Why Hugh Hefner is an Important Lesson in Praying for the Dead

Since the death of Hugh Hefner went public last week the Internet has been abuzz with obituaries and commentaries.
Some people are hailing Hefner for his outspoken support of civil rights or liberating American culture from a puritanical sexual morality.
Some people (even in the Christian world) are filled with hate and wishing him eternal damnation in Hell.
I look at the death of Hugh Hefner as an opportunity to practice one of the most difficult tenets of Christianity. 
Specifically, praying for people who hurt you.

I obviously did not know Mr. Hefner personally and he had no idea who I was. 
But my life has been deeply affected by the addictive, manipulative empire he stood for and in Playboy.
Sexual addiction and pornography are the reasons I am no longer married. 
I find myself both angry and truly heartbroken for the millions of little boys whose innocence was robbed and taken from them in what Playboy represented. Little boys who were confused by what they saw which hurt their own sexual development and identity.
I am angry how Playboy laid the groundwork to the gateway drug of pornography affecting millions of men, young boys, and women. 
I am angry and disgusted that a woman's body has been treated as an object; a mere image of sexual pleasure and fantasy for a man to "get off" on. I am sad for so many women who have been used, abused, and treated as a man's plaything.
Sexual freedom never comes from the using of another person. And Playboy has used up women for such a long time.
Playboy and pornography are gateways to other deeply addictive ways of acting sexually: adultery, masturbation, sexual abuse and violence, prostitution, lust, contraception, abortion...the list just goes on. The sexual sins that Playboy represents spits upon all that is good and true about our bodies and sexuality. 
While I hate what this man did and represented, I do not wish Hugh Hefner to burn in Hell. 
Last week I was finding it very difficult to pray this man.
I read in a magazine article that as young boy Hefner felt very disconnected emotionally from his mother and was not shown much love. When we lack in experiencing real love in our lives, often we are propelled to seek it out and chase after it...even if those ways are damaging to the mind and soul.
But I did pray for him. 
Since then I have prayed those words Saint Faustian left us in the Chaplet oF Divine Mercy, "Jesus, have mercy on us and on the whole world." 
Jesus, show him mercy. 
I hate with every fiber of my being the evil he supported and represented, but mercy Jesus, only Your mercy.
It is hard to do that. 
Like really hard; especially when its so easy to think of the millions of families, marriages, and lives that have been destroyed by all that Playboy is.

The death of Hugh Hefner presents the Church with an opportunity to speak up and into the destruction the pornography epidemic is having on marriages, families, and relationships.
So Church show up and step up! PLEASE. I am begging you.

May his death be an opportunity to speak truth and hope to many people who have been deeply impacted by what he and Playboy represent.
But more importantly, let this be an opportunity to pray for the dead. 
Let us call out the mercy of Jesus, not condemnation or due justice.

Jesus have mercy on Hugh Hefner, on all of us, and upon the whole world.