NBC's "Parenthood" abortion episode

  • Thread starter Thread starter ExCatholicGuy
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
It’s that time of year, Network Sweeps, and ANYthing goes on the air that some executive thinks will boost their ratings. I gave up on network television years ago.😦
 
Decades ago I read a pop magazine interview with a sitcom producer. The interviewer asked something about what motivated this person and the response changed my outlook on TV and movies forever. The guy said:

“… and I realized that if I can make America laugh at who they are, I can make America CHANGE who they are.”

It was decades ago, but I’ll never forget. There’s no such thing as mindless entertainment. Keep your filters up ALL the time when consuming media.

Everybody thinks that such things don’t influence them. Just like everybody thinks that advertising doesn’t affect them either. But it does. Boy, does it.
 
Does anybody here on CAF know what Dr. William Donohue of the Catholic League has to say about the episode? How about Michael Voris?
 
Maxirad said:
Does anybody here on CAF know what Dr. William Donohue of the Catholic League has to say about the episode? How about Michael Voris?
Click to expand...
Just a guess, but I suspect they would both say “why in the world are you even watching that garbage?”

But that’s just a guess.

:rolleyes:

~Liza
 
manualman said:
Decades ago I read a pop magazine interview with a sitcom producer. The interviewer asked something about what motivated this person and the response changed my outlook on TV and movies forever. The guy said:

“… and I realized that if I can make America laugh at who they are, I can make America CHANGE who they are.”

It was decades ago, but I’ll never forget. There’s no such thing as mindless entertainment. Keep your filters up ALL the time when consuming media.

Everybody thinks that such things don’t influence them. Just like everybody thinks that advertising doesn’t affect them either. But it does. Boy, does it.
Click to expand...
Interesting. Consider the wide-spread acceptance of “gay marriage” nowadays. IMO, this started back when Will and Grace came on the air. Up until then, homosexuals were not portrayed as “normal” on television. But Will was just soooo sweet and reasonable and handsome and “normal,” and anyone who said otherwise was condemned as an “extremist.” Now you don’t dare say that homosexuality is “abnormal”–you can lose a job for saying something like that.

In one of the family forum threads on CAF, I recently advised young mothers to be careful
about relying on “instincts” to raise children, as many of us have been negatively influenced (warped) in our thinking by the media, especially TV and radio.

Several of the moms took issue with me on this. They claim that they have kept themselves pure from these influences.

Well, I certainly hope so. But I stuck with my guns on that one. I think that unless we can truly say that we have never seen television and never listened to the radio or any other form of popular music (e.g., stereo at a friend’s house), we HAVE been influenced by the media, and very likely, that influence has not been good and wholesome.
 
You are dead on Cat!

I can’t agree with your post more. I watched Will and Grace as a young teen and it greatly normalized gay relationships for me and made me think the Catholic view on homosexuality was ridiculous and wrong. I also came to accept premarital sex as normal and even desired it since that’s all most of these shows on US tv promote. My parents never taught me anything about sex so that’s all the influence I had. I guess they expected that whatever I had received in CCD as a young kid would counterbalance that:shrug:

All I know is once I came back fully into the church and accepted all her teachings I am shocked as to what passes as decency in the entertainment industry. I stopped watching almost all my favorite shows a few years ago and can count the number of American shows I watch on one hand and most of them I don’t watch regularly. I do watch old american tv shows since they tend to be ok.

I discovered tons of foreign shows that were much tamer and even inspiring and that don’t feel the need to show sex scenes in every episode. I recently watched a romcom that had no more than three tame kisses in the whole 20 episodes and it was one of the most romantic series I’ve ever watched.😊

I sometimes catch parts of american tv shows in the gym or at friend’s houses and I literally cannot watch some of them, Also, don’t get me started on Spanish soaps (i’m latina) I feel embarrassed for the actors, myself and anyone watching. I compare it to when I was a vegetarian for two years and then started eating meat again. I was so sick the first week because my body was not used to it. That’s how I feel and it makes me realize that we are slowly conditioned to accept anything and everything by the entertainment industry.

I see tons of threads about struggles with purity and this was a biggie for me. My first advice for anyone with this problem is to STOP the majority of your TV watching or be extremely selective of what you watch.
 
