What are you allowing into your house?
I got an interesting question recently:
Hello,
I am frustrated in my attempts to grow in holiness, and I was hoping you could help me out.
For some reason, I feel that I have stagnated in my spiritual growth and can’t seem to figure out why. I go to Mass almost every day, pray the Rosary regularly, and try to make time for reading the Scriptures on a regular basis. I also perform works of charity and volunteer at my parish as much as I am able. I try my best to follow the 10 Commandments and go to confession at least monthly. Also, most nights I invite some entertainers into my house whose performances oftentimes include taking off all their clothes and simulating having sexual relations.
Can you give me any advice on what I am doing wrong? What can I do to move forward in the path of holiness?
Okay, I admit it: I made this question up. I did it to highlight what I think is a serious problem among many practicing Catholics today: watching movies and television shows with sex and nudity without any realization of how horrible they are to the spiritual life. Even many Catholics who are aware of the dangers of pornography on the Internet don’t think twice about watching “mainstream” movies and TV shows which include gratuitous scenes of sex and nudity (and the amount of sexual content in movies and on TV is only increasing).
The problem is desensitization: we have become so used to what passes for acceptable in our culture that our own bar of acceptability has adjusted as well. If a movie has a great plot, good production values, is well-received by critics, and has but a single sex scene, how many of us would refuse to watch the movie for that one scene? But if the scenario I mentioned above actually happened – live performers came into your house and simulated having sexual relations – would you not be shocked and extremely offended?
So why allow it when it happens in a box in your living room?
Amen!! This is one of many reasons we no longer watch television in our home. Thanks Eric.
you missed one very important source: BOOKS
why is it that many of us think that books are
not a source of desensitization? I tell my wife:
“if they made that book into a movie… just as it
is written, what rating would it get and would you
sit down and watch it here in your family room?”
Since the switch to clumsy HDTV, I can’t get regular reception even on a new HD TV in my area. And I miss it. I never chose vulgar “comedians,” soft-porn series/films, or other offensive programming. But now I’ve lost access to most travel, natural history, cooking, & news programs, including ALL PBS stations! Fortunately, I have a collection of classic videos/DVDs.
i killed my TV almost 15 years ago. not for those reasons, but the *side effect* was a drastic reduction in such content (admittedly, i usually watched old mystery shows, and cooking shows, so it wasnt quite as bad as most folks)
if you have good self control, you can get some excellent shows on Cable…. but the sad thing is you almost HAVE to get a package that includes being ABLE to watch things like MTV. not a good option if you have kids in the house, or if your self control is bad or you have a prn addiction. (dating myself, i remember when MTV actually had music videos sometimes….)
someone mentioned books.
there is one drastic difference with books that have .. difficult content. you can censor any book YOU own. if there is a sex scene that would be graphic in an otherwise good book? well, they make tape, paper and sharpie markers. as long as its YOUR book, no one can say anything about it. (obviously if it isnt your property, this would be vandalism!)
the critical thing is knowing what you have become desensitized TO, and knowing where your temptations are. because we are not all tempted “the same”. for some people a fashion magazine is way too much skin and indecent clothing, for others its not even a blip on the radar, but the food network is an incitement to sloth and gluttony.
I DEFINITELY agree with your views. We are being desensitized with sex. Our grandchildren are growing up and I fear for them. We can explain all we want, but look at what is all around them. I stopped watching TV several years ago and watch EWTN.com on my computer. What ever happened to the organization that forbid indecency on TV?
On the plus side, I’m a convert to Catholicism. I used to come home after work at night and try to relax in front of the telly. Unfortunately, even if the programs weren’t objectionable, the commercials were. I discovered that the only channel I could watch without worrying about what my kids and I would see was EWTN. Eventually, I ended up in RCIA and now, here I am, Catholic and loving it!
The impact of the media on how we think and feel is amazing. In 2000 I was a liberal in the most hedonist sense of the word. I don’t know how it happened, but I started to read very conservative publications and books. Woke up one day a prolife conservative. (And I mean that in the social sense as opposed to political.)
