2008 RESPECT LIFE CONFERENCE

Achieving Chastity in a Pornographic World
September 27, 2008

Blessed are the clean of heart, for they will see God.
Matthew 5:9

Ken Henderson, Father Thomas Morrow and Mary Weyrich spoke at the annual Respect Life Conference held in Cody, sponsored by Catholics United for Life on Sept. 27.

All three speakers gave powerful presentations. Mary Weyrich and her husband, David, founded the Cenacles of Life to pray with the Blessed Mother for an end to the culture of death.

Ken Henderson has been married for 18 years to his wife, Michelle. He spent most of his life and 13 years of his marriage addicted to pornography. When he isn't speaking, he works with True Knights, an organization that challenges all men to be the best man they can be.

Father Thomas Morrow has helped many break their addiction to pornography and has gained a vast amount of experience throughout his 26 years of experience since ordination.

Father Morrow shared some sobering statistics about sexual sins before he officially began his talk. He stated that when someone is under any addiction, they can never be truly themselves.

"In order to give yourself, you must be free from addictions... When you treat something holy as trivial, you drag your nobility through the mud," he said.

Self-control is not the same as being truly chaste. When we control our desires, we merely suppress them. When we are chaste, we don't suppress our desires; we channel them into something constructive for our own faith. Then we have taken a step beyond self-control. Chastity occurs when there is no struggle in channeling our will; it's just natural, Father Morrow explained.

God, being the Supreme Being, sees everything as it should be, that is, body and soul intertwined; one inseparable from the other. We only see people superficially; that is, the body alone, or the soul alone. We sometimes even struggle to see the body as a whole, instead focusing on only the parts that satisfy our selfish impure desires. We need to strive to see us as God sees, body and soul together, the person, all of them, he said.

Ken Henderson presented "the Greatest Battle of Every Man's Life," although it might be more accurately called a testimonial. During his presentation, he showed that his teen years were the most formative and damaging to his adult life. The 1980's were very free. MTV was just making its debut. Pornography made a big splash with its national appearance during the late '80s and early '90s. It preached a distorted message of love, emphasizing self-gratification over true commitment.

"Men will use love to get lust. Women will use lust to get love," he explained.

He floundered in his marriage, trying to find a solution, but even religion let him down, as the Catholic Church that he was going to had adopted new age philosophies and lacked a solid catechetical RCIA program.

He fell into this pseudo-Catholicism and began to embrace it.

He decided that he wanted to become a history professor. He left his wife and child home in Southern California and left for Scotland to study.

He failed to get the doctorate he was seeking, instead squandering his family's hard-earned money on a worthless pursuit.

This severely crippled his already-deflated self-esteem. He began to see a psychologist and was diagnosed as "bi-polar." He was given medications that hurt him more than healed.

After many trials and failures, he decided to come back to the Church with a special interest in researching Church history.

"It was important that God had taught me to research history," Henderson said, referring to his time as a grad-student.

The Early Church Fathers caught his interest, and he devoured their works. St. Justin Martyr, St. Ignatius and St. Polycarp were all big influences on him. A fact that resonated with him is that, saint to saint, the teachings they taught are the exact same that we use today.

In October of 2002, he experienced his inner conversion and in February of 2003 he shared with his wife that the time had come to rejoin the Church as a family.

Henderson founded True Knights and started giving talks. The talks became syndicated, mainly through St. Joseph Radio. Now, three years later, he continues to be spiritually attached every day, but he holds strong. He challenges all Christians, not just men, to be strong in the fight for chastity.

"Satan goes to the head of the family," Henderson said. "When you cut off the head, the body dies."

He pointed out what true freedom is – it isn't doing what you want to do, when you want to do it, but knowing the right thing to do and doing it for its own sake.

"The cross is only heavy when you push it away," Henderson said.