ExCatholicGuy said:
Did anyone see it? I thought the promotion for Planned Parenthood was pretty blatant; in one scene, the camera very obviously focused on their “Care. No matter what.” slogan posted above the reception desk in a PP waiting room.
Click to expand...
Hearing about stuff like this is why I’m happy I don’t have a cable connection. No faithful Catholic should allow that filth to enter their home.

While I’m defiintely no socialist, I have to admit that corporations (especially television networks and advertisers) have very much contributed to the moral destruction of our society.
 
Yes a biggie for me was cutting cable. When you have to look for what to watch on netflix or online or bother with rabbit ears lol your tv watching naturally decreases because it’s just more work and you have to put more thought into it
 
MidnightSun12 said:
Hearing about stuff like this is why I’m happy I don’t have a cable connection. No faithful Catholic should allow that filth to enter their home.

While I’m defiintely no socialist, I have to admit that corporations (especially television networks and advertisers) have very much contributed to the moral destruction of our society.
Click to expand...
I don’t have a problem with Christians watching shows that present a non-Christian worldview. In fact, I think it can be very helpful for us.

I think that if Catholics watch with full awareness and discernment, these shows can provide a valuable service to us, as they help us to more fully understand the mindset of our friends and fellow citizens who do not profess Christianity and show no interest in Jesus or the Church. We need to have an understanding of our culture before we try to go out and be “missionaries” in our culture. Watching televisions shows can help us to be more compassionate towards those who do not believe, and more intelligent about our witness and testimony.

The problem is that too many of us do NOT watch TV with full awareness and discernment. We plop down on the sofa, deposit our brains on the coffee table next to the bowl of chips, and we just let the TV shows wash right over us and flood our souls with all kinds of non-Christian points of view.

It’s no surprise that gradually, we come to believe that what we are constantly watching on TV is the truth, and that our Church is wrong.

We need to watch TV with awareness, and talk back to the TV. I’m serious! Years ago, I attended a seminar (Protestant) presented by a man who actually had SIGNS made for the top of the TV. This man said that we should listen actively and then verbally CHALLENGE what we were hearing and seeing on the television! I remember one of the phrases was “Who are you kidding?!” This is a great phrase to yell out during many of the commercials, but also during the shows that present non-Christians actions as “good.”

I still yell at the TV to this day, and so does my husband. We don’t watch a lot of television shows, but when we do, we try to stay aware and we speak up! TiVo is really helpful for this, as you can pause the show, yell at the TV for awhile and talk about what is wrong with the message we are receiving, and then un-pause and go on with the show without missing anything.

On the other hand, I see no reason for Christians to constantly watch television shows that are objectionable. There are so many other tasks that need to be done. I think we need to limit TV so that we are able to accomplish more in life.
 
Cat said:
I don’t have a problem with Christians watching shows that present a non-Christian worldview. In fact, I think it can be very helpful for us.

I think that if Catholics watch with full awareness and discernment, these shows can provide a valuable service to us, as they help us to more fully understand the mindset of our friends and fellow citizens who do not profess Christianity and show no interest in Jesus or the Church. We need to have an understanding of our culture before we try to go out and be “missionaries” in our culture. Watching televisions shows can help us to be more compassionate towards those who do not believe, and more intelligent about our witness and testimony.

The problem is that too many of us do NOT watch TV with full awareness and discernment. We plop down on the sofa, deposit our brains on the coffee table next to the bowl of chips, and we just let the TV shows wash right over us and flood our souls with all kinds of non-Christian points of view.

It’s no surprise that gradually, we come to believe that what we are constantly watching on TV is the truth, and that our Church is wrong.

We need to watch TV with awareness, and talk back to the TV. I’m serious! Years ago, I attended a seminar (Protestant) presented by a man who actually had SIGNS made for the top of the TV. This man said that we should listen actively and then verbally CHALLENGE what we were hearing and seeing on the television! I remember one of the phrases was “Who are you kidding?!” This is a great phrase to yell out during many of the commercials, but also during the shows that present non-Christians actions as “good.”

I still yell at the TV to this day, and so does my husband. We don’t watch a lot of television shows, but when we do, we try to stay aware and we speak up! TiVo is really helpful for this, as you can pause the show, yell at the TV for awhile and talk about what is wrong with the message we are receiving, and then un-pause and go on with the show without missing anything.