To begin viewing popular culture with revulsion first required consuming information that pointed out its evil characteristics.
Kissing on screen by people who are pretending to be married couples is also a huge problem. You can watch a PG movie all you want, but the truth is you would be desensitizing your ability to properly discern what is chaste and modest. Of course, this leaves us with virtually no movies to watch, but it is still a problem that will not die in Hollywood.
Hollywood has many divorced people for a reason. They don’t have a radar screen that tells them they are off the grid. Everything is game when working on a set, because it is seen as, “just acting”. After all, it has to be as real as possible to be believed. Who said our imagination cannot capture imagery without leaving toxins behind?
We killed our tv 30 yrs ago when our youngest was 3 yrs old. We spent our evenings reading 1) lives of the saints 2) good secular literature such as the Chronicles of Narnia 3 and memorizing the Baltimore Catechism. We had a prayerful, peaceful, joyful home with NO rebellion whatever when the kids reached their teens. They NEVER asked why they had to go to Mass. At ages 32 and 30 they are fervent Catholics and my daughter is a contemplative nun.
Aside from that, killing the tv was the best financial decision we made. The kids’ attention span was not being constantly being fractured,and the people who tested them for the school district (two years apart) both remarked on their extraordinary attention span. They both did very well in school. My daughter was an A student for the 16 yrs of her schooling and they both got a lot of scholarship help on a merit basis. In fact, my daughter was a National Merit Scholar. None of the above would have happened with a TV. Our home was very conducive to study without it. It paid off.
It drives me to distraction to hear parents worry about “the culture” as they are walking out the door to drive over to Best Buy to buy a still bigger entertainment center to import the dreaded culture into their own home and into the hearts and minds of their children.
It also drives me to distraction to hear all the talk about the “vocations crisis.” There is no vocations crisis. There is a parenting crisis. There is a leadership crisis. When priests and bishops kill their own tvs, and can persuade even as little as 5% of their young parents to do the same, within 15 to 20 yrs they would have more priests and religious than they would know what to do with- especially if they pointed them in the direction of the lives of the saints, the Baltimore Catechism and family evenings together.
We killed our tv long ago — as in No cable
We use it for DVDs and we use the computer for things like tonight’s State of the Union address.
I admire Philippus and the choices made in that household.
I allow my kids to watch programs like The Dick Van Dyke show, Modern Marvels and select other shows via computer.
We are sometimes invited to watch football at friends’ homes and I have found the ads so objectionable that I have declined many an invitation.
Serena also made a great point. I can relate to it!
“To begin viewing popular culture with revulsion first required consuming information that pointed out its evil characteristics.”
Once when we were visiting some relatives three decades ago, some awful program was on TV and the father of the family coming into the room said, “We don’t watch that kind of program in this house.” Behind me, out of his earshot, the second eldest daughter hissed, “I can’t wait to get out of this house!”
Incredibly and paradoxically, by issuing the one command, “No TV!” I escaped being a censorious parent. My kids did not constantly hear me saying, “Don’t watch this, don’t watch that.” St. Paul says, “Fathers don’t nag your children….” But all throughout the Church fathers *are* nagging their children on this issue, and it is killing us, alienating parents from their children, driving them out of the home and out of the Church. In that good Catholic home, where the kids went to Catholic grade school and high school, Sunday Mass every week, 4 of the 7 left the faith and lived in fornication. The same kind of Catholic upbringing was true in my own parents’ home, with 6 of the 8 siblings leaving the faith. TV had EVERYTHING to do with it.
Left out of this account is one death of AIDS, one child by artifical insemination, three lesbians, severe mental illness and hospitalization for two individuals, severe depression and near suicide in three individuals.
Do I lay the blame for all this at the foot of TV? I don’t think any of those things would have happened if Jesus Christ and his gospel were not endlessly being contradicted in the bosom of those two otherwise wonderful Catholic families.
