PostThis is the first of 4 newsletters from the website,
Our Lady's Apostolate for No TVhttp://www.ourladysapostolatefornotv.org/2007.htmSeptember 2007 Newsletter
This newsletter is the first to be published since the direction of the Apostolate has been handed on from its founder, Fr. Frank Poncelet, to his long-time secretary, Patti Petersen. Father remains the spiritual director of the Apostolate, however. We realize that many of you have enjoyed the writing of Fr. Poncelet, and ask your patience as this change takes place. Anyone wishing to contact Fr. Poncelet may do so by sending a letter to the Apostolate at the above address. Your letter will be faithfully transmitted to Father. If the contents are personal or confidential, please make that clear on the envelope, and it will be forwarded unopened. God bless you all!
The following article, written by Dr. Carol Byrne, was published in the Autumn 2005 issue of Mater Dei magazine, the press organ of the Society of St. Pius X (SSPX) in the United Kingdom. It is being re-published in a two-part series in Our Lady’s Newsletter with the permission of the author.
Do not bring an abomination into your house, as you shall become accursed like it.
Deut. 7:26
TV OR NOT TV? THAT IS THE QUESTION
And why abstention rather than moderation is the answer
So please, oh please, we beg, we pray,
Go throw your TV set away…
That nauseating, foul, unclean.
Repulsive television screen!
“Who said that?” I hear you ask.
“Bishop Tissier de Mallerais?” Not so.
“Fr Morgan, then?” Wrong.
“Well, it must be
Bishop Williamson or an American branch of the SSPX who condemn women’s trousers and pop music!” Wrong again.
Many readers will be surprised to know that the above exhortation to kill your TV – to get the box completely out of your house – is not, as it is sometimes alleged, a modern form of extremism invented by the SSPX but an impassioned plea from the children’s fiction writer, Roald Dahl, written as early as 1964 [1] to warn parents of the dangers of television for children. They will be even more surprised to know that anti-television advocacy has existed for decades among representatives of different religions [2] as well as a growing number of secular groups [3] and individuals who are so concerned about the harmful effects of the medium on people’s spiritual, moral and intellectual life that they call for its total elimination.
Now here’s the rub. It is not difficult to come across people who would concede that television exerts a negative influence on society. “I couldn’t agree with you more”, they would say, and might even add that we would all be much better off without it.
But how is it that the same people who deplore the existence of television find the idea of eliminating it from their own lives utterly unthinkable? It would seem that, although they hate television, they hate even more the idea of getting rid of it. And so they resort to a raft of subterfuges and excuses, objecting to a blanket rule against television on the grounds that there are some programmes which are wholesome or at least relatively harmless. So why prohibit the good along with the bad? Why not allow adults to use their discernment in the choice of material for themselves and their children to view? Then they point to the other electronic media such as radio, video recorders, computers and the Internet, all of which could be potentially as harmful as television - should they be banned too for exactly the same reasons?
And if they really wanted to be obstructive they might even resort to a
reductio ad absurdum: shall we ban all books, newspapers and magazines? Next they will accuse you of being weird and unrealistic in expecting people to actually give up a habit that has permeated the whole of society (but that argument was used about smoking which has become less and less socially acceptable as soon as its dangers were demonstrated, and has now been completely banned in many public places).
Let us now turn to the big picture on TV.
SOUNDING THE ALERT IN THE 1950s
As soon as television showed signs of becoming a popular form of mass entertainment, the question arose as to whether a niche could be found for religious broadcasting in the TV network and whether, in spite of its obvious countervailing influences, the electronic medium could be successfully pressed into action as a tool for evangelization.
The USA
The Catholic Church in America led the way when Mgr Fulton Sheen launched his highly popular and successful series of television talks on the Faith, “Life is Worth Living” (1952-55) which were watched by millions of viewers throughout the world and brought many converts into the Catholic Church.
So far so traditional. But a crucial distinction to keep in mind is that the 1950s era of television did not represent the same degree of corruption or danger to faith and morals as it does today, and that it was then possible to use the medium as a means of spreading and strengthening the Faith, a point made by Pope Pius XII. [4] He went on to remind the faithful that because of the obligation of Divine Law not to expose oneself to material harmful to faith and morals, it is the duty of bishops to establish committees for the promotion of decent material for viewing and to inform priests and faithful of their judgment, [5] noting that “In several countries, the bishops kept these directives before their eyes and set up offices of this kind not only for motion pictures, but also for radio and television.” [6] So in the circuмstances of the time, Church leaders judged it expedient to issue warnings to the faithful to use their discrimination in programme selection, rather than recommend a total ban.
Ireland
Evangelisation was also the driving force behind the pioneering efforts of Archbishop McQuaid of Dublin to make Ireland’s first television production unit, Telefis Eireann, worthy of a Catholic country. [7] That could not be achieved without the Church’s constant battle to promote Christian standards and avoid elements of moral corruption. In a magnificent display of solidarity, he was supported on all sides – in the pastorals of Cardinal D’Alton and the Irish bishops, sermons from priests at Sunday Mass, speeches by President De Valera, in the debates of members of the Oireachtas (Parliament), meetings of the Gaelic Athletic Association, addresses given by Heads of schools to pupils, in the seminars of the Knights of St Columbanus, in the Irish press and in the journals of the Catholic Truth Society of Ireland whose President was Cardinal D’Alton, all of whom issued dire warnings about the dangers television might exert on the Catholic population. There was not a corner of Irish society untouched by the early warning system, and one could say that the whole of Irish society experienced a high level of apprehension at the prospect of having its own national television station. This was eventually to materialize on New Year’s Eve, 1961.
One of the reasons for procrastination in the arrival of Irish television (apart from the Finance Minister’s view that it was an “unaffordable luxury”, an expensive irrelevance in an impoverished country) was the concerns of the Irish hierarchy about the corrosive effects of television on Ireland’s religious and cultural heritage. The 1956 Report of the Television Committee [8] criticized the content of BBC programmes which Irish citizens were already receiving, as “quite alien to this country” on the grounds that they included “exploitation of semi-nudity, ‘blue’ jokes in comedy shows, docuмentaries of the unmarried mother, plays hinging on the theme of adultery”. The Report reflected the dominant view of the Irish clergy in the 1950s who regarded television as spreading a “gospel of pleasure” and bringing “'pagan propaganda into the family circle”. One priest [9] even suggested that television sets should be fitted with lockable shutters, so that parents could physically prevent their children from viewing unsuitable material – thus prefiguring the modern V-chip!
Under the influence of the Catholic clergy who attended all policy meetings,[10] McQuaid’s system worked well in the early stages with high quality production standards and good journalism. Irish TV featured religious programmes as part of its regular output with prayers, sermons, pious commentaries, religious discussions, coverage of liturgical ceremonies and news of the foreign missions, not to mention efforts to promote the Irish language and culture. But the Archbishop had reckoned without the effects of the Second Vatican Council which exerted a liberalizing influence on faith and morals. His carefully planned efforts backfired when the priests he had chosen to exert a moral influence on productions were converted to the new ways of thinking and started to use the screen to promote the very modernist ideas about the Faith and the Missions that the Archbishop consistently condemned! And what is more, with the connivance of the modern clergy, producers began to introduce “soaps” dramatizing sordid and immoral lifestyles of the “kitchen sink” variety while prime time was given to chat shows featuring the frank disclosure of subjects never before aired in public such as cohabitation, contraception and divorce.
England
The attitude of the English clergy to television in the 1950s was also very much in line with the papal directives that had been emanating from Rome in recent years. Within weeks of the publication of the Pope’s Encyclical the bishops in their Advent pastoral letters were warning the faithful of their grave obligation in conscience not to watch programmes that could in any way endanger their faith or morals. A sample of their teachings was published in The Catholic Times dated 6 December 1957 [11] which reproduces two hard-hitting messages, one from Archbishop Godfrey of Westminster and the other from Bishop Murphy of Shrewsbury.
Both bishops show the harmful effects of television on the life of the soul, particularly the innocent souls of children, and explain that it “can undermine and bring to lasting ruin the whole structure of purity, goodness and wholesome personal and social upbringing.” No one listening to or reading the English bishops’ pastorals could conclude that they were talking about a minor matter to be left to the judgement of the individual conscience, or be left in any doubt that the subject of television viewing was of the most fundamental importance to the life of the nation.
It was only to be expected that the clergy and members of religious orders would take their cue from the bishops and instruct the laity under their charge on the dangers of television viewing. It was not long before the message to beware of television percolated down to the young people who populated Catholic schools, as many people today will testify. “Don’t watch television” was the universal acclamation. [12]
THE CHURCH’S EARLY WARNINGS ARE VINDICATED BY MODERN RESEARCH
If we examine the teachings of the pre-Vatican Popes, starting with Pius XI’s Vigilanti Cura (1936) on the dangers of the “motion picture” as it was then called, which came into our homes in the form of television, we can see an important fact: that TV is an intrinsically addictive medium and has more power to convince than any other device of communication. That is why it was singled out by Pope Pius XII:
But television, besides the element it shares in common with the other two inventions [cinema and radio] we have spoken of for the spreading of information, has a power and efficacy of its own. [13]
So what is so distinctive about television compared with the other media and what exactly is it that makes the experience of watching it more harmful than, say, the custom of people in former times listening to the radio? Very few people concerned themselves with those questions in the heady days of early television, and the Popes’ words were submerged in the flood of 1960s liberal mores, only to resurface in the 1980s when their enduring truth value was “rediscovered” by researchers working in the fields of education, health and social studies.
An Anti-TV prophet
Canadian-born Marshall McLuhan [14] (1911-1980), who became a Catholic in 1936 under the influence of G. K. Chesterton, was one of the first laymen and certainly one of the most prescient of his generation to raise public awareness about the inherent dangers of television viewing. He is best known for his aphorism “The medium is the message”, which became a catch-phrase in the 1960s, and in 1973 he was appointed as a Consultor of the Pontifical Commission for Social Communications.
McLuhan set out his ideas in 1967 in his book The Medium is the Massage – an obvious pun on his own aphorism – where he explains that the electronic media were shaping people’s ideas in ways they did not suspect, and, more importantly, that the way we acquire information affects us more than the programme content itself. He believed that the electronic medium is not “neutral”: “It does something to people. It takes hold of them”, he continued, “It massages them.” Television in particular comes under his special censure as having a profound impact on viewers, especially children. He noted that the experience of staring at a glowing screen which projects moving pictures directly into their eyes produces a trance-like fixation in which the normal processes of thinking and discernment are not fully functional, if at all. Their minds were being filled with images of places and times and events and personalities which were merely the product of other people’s minds, edited and processed through the lenses of a cameraman. From this observation he concluded that viewers unwittingly laid themselves wide open to the danger of deception and manipulation by social controllers who wish to dominate our minds.
Although McLuhan was most interested in the televisual experience itself, he did not neglect the content of television, and with reference to this he told his Fordham University students in 1967: “The public has yet to see TV as TV. Broadcasters have no awareness of its potential.” What could be more prophetic? Looking back from our vantage point almost four decades later, we can regard McLuhan as a visionary. His expertise in media studies pioneered later generations of research into his message that “we become what we watch.” [15]
McLuhan’s ideas were taken up, developed and substantiated by researchers in the fields of education and social studies and their findings were made known by a host of authors from the 1970s up to our day.
1. Who’s