Laughing at immorality

[Liberanosamalo]

Cat, I didn’t mean to inject Crowley into things really. But when I looked him up, I was interested to note that every area he dabbled in heavily… drugs, Eastern Mysticism, bisexuality, the occult… all of the evil… you can find a tv show glorifying that in a more diluted form on television now. He was a one-man network television station! Way ahead of his time! It took 3/4 of a century for the rest of the world to catch up to him.

I work to pick and choose what my girls watch. But I can’t control what they see at their father’s. And he has few standards. And their friends see some shocking things. So all I can do is then talk about it with them after the fact, indicate that I didn’t think it was appropriate, and tell them where the moral reasoning and message was off in the show/movie. Everything becomes a teachable moment. And the world intrudes more and more as they get older. It was easier to keep them from things when they were 12 than 17.

Some of our best conversations have been after I found they had been seeing something “objectionable” on tv, where I was then able to discuss with them why the Church taught what it taught.
It’s so much easier when you can control their household and they aren’t spending half their time in a household with someone who has left the faith and dropped all his standards.

But I was raised in a relatively sheltered environment, Catholic schools, etc. And college was a shock for me. I think my girls will have a better time adjusting than I did, because they’ve been innoculated to some degree to the world around them.

 

[edwest2]

If you look at comedy in the 1960s, 70s, 80s, 90s and now, it is very clear that endless sex jokes and the constant use of profanity has been made to appear average or normal. Compare the comedy of Bill Cosby, Red Skelton, and Jonathan Winters to the “comedy” of today. It all happened gradually, starting at “off color” and suggestive to a little more, a little more and a little more risque. Like a slow poison, people barely noticed, now comedians use profanity as if it’s part of everyday conversation and even female comedians trivialize sex and talk about it like drunken sailors on leave.

Television was, at one time, a welcome form of entertainment and a welcome guest in our homes. Now, it is consistently turning out very vile and graphic material. Yes, there are a few television programs that contain some virtue but I find no virtue in graphic scences of violence that include blood, vomit and partial nudity. These types of shows may be more appropriate for training soldiers but are not “enteretainment.” And this trend is being cross-promoted in print media as well. One day, I picked up a book and there was the profanity (just a little), but a littlw while later, I picked up another book and there it was again. I complained to the publisher since these words distracted from my enjoyment of the book and were unnecessary.

I’m posting a warning about television because it has gone from an entertainment option to an always on background noise of increasingly little value, and it is promoting immoral, dysfunctional and degenerate living. Example: Grey’s Anatomy. The lead character is a doctor who engages in random sexual encounters with men, and drinks tequila when depressed.

Television is an option, not an important part of living. For every one or two programs that show material that has some virture, the rest is really unGodly and unCatholic, even some of the cartoons.

God bless,
Ed