because we have not fornicated or watched pornography? How many of us gossip, betray, act vindictively, and commit sacrilege? How many of us focus on eradicating homosexuality when we fail repeatedly by committing acts of malice against our neighbors? Conversely, how many of us focus on social justice issues to a point where we are using them as vehicles to pridefully exalt ourselves?

             This kind of Christianity absent formed moral conscience I dub here as "Don Jon Christianity." Don't be like Don Jon. Let us, therefore, examine our conscience more regularly, confessing our wrongs. 

"Therefore confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man has great power in its effects." (James 5:16).

Though I must admit, reciting prayers while doing reps is not a terrible idea.