On the other hand, I see no reason for Christians to constantly watch television shows that are objectionable. There are so many other tasks that need to be done. I think we need to limit TV so that we are able to accomplish more in life.
Click to expand...
Thank you for the reply 🙂

I will not watch any television content that promotes immorality, even if it’s subtle… I feel that our eyes and ears are windows to our souls and when we allow satan’s message into our minds for the purpose of entertainment (obviously it’s different if we’re evangelizing or defending the Church) we are slowly de-sensitizing ourselves to the repulsiveness of sin. Satan can bombard us with the same message of immorality a hundred times each day without exhausting himself in the least… Each time we get hit with one of these messages, however, we gradually get just a little bit weaker in our resolve against sin. For example, a 100 years ago the mere idea of homosexual unions were absolutely intolerable… How many Catholics today view these sinful unions with at least some degree of indifference or luke-warmness? All of us are impacted by the diminishing effects secular society has on our faith, that said, I think the home needs to be an antidote towards those effects, not yet another venue where satan can have his message heard.

God bless!
 
That is the one reason I stopped watching I think it’s called “The Practice” or it may even be called.“Private Practice”. It’s the spinoff of “Greys Anatomy” is because in the show they hired a doctor to play the role of an abortionist. Then they were trying to sway a patient to have one. Don’t need that. I think it is on Monday nights on ABC. Then on election day, I was watching Who Wants To Be A Millionaire and they were playing for a charity and Meredith Vierra (sp) came out and said about the charity and introduced Joy Bahar and Meredith asked Joy what Charity she was playing for and Joye said The Planned Parenthood clinics. That put a bad taste in my mouth and caused me not to want to watch that show. I dish that for people that can’t afford cable or satellite, they would have a good wholesome Catholic station. :shrug
 
Cat said:
I still yell at the TV to this day, and so does my husband. We don’t watch a lot of television shows, but when we do, we try to stay aware and we speak up! TiVo is really helpful for this, as you can pause the show, yell at the TV for awhile and talk about what is wrong with the message we are receiving, and then un-pause and go on with the show without missing anything.
Click to expand...
My DH and I also do this. We don’t have cable so we are mostly watching DVD’s we have rented or Netflix which makes it easy to pause. We not only have long rants in the middle of the shows we often post some of our better thoughts to facebook when we are done. We’ve had lots of people openly agree with us and even raise their own points of contention over the same show or movie. I always enjoy it because it gets a lot of us thinking 👍
 
Gigglin4God said:
That is the one reason I stopped watching I think it’s called “The Practice” or it may even be called.“Private Practice”. It’s the spinoff of “Greys Anatomy” is because in the show they hired a doctor to play the role of an abortionist. Then they were trying to sway a patient to have one. Don’t need that. I think it is on Monday nights on ABC. Then on election day, I was watching Who Wants To Be A Millionaire and they were playing for a charity and Meredith Vierra (sp) came out and said about the charity and introduced Joy Bahar and Meredith asked Joy what Charity she was playing for and Joye said The Planned Parenthood clinics. That put a bad taste in my mouth and caused me not to want to watch that show. I dish that for people that can’t afford cable or satellite, they would have a good wholesome Catholic station. :shrug
Click to expand...
The show you speak of was just cancelled. I have absolutely NO use for Joy Bahar.
 
We stopped cable access in our home months ago. It’s quite refreshing.

We do have Netflix though. But, we pick and choose the shows that come on in our house.

Lots of Veggie Tales, Wallace and Gromit and Shaun the Sheep…for DD.
She LOVES veggies tales. It’s probably the only time I can get her to sit still so I can sneak in a load of laundry or a chance to get lunch/dinner started.

I must admit…that I catch myself wanting to watch shows like Law and Order, West Wing and even Fraiser.
These were shows I really loved before my conversion and now I see their content and trashy…especially Law and Order.

It’s tough to keep the influences out of my home because I still have a slight attraction to them.
 
I did not see that particular episode, but I did see the one before it when Drew’s girlfriend told him she was pregnant. It is a liberal show, so I am not surprised. I actually started watching Parenthood as part of an assignment for a Family Counseling class. They are a prime example of an enmeshed dysfunctional family. They have no religious or spiritual foundation. Though the theme song invokes God’s blessing, there is no evidence that any of the characters, with the exception of Jasmine’s mother, has any belief in God.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top