What’s your opinion on Catholics and cable TV?
To get cable, one must buy a “package”, which includes a number of stations that are / should be objectionable to Catholics.
Yet, if we get a package - whether we watch objectionable stations or not - our money pays for it.
As a Catholic, it would be your own moral decision whether to skip Cable TV in order to not support the objectionable stations.
The broad moral principle of the ‘Double Effect’ covers what you are asking about: directing money to corporations that may also peddle immoral goods or entertainment.
There is a section on the Double Effect in the Catechism of the Catholic Church.
You could in good conscience as a Catholic boycott Cable TV; but, on the other hand, it is reasonable that you need a source of information and entertainment, and CableTV is is usually the quickest source for both news and entertainment.
So, it is not a venial or mortal sin to subscribe to Cable Television (I’m talking about the basic cable channels; not the pornographic ones; and you already know that many of the cable channels do contain objectionable content), but if you wanted to, you could boycott Cable TV because of objectionable content on many of the channels.
Cable TV is something you, perhaps (without really analyzing it tonight), **should not ** be supporting financially.
But it is not a venial or mortal sin to subscribe to Cable TV.
Also, yes, you can watch EWTN for free over the internet.
You can also watch the Catholic Television Network of Detroit (CTND) over the internet for free; just go to the Archdiocese of Detroit’s website, or google CTND, and you should be able to find it.
CTND ran a few PBS shows about religion on it and some other show with what, I thought, was a somewhat (once in a while) theologically unorthodox Catholic priest named Father Manning from California. So, EWTN is better. They would show EWTN in the evenings (starting at 8:00pm) on CTND.
I think the Computer Industry already sells “TV Screens” for computers; I don’t think they are as big as TVs, and they are new so they probably are expensive.
If they are not selling them now, but Microsoft and other companies will be selling them in the near future.
Yeah, but if you just want EWTN, you might just want to watch it on the internet which is free too do so.
The main EWTN Talk Shows like EWTN Live, and Sunday Night Live at
ewtn.com are watchable for a week in Archive on video; then they are transferred to their Audio section.
Some of EWTN’s older series are available on audio on demand in their Archive, although I did have trouble accessing some of the much older EWTN series audio files (some of the files I think wouldn’t work).
Also, I don’t know how the Cable Industry works, but I do not think the Cable Company pays the cable channels money in order to run their cable channels.
The Cable Company provides the programming and repairs, and you pay them to receive their line up.
The Cable Companies might pay something to the cable channels, but I always thought the cable channels received most of their money through commercial advertising, although in the beginning many of the cable channels were commercial free, so I am not sure (?).
My local Cable Provider always gave CTND the worst channel number, number 2 (the lowest cable), and it almost always the reception was terrible, even unwatchable, unless I videotaped the shows.
Then CTND was switched to their Digital Channels, and, I think, I remember reading in a newspaper article that CTND had poor reception on digital because a retirement home was complaining about the poor reception.
More on the Double Effect:
Three questions determine whether an action with a double effect is moral or immoral.
- The first is the question of intention. One can never intend the evil effect (CCC 1752). One’s intention must be only for the good effect. The evil effect must be a regrettable byproduct.
- The second is the question of causality. St. Thomas Aquinas articulated the principle that “the end does not justify the means” (CCC 1759). One may never do evil hoping that good may come of it. A bad effect may be the consequence of a morally good act, or it may occur simultaneously along with it, but the anticipated good must never be a result of evil actions. Such acts are never morally licit (CCC 1756).
- The third question is of comparable gravity. Is the good being done proportional to the evil consequences of the action? In order to justify taking the action, it must be. When an action has both a good and an evil outcome, the gravity of the two must be weighed against each other. Although “circumstances of themselves cannot change the moral quality of acts themselves; they can make neither good nor right an action that is in itself evil.” Still, they can and do “contribute to increasing or diminishing the moral goodness or evil of human acts” (CCC 1754).
By Matthew Newsome, Catholic Answers writer, in This Rock, September, 2006
