Can a priest watch films?

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As long as you have a desire to be a priest - keep asking questions, don’t give up, and keep on contacting religious orders or even the vocations director in your diocese re the diocesan priesthood. As you have discovered, your interest in films has led you from the Salesians to the Paulist Fathers. At this point, you’re unsure where The Lord may be leading you. Our last parish priest loved to relax by television and his old television was pretty ancient, so when he left our parish we took up a collection and bought him a brand new television/DVD player as a parting gift from the parish. Our diocesan priests, goodness knows, work so hard in the main that they need a means of switching off and relaxing for a while, else pretty quick I think they would be experiencing burnout at very least. I am yet to go into a parish house that has no television etc., which is not to state that they may not exist.
Re actual qualifications to be considered for a religious order or the diocesan priesthood, they will probably vary from diocese to diocese and from religious order to religious order. Some religious orders do state that they take each applicant individually and some diocese may do the same for the diocesan priesthood. No harm at all in asking.

TS
 
DexUK said:
For religious orders that might be different of course: it would depend on their rules. If you take a vow of poverty you’d clearly not have the money to do such a thing.
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This is not true, it would depend on the order and how they view and practice the vow of poverty.
 
Go to film school and continue to enjoy watching movies during your two years of Pre-Theology at the seminary. You’d be on the six-year plan, instead of the four-year plan, but you’d still be doing it, ya know? (And there may be an extra pastoral year thrown in there too, FWIW).

One can find some great Catholic themes in the seemingly and most unlikeliest of films, such as the Hong Kong films of John Woo. Astonishing themes of redemption. (Complete with requisite white doves!)
 
I think you need to consider the immorality in the film industry, and in films and take it more seriously.
 
I know a Jesuit priest who is a teacher of film studies. He studies, analyzes and teaches about all kinds of films, and I do mean all kinds. Well, except pornos! He finds much truth about humanity and God in all the films he sees. He is also one of the holiest priests I know.

A diocesan priest I know graduated with a master’s degree in musical performance and went straight to seminary. Lots of “second career” priests have backgrounds in subjects other than philosophy.

Betsy
 
It really isn’t fitting for a priest to be watching all sorts of films filled with impurity, immodesty, taking the Lord’s name in vain, and enticement to sin and admiring them and promoting them.

It really isn’t fitting for regular Christians to do so either.
 
I have nothing against the timing, I have something against the content, because it is immoral, and entices towards immorality.

If something artistic entices a person towards immorality, the work as a whole is evil and not to be recommended. Most of today’s movies contain content that is truly pornographic.

A good deal of yesterday’s movies do too. Hollywood loves to flash people, and promote sinful relationships.

You would not be watching these movies in church, and these movies aren’t something anyone will be enjoying in Heaven.

See the sermon linked here at the very start entitled, ‘Movies’.

A priest is sacred and set aside from the world even moreso than the simple Christian. The simple Christian should be in the world he most not be ‘of it.’ This means something important. 🙂

It’s an occasion of scandal to mix the sacred with the profane like this.
 
Excellent homily on movies on the link you gave, I thought, Shin. Certainly it can teach us about where our Catholic responsibity lies re movies and when a movie has gone too far (e.g. taking God’s name in vain) and to exercise discipline and self denial and switch the movie off, rather than watching it to the end and thus supporting what is sinful and a possible sin of its own. I thought the homily was quite good.

What I did think as I listened to the homily is that what we probably need as Catholics is sound and reliable Catholic reviews of movies. I dont think the priest in the homily was condemning all movies outright and perhaps we need sound Catholic reviews of movies pointing out the dangers to us and what is recommended and what is not and why. In telling us the why of it all, it helps us to understand what previously we may have not understood and can extend not only movies etc. but also to areas of reality and daily life. Perhaps we need a ministry for priests or laypeople who do make such reliable reviews.

I dont think all movies are profane, some may have something important to say - providing they do not take God’s Name in vain, for one, as Father said in his homily. Some movies may provide pure escapism and relaxation without being in anyway morally over the edge and we all need to escape and relax now and then. I like Chevvy Chase movies for example and also Norman Wisdom (rarely seen nowadays!) I dont think that priests should be advised not to, or prevented from watching movies. Rather to watch them discerningly and know when to switch off and why, and to share their opinions of a particular movie or movies. If a movie or television program is affecting me in an adverse manner of any kind, then I switch it off and had occasion to do so recently. With our parish priests for one, they have the opportunity to write a few words about a particular movie or television program etc. and put it into the parish bulletin keeping parishioners updated about what they are watching in one medium or another and exactly why it may be recommended or not from the Catholic viewpoint. The same with books.

TS
 
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