For years, educators, psychologists and families have been warning about the massive consumption of pornography among adolescents. We know -because studies confirm it- that exposure begins earlier and earlier, that it affects the perception of the body and distorts the understanding of consent. That concern is legitimate. But as we look to that shore, another phenomenon has been quietly growing that deserves the same attention: the popularization of erotic novels disseminated through social networks, book clubs and platforms such as BookTok.

Today, it is enough to go into any bookstore to see for yourself. The “juvenile” section is flooded with covers with warnings of spicy, and labels that classify the level of explicit content. Sometimes they are works of fiction for young people; others are clearly aimed at adults, but massively acquired by adolescents. In almost all of them, the plots revolve around hypersexualized bonds, normalized jealousies and a dependency presented as the ideal of romantic love.

This editorial turn is not random. It responds to the explosion of communities on TikTok, where the hashtag #BookTok has transformed algorithms into the most powerful showcases of the decade. Under tags such as Dark Romance o Romantasy, titles that until recently would have inhabited adult niches now lead the global sales rankings. In Chile, it is enough to observe the prominence of these works in fairs and large chains: luxury editions with painted edges and irresistible aesthetics designed to capture the collecting desire of a generation that, paradoxically, consumes fantasies of possession and emotional violence under a cotton candy appearance.

And here a disturbing ingredient appears: the naivety -or resignation- of some parents. While their children devour bulky books, they sigh with relief: at least they are not in front of a screen. They ask few questions and check less. Sometimes they don't want to know. But reading is not an absolute good in itself: content matters and how it shapes a child's affective imagination.

This is not to demonize literature; the written word has the power to open worlds and heal wounds. However, books educate -even unintentionally- and the mass consumption of certain narratives shapes the idea of desire and bonding. When an adolescent girl reads, over and over again, stories where loving means losing herself in the other or justifying any excess in the name of physical attraction, the message is not neutral. She will learn, by osmosis, that love absorbs and controls.

Contemporary erotic narrative does not only eroticize: it also pedagogizes. It teaches what is acceptable in a couple and what can be demanded or tolerated. For many young people with no real experience, these works function as emotional manuals. And if the models are toxic, the print will be too. Some will say that “they are just fictions,” the same as is often argued about pornography. However, both build unrealistic expectations. When sexuality appears without human context, the boundaries of consent become blurred: what in reality would be aggression, on paper is celebrated as “irresistible passion”.

And in the midst of this phenomenon, the publishing industry has found a vein of gold.: the boundary of “fit” while making up the content as "fit". women empowerment. Relationships of control, asymmetrical power or emotional dependence are packaged under the discourse of freedom and self-desire. But if empowerment consists of enduring harm in the name of love, we are confusing something serious. The market sells an affective education of very low ethical cost and very high emotional profitability.

We cannot leave all the responsibility on the child's judgment or on the weary eye of the parent. When a plot that contains dynamics of abuse and romanticized dysfunctional relationships is labeled as juvenile, sales are prioritized over the protection of emotional development. And the result is that many adolescents are receiving, without adult mediation, a “sex education” that is not recognized as such..

What to do? Prohibition is not enough; the clandestine always attracts. What we need is conversation and emotional literacy. Just as we ask for comprehensive sex education, we also need a critical look at cultural consumption. To read with them, to ask: is this love or control? Where does respect appear? What image of the body and of women is transmitted?

As a society we have recognized the harm that pornography can cause; let us not now ignore its printed version, disguised as sensitivity. It is not enough to celebrate our children turning the pages: the real challenge is to help them read with lucidity so that they do not confuse a heart on fire with a bond that consumes them. Because to love is not to possess, nor to annul oneself, and no novel -no matter how successful it may be- should teach us otherwise.

In 1907 Robert Hugh Benson wrote his best known novel, Lord of the world. It is a fictional dystopia in the style of 1984 or Brave New World, in which the author enters with great intuition into the world he was living in. When one reads this book one cannot help but feel that one is before a prophetic tale that is a great denunciation and a terrible warning about the future. About our present.

The book narrates the advent of a secular messiah, Julian Felsenburgh, a diplomat, a sage, a charismatic and powerful leader who manages to bring peace to the world at a time of great tension and who establishes a humanitarian philosophy in politics. I don't want to reveal the plot, but it is overwhelming to see how, step by step, many of the predictions made by the author are fulfilled. From the general apostasy and a secularization that leaves religion in a corner of social life, to the euthanasia laws or the creation of the European Union and the emerging power of China. In the end, only the Church remains as the last redoubt of a transcendent vision that Julian Felsenburgh wants to destroy.

I was reminded of this suggestive novel when I saw the debate that has arisen in recent days the atheist funeral, secular tribute they call it, that the Socialist Government of Pedro Sanchez wanted to celebrate after the victims of the train accident in Adamuz in which 46 people died.

In the novel the Government promoted by Felsenburgh promotes new festivities, that of Paternity and Maternity and establishes the worship that the citizens must render. Francis, a former apostate priest, is presented on behalf of a group of former clergymen to organize the whole liturgy, because he and the Government know that men need rites and faith, and that the liturgy has a special relevance in it. No one knows this better than he, a former Catholic priest.

For some time now, the Government has been trying to replace Catholic State funerals with secular tributes, with a liturgy that partly reminds us of the liturgy that religions have created to worship God. We saw it for the first time in the pandemic that caused the COVID-19, we saw it again in the tribute after the floods in Valencia, and they have also wanted to do it now, before the terrible railway accident.

But this time the victims have refused to play the government's game and finally the Sanchez administration has postponed its proposal. sine die. A Catholic funeral was indeed held, attended by the King and Queen of Spain and many civil authorities. Only the President of the Government was absent... for agenda reasons, they said.

Liliana Alvarez, daughter of one of the victims, took the floor at the beginning of the ceremony and was clear about this: «Thanks to our diocese for this funeral, the only funeral that could fit in this farewell, because the only presidency we want at our side is that of the God who has made himself present in bread and wine».

Why is the government so determined to organize funerals that leave aside any allusion to transcendence, to religion, to God? Who wants an atheist funeral at the most tragic and painful moment of life? «Only God can console us now,» said one of the victims of the accident at the beginning of the funeral. 

When a government decrees that a religious ceremony must be replaced by an atheist one, it is imposing its own vision of life, which in this case is the denial of God, and it is entering a sphere that does not correspond to it, which is that of consciences and religiosity. And it does so by substituting one rite for another, a religious liturgy for an atheist rite - as in Benson's novel - because they know that men need liturgies and rites. 

The excuse is a half-truth-half-lie. According to this Government there are people of different confessions or without any confession and a State funeral should not be offered in the rite of a specific confession. As it can be seen, we are in the so many times used misunderstanding between the non-confessional State and the atheist State. It is true that the State in our country has no official religion, but it must be a State that welcomes and respects the life of its citizens, especially with regard to the practice of their deepest convictions such as religious ones. The State is non-denominational, its citizens have beliefs and faith. The way to respect the plurality that exists in society is not to impose silence on everyone, but to generate a public space where everyone can be himself in freedom.

In reality, what is intended with this type of tributes as a substitute for religious funerals is to offer a materialistic vision of the meaning of life, without any reference to the spiritual, much less to life after death. But why should the State assume this position of offering the meaning of life and transcendence that corresponds to religions? Would it not be more normal for the authorities to accompany the victims and their relatives to the funeral that corresponds to their religious convictions? Let us imagine that by a fateful misfortune those who died in an accident were all Muslims: wouldn't it make sense that our rulers accompany them in that moment of pain in a funeral that is in accordance with their religious experience? 

But the problem is that it is not a question of respect for the faith of all citizens, but of imposing their atheistic vision of reality, in which the State replaces God himself. Benedict XVI speaks of this temptation when he analyzes how Jesus was tempted in the desert at the beginning of his mission in his book Jesus of Nazareth.

Here the core of all temptation becomes clear: to set God aside, who, before everything that seems most urgent in our lives, becomes something secondary, or even superfluous and annoying. To put order in our world on our own, without God, relying solely on our own abilities, to recognize as true only political and material realities, and to set God aside as something illusory, this is the temptation that threatens us in many ways.

The State has its function, without a doubt. It has to solve and manage the concrete problems of citizens' lives, including the maintenance of proper infrastructures. But it must never go beyond the limits that lead it to invade areas of the life of the conscience of the people. This pretension is dangerous and leads, sooner or later, to totalitarianism, more or less covert.

The victims of the Adamuz accident have understood this and have conveyed it with dignity and courage to the Government. I already tell them that the postponed state funeral will take a long time and will not be held. Because in the end, also in this type of acts, for them political calculation counts more than showing closeness to the victims. The President of the Government was not at the Catholic funeral because he feared the booing at the entrance or exit and he will only call an event of any kind if it has some political gain or if he can introduce his particular and personal vision of life.

The victims of Adamuz have given an example of dignity and faith. When I heard the words of Liliana Alvarez at the funeral I was moved and cried, and I understood, with pride, that faith in God fills with light even the darkest moments of our lives. That no State or Government can offer us the comfort that God gives us at the hour of death.