German Bookseller Causes Controversy Due to Erotic Books

According to a recent news reports, Weltbild, the largest media company in Germany has been involved in some controversy due to the fact that they sell some rather explicit pornographic materials like erotic books.While they are not well known outside of Germany, Weltbild maintains an online book store that is very popular in Germany and is second only to Amazon.The controversy is not really due to public outcry over the books, as Germany is a country that is pretty liberal when it comes to issues related to sex or the sale of pornographic materials.It is rather the fact that the company is actually owned by the Catholic Church.This is not even an issue of the Catholic Church owning some stock in the company, but rather the fact that Weltbild is owned eintirely by the Church.Of course, Weltbild does not sell only Erotic Books but also plenty of other types of reading materials, such as more tame Romance Books, historic books and other forms of popular literature.But by looking at some titles of the 2500 pieces of erotic reading material sold by Weltbild, few would think that these are just romance stories.In the online catalog of the bookseller, you can find titles such as Sluts Boarding School and Lawyers Whore.According to several online sources, it would seem that the Catholic Church is aware of the issue but is choosing not to take any action to prevent the sale of these books in the business that it owns.Strangely enough, a spokesman for the Catholic Church has stated that Weltbild is taking actions to prevent the distribution of any content which could be seen as pornographic.Even after the fact that Catholic groups in Germany have tried to bring this to the attention to the authorities of the Church for over a decade, no action seems to be taken at all and nothing has been done to prevent the sale of erotic books.Reactions in the online world have mostly been mocking the hypocrisy of the situation.LezGetReal, a news site that caters to a primarily gay and lesbian audience, has stated that the Catholic Church is giving the same quantity of effort in preventing the sale of explicit books as they are of preventing child molestation; not much at all.Many others have made humorous comments online regarding the issue.Cora FuchsComputer Technology Articles, a reviewer of German erotic literature wrote in a tongue in cheek blog post saying that it would be much better if priests actually ordered some of these books to keep their minds off molesting little children.Some more serious online articles have stated that it is simply business and that if Weltbild removed all books that would go against the strict teachings of the Catholic Church in that they wouldnt be making much money.