In my kitchen I have about half a dozen frying pans, and at least that many spatulas.  It’s not that I have any special affinity for them; it’s simply that I make scrambled eggs far more often than I do dishes. I didn’t know you are supposed to periodically clean out the bacon grease (I rarely cook anything that doesn’t include bacon) from the oven until it caught on fire a few weeks ago.  In my refrigerator you will usually find little more than beer and pickles.  I don’t own a vacuum, only do laundry when I am out of clean clothes, and always leave the toilet seat up.  I am, in other words, a bachelor.

Perhaps then I am not the best person to comment on what constitutes the most pressing issues facing American marriages and family life.  On the other hand, I am a son, a brother, and a brother-in-law, and so I’d like to think I have a pretty good grasp of at least what is at the top of the list.  I wouldn’t place pornography on that list, and I imagine most other people wouldn’t either.  The US bishops, on the other hand, seem to think it is a plague on all our houses urgently calling out for a response.  How else should we interpret their plans to issue a pastoral statement that “will emphasize the effects of pornography on marriages and families?”

There are plenty of things wrong with pornography.  We could start with the victimization of many of those who take part, the decreasing ages at which young people are exposed to it, its creep into pop culture, the objectification of women, and then continue on for pages.  Bishop Richard Malone of Buffalo, who is leading the charge for the statement, cited statistics in his proposal that pornography is a factor in 60% of divorces.  This is troubling, to be sure, but I’m willing to bet it is more a symptom than a disease.

Looking at what those root causes are and addressing them would be far more productive.  For example, while talking to my mother recently I asked how my father was.  “Dad who?” was her response.  After a prolonged period of recession-caused unemployment, my father, the hardest working man I’ve ever known, took on a series of jobs outside of his field.  When his union finally called with a job working as an electrician, he naturally took it.

After a few weeks on the job they upped his hours.  Normally this would be a good thing, except that they increased it to six 10-hour days and one 8-hour day a week.  They expect my dad to work 68 hours a week, during the second shift, with no days off, outdoors through a New England winter, for six months or more, and to be happy to do it.  Even the Israelites (to say nothing of God himself) had one day in seven to rest.

Even if my mother hardly sees him, I’m certain my father feels lucky to be working while too many others in his union, our community, and nation are not.  Or they are working two or three part-time jobs, and still struggling to make ends meet.  I suggest that this economic instability is far more threatening to American family life than a laptop in a darkened room.

Don’t get me wrong: this isn’t a defense of porn.  While I’d vigorously defend any consenting adult’s legal right to make or view it, on the whole I’d prefer if it wasn’t a part of our society, and certainly not such a pervasive part.  I’m also not opposed to a statement about pornography, per se.

My complaint lies in the fact that there are plenty of bigger issues facing families that the Bishops’ Committee on Laity, Marriage, Family Life, and Youth will not be addressing until this statement is finished in 2015.  While they are busy drafting a statement that almost certainly will not break any new ground (is anyone really confused about what the Church thinks about porn?), they will be missing opportunities to bear witness to important issues that really affect American families.  I wouldn’t go as far as to call that obscene, but at the very least it is disappointing.