A good summary.
Television is not evil or bad. It’s a medium. Some shows are morally corrupt, others are amoral, still others have good and bad elements and some are pious and good. We’re allowed to relax and have fun as Catholics (lay, priest or religious). This doesn’t mean we relax our minds or our focus on God. There is a danger in that, but that danger is present at all times - even during prayer when our minds start to think about other things.
Just don’t watch too much, stay away from near occasions of sin, try not to create scandal or support immoral shows and you should be fine. Most shows are pretty boring now anyway. Better to read a book.
Dear NewsTheMan,
Cordial greetings and a very good day. Hope all is well and good to see you on the boards again, dear friend.
Quite so, television, like the internet, is itself a neutral medium and it is the abuse and not the use of it
per se which is the real problem. That said, it is important that the Catholic remembers that he is engaged constantly in spiritual warfare and that in a fallen world he is not taking part in some perpetual picnic. The danger for Catholics living in the godless and hedonistic Western world is surely not from any over-rigorous discipline, but rather from over-indulgence, so that even good or ‘neutral’ things have the potential to become positively harmful. Thus we must needs be aware of the hazards to the spiritual life, even though such an awareness will not exclude time for picnics or for leisure pursuits, including moderate and selective TV viewing.
There has undeniably been a gradual loss of excellence as regards television programme content, which is no doubt a reflection of the moral and cultural deterioration in Western society generally. All of this is most lamentable, but what is even more mournful is to hear some professing Catholics say that because we now live in a milieu dominated by moral permissiveness, we can assimilate a certain amount of immoral entertainment on television without being adversely affected. It seems to be tacitly assumed that if a man has a sufficiently robust faith, then he will be grown up enough to be able to sift the good from among the bad and not be spiritually harmed by it - ignoring the unsavoury elements whilst savouring the good. Thus many modern day Catholic people seem to have no problem with watching graphically dramatised murders every week on films or TV series. Moreover, they are entertained by puerile and decidedly unwholesome comedies and relish so called inane ‘nerd humour’, deriving pleasure from the coarse wit but little realizing how a diet of laughing at what is profoundly unfunny will, at length, alter their ability to understand the gravity of immoral acts and how offensive they are to ar all-holy God. This sad state of affairs clearly results for unselective and undiscerning television viewing and is cause for concern.
Whilst I am not advocating that men part company with their TV sets, they do, I think, need to be very wary of befouling their souls by indiscriminate viewing. Catholics need to recover the moral sensitivity of former generations of the faithful, so that that which is morally and culturally unhealthy will immediately show up on their radar. If one is truly in earnest about the pursuit of holiness, then he will wish to avoid anything that could influence his heart and mind in the direction of sin and cause his love for God to wane.
My plea is that we ponder this whole matter of television viewing carefully and prayerfully, not that we necessarily transition to no viewing whatsoever, though some may feel led to do this in order to attain a greater degree of holiness.
Warmest good wishes,
Portrait
Pax
:clapping::clapping:
:thumbsup: