May 2010 Print


Television: The Soul at Risk

PART 6

Isabelle Doré

This is the sixth installment of a series on television. It was originally published as a book by Clovis in France (Clovis is the publishing house of the French district of the SSPX). The series will continue every month in The Angelus.

In some cases, the TV watcher is so dependent on television that he is reduced to a zombie-like state: his will, his capacity for loving the good, is annihilated, like that of the millionaire American Howard Hughes (or his double), deceased in 1974,

who spent the last fifteen years of his life…watching television! Installed in luxurious hotel suites, surrounded by an escort of Mormon guards and domestics who isolated him from the outside world, Hughes spent his days all alone in a room with the curtains drawn, stretched out on his bed all day long. Before him: a television turned on fifteen hours a day. He would rapidly consume some sandwiches or canned food without taking his eyes off the screen. He even refused to cut his fingernails or have his hair cut. Solitary, half mad, thus died Howard Hughes, consumed by television.

Not every television watcher under the sway of television has reached that point; even if the will is blocked or turned away from the good, it is not completely so. Just as television is an obstacle between the real and us in the order of knowledge, it is also an obstacle between the real and us, between our neighbor and us, between God and us, in the order of charity. The real, God, our neighbor, are mediatized. The audiovisual may incite to evil by its impious or immoral content, like the spectacles of the Renaissance or the time of the Roman Empire (and denounced as scandals by St. John Chrysostom and Bossuet). But before it incites to sin or evil, television paralyzes the will. We do not know if Howard Hughes watched pernicious spectacles: he was not harming his neighbor’s life, he was not committing adultery; he contented himself with doing nothing.

The audiovisual is dangerous firstly because it turns us away from our real neighbor in favor of some remote abstraction. It also turns us away from an alternate activity that might draw us closer to the good and to our neighbor. To set one’s hand to something, the Church reminds us, is the first degree of contemplation. Our Lord began by being a carpenter.

 

Television and the Virtue of Religion

One sometimes hears a surprising statement when Catholics speak about their faith: “I believe that there’s something.” How can our God, living and true, be reduced to “something”? This is surely an effect of television, where God, the neighbor, the real, lose their consistency for a habitual viewer. How can one be devout–as St. Francis de Sales defines it–when one is “hooked” on television? St. Francis defined devotion as “promptness and diligence in the observance of the commandments and the accomplishment of inspired or counseled good works.”

Can the inspiration to accomplish good works come through television? Is there not a contradiction between promptness and diligence in keeping the commandments and the habit of relaxing in one’s armchair to follow programs designed to hold us in front of the set? How can a Christian apply himself to God while his soul is encumbered with scandals, phantasms, and foolishness?

A missionary to India a few years ago related:

In the places where television has not yet come, the children preserve the purity of their souls until the age of 18 or 20. In the villages where television has spread, the souls of the children are sullied by seven or eight. In the towns, relentless advertising urges people to buy a set for every room so they don’t have to depend on anyone else in their choice of programs.

Yet it is the pure of heart that will see God.

What become of faith and religious practice among habitual viewers? We observe that faith (like religious practice) is rather inconsistent and vague. The proclamation “I believe in something” as one’s Creed is an indicator of a failing faith.

In a diocesan parish bulletin, some young confirmands were interviewed about the reception of the sacrament: not once did they speak of God, the Holy Ghost, or His gifts. They spoke of encounters and discussions about love and films. They told about the big moments of their preparation: the meeting with the bishop, the day of the ceremony, their friends, the relatives who came; they speak about themselves and their pride, their emotions, their joy, the banquet after the ceremony… They completely left out God, the Christian life, the apostolate, and their vocation as apostles.

 

The Parable of the Sower

The Christian life and religious practice amount to little, by the avowal of practicing Catholics and their priests. The pastor responsible for our area designates practicing Catholics as “the visible individuals in our human and ecclesial community.” That means that religious practice consists merely in being visible in the human and church community.

Lukewarmness and false devotion have always existed, but what should be rare and abnormal becomes current and normal. Does television play a part in this refusal of the Christian life, in the difficulties with being prompt and diligent in the observance of the commandments and the accomplishment of counseled or inspired good works? The parable of the Sower can give us some keys if indeed we allow that, in spite of the novelties sown since Vatican II, the Good News is still being sown to a certain extent in the Church today since passages from the Old and New Testaments are read in the churches.

“[The seed] was trodden down; and the fowls of the air devoured it.” The Church instructs us that this designates superficial souls or hardened hearts that will not open to teaching or grace. Television certainly plays a leading part in the fabrication of shallow souls and hardened hearts, with its fare of silly programs and horrible scenes. The people who spend a lot of time in front of the TV set and who rarely go to church (for family occasions) resemble the superficial souls and hardened hearts of the parable: they receive the seed, but in vain: the noise of the world prevents the good tidings from taking root.