As a never ending stream of anti-Catholic, anti-Christian, demonic propaganda into the home TV is unparalleled in history. By its presence it excludes an atmosphere of prayer, the presence of Christ.
In 1949 Pope Pius XII wrote an allocution about TV and Radio in which he cited possible benefits, but as a first principle of discernment he quoted the poet Juvenal, “NOTHING IMPURE IN THE HOME.” That slogan is enough to decide the issue in the year 2010. Young couples preparing to marry, new parents at baptisms, parents of young school children should hear it again and again from their priests. Of course, at this point it applies to much more than just TV, but that it applies there is unarguable.
I have often considered going “No TV” like others who posted above, however, I really learn a lot from watching EWTN.
In our household, EWTN is the channel of choice and is almost the only channel we watch. I just wish they had better~and more~children’s programming. Not being raised Catholic, I have actually learned a lot from EWTN about the little customs of being Catholic that children learn by being part of a Catholic family. (I watch the shows with my children.)
We have only one TV and it is in the living room, no TVs in bedrooms where people can “sneak.”
Our kids aren’t the ones who have problems with the content of what they watch, as they watch EWTN almost exclusively. (Except for Barney and Caillou on PBS.) It’s my husband I have to watch closely, as it’s hard to break the habit of watching shows he became hooked on before converting. But I agree that often times we could better spend time reading and on family matters than on watching television.
[The bird-brained HELLywood shmucks affect even our Kansas birds - the HELLywoodized ones with their blaring boombox "mating calls" which scare our little feathered ones. So I am sharing this with all non-shmucks. Karl]
Our songbirds here in MitcHELL County, Kansas want
to give the following update on the insane boombox noise here:
“The noisiest kid over in the city of Beloink drives an older white sedan with license number 178-BJW. Our owner’s friends in Beloink have told the police about him several times, but it never dawns on the Keystone Kops there that they could use an unmarked car to verify the noise; the kids have cell phones and can warn their friends when they see a marked patrol car coming.
“And it never dawns on the anti-social psychopaths (who may be making up for the lack of noisy rattles in their infancy) that their unlawful noise may be harming a sick baby or someone whose night job forces him to sleep days – or even some veteran who can get “flashbacks” of battlefield cannon booms!
“It’s obvious that many Kansas kids are no longer Christians, or patriotic Americans, or even human because they have been slowly brainwashed and mentally enslaved by leftist, anti-family, perverted, unAmerican, Jesus-bashing, Marxist shlemiels and shmucks in HELLywood who exercise their first amendment rights by dangling every known vice before Kansas farm kids while secretly viewing them as red-state “hicks”! After America falls we’ll be able to blame the buyers of HELLywood’s videos and devil music as much as the HELLywood devils themselves!
“If you think such music doesn’t create devils, why do little piggy Beloinkers blast quiet neighborhoods even on Sunday mornings during church time? Do those paranoids really think everyone is out to get them and they have to have growling tailpipes for the same reason a dog growls? Since we don’t get to democratically vote whether we want to hear their music or any music, will those “dictators” be happy when God responds in kind by letting America be taken over by a big dictator who will likely ban all “dirty capitalist” noise! Until then, maybe a tornado – or even a nuclear war – will cover up at least some of the noise!
“Many other places (like Albuquerque and Reno) have huge fines for boombox noise and even impound offending cars! How can high-crime, gambling towns have better “Kansas values” than a north central Kansas town?
“Have the little piggies here heard of headphones? We don’t care if they’re smoking pot and fornicating in the middle of our road at 3 a.m. as long as they’re quiet! North Bell St. over in Beloink is the noisiest place in the county. Would the BELLies care if one of our friends is a veteran a block east of them who might go postal over the noise? As long as the cops do nothing about this, we songbirds will keep singing to the whole world about MitcHELL County!”
See what smart birds we have?
Karl (in Karl’s Kastle)
[Want more? Google "David Letterman's Hate, Etc."]