“And some other fell upon a rock. And as soon as it was sprung up, it withered away”: The Church teaches us that this passage designates passionate, enthusiastic, generous souls living in the excitement and agitation of feelings and emotion. These souls can be touched by grace; they can have been moved, they can be drawn by someone, but it does not last. They let go of the Christian life once desolation, trials, or renouncement comes.

Television sustains this excitation of the feelings and emotions. We still find many of these Christians in the Church, like the young confirmands who speak of their emotions, their feelings, but not at all of the sacrament that makes apostles. We meet, especially in charismatic circles, many Christians who are looking for intense experiences. But the Christian life does not consist only in felt experiences, and all the spiritual writers agree that for advancement in the spiritual life, periods of trial and desolation are most fruitful. This group of Christians watches television less avidly than the first: their hearts are not hardened because they do not care for the spectacle of violence and evil, but the seed scarcely sprouts.

“And other some fell among thorns. And the thorns growing up with it, choked it”: The Church teaches us that the thorns represent the smothering exterior world: pride, money, vanity. The seed begins to grow but finally it is choked by the world. These are the people who have talents, but the world comes to them through television, and their talents are spoiled. We recognize in the Church such people among “involved practicing Catholics,” the members of parish leadership teams, the “vicaresses” who like to take the priest’s place, the ladies who take advantage of every opportunity (readings, announcements, songs) to make an exhibition of themselves.

While our ancestors used to hear Mass turned towards the Lord, making their own these words of the hymn: “Let all efface themselves here, for Jesus on the altar appears,” in many churches we get the exact opposite impression. Those who attend the New Mass are turned towards ladies who, by their conduct at least, seem almost to proclaim: “Let the Lord efface Himself while we at the altar appear.”

Here too, a link with television can be established: these liturgical “shows,” as Cardinal Ratzinger called them (before being elected pope), are inspired by televised spectacles and variety shows. The talent of these Christians consists first of all in modeling the Church on the world and then putting the Church at the service of their social ambitions.

Churchmen in charge of parishes continually make use of the vocabulary from the world of entertainment: they speak of the parish leadership team or the liturgical leadership team. For many Christians, attending Mass means paying attention to the extras. In another recent issue of our diocesan bulletin, the priest invited the leaders of the local team to make the Mass livelier so that children would attend more willingly.

One wonders by what means these Christians will one day be able to be oriented towards the Tridentine Mass!

Active Catholics often designate themselves as “actors”: “I belong to the liturgical leadership team because I want to be an actor in the Church,” one often reads in their testimonials. One gathers that the non-actors are spectators. Moreover, these active Catholics are suffering, like priests, from an identity crisis. They do not appreciate, perhaps more often than they confusedly express, being lumped together with the passive spectators by the “actors.” In the parish bulletins, thanks and congratulations are invariably addressed to the “actors” of the liturgical leadership team, who liven up the Mass and who make the parish run.

Applause is now common among the official parish staff; yet St. Pius X forbade it. “One does not applaud the servant in the Master’s house.” But there are no more servants, only actors!

A priest of the diocese explained that he had to command silence during the Offertory because the parishioners were taking the Offertory for an intermission and would begin to chat.

Of course, the parable of the Sower was taught well before the existence of television. The souls displaying these defects have always existed in the Church, and we may recognize ourselves in each one of these descriptions, but by its effects television contributes to the transformation of souls into a terrain that is hardly apt to bring forth a fruitful harvest, and Christendom now resembles a ground in which the good seed does not grow very often. One finds very many hard, shallow souls, very many souls on the look out for intense experiences, very may actors and actresses and leaders, but few Christians. The good word sown during the Mass is unfortunately often stripped of its meaning, and it seems that the media are not extraneous to this misappropriation.

 

In some parish bulletins one finds an inversion of the steps of the Ignatian method: Memory, Understanding, Will. Memory: one systematically chooses something that is not supernatural. Understanding: instead of clarifying the mystery or parable in light of the faith, one obscures it with considerations of contemporary issues. Will or resolution: the act of the will is always turned towards the world, towards others–not towards one’s neighbor, but towards a vague, distant object.

For instance, in a parish bulletin, the parish pastor presents the Holy Family: the father, the mother, the child (memory); he explains that there are new models of families… (understanding); he invites us to welcome these new models and to be attentive to others (will). Now, in this parish, the practicing Catholics are still, overall, normal families. Where then did the priest-editor of this editorial draw his inspiration?

Another example: Jesus sends forth the apostles two by two without gold, silver, sandals, purse, or staff (Mt. 10:10) (memory). At present, we dispose of a number of means of modern communications like the Internet (understanding). Let us know how to make use of these new means of communication (will).

Behind all these considerations one surmises the deleterious influence of the media, a refusal of realities both natural and supernatural, a desire to pattern oneself on the world, a total submission to the world as it is shown, transformed, and fashioned by the media. Instead of transmitting the things of God, our preachers have transmitted the media, especially television, the principal vector of hidden persuasion: they have made a god of their TV.

(To be continued.)

 

Translated from La Télévision, ou le péril de l’esprit (copyright Clovis, 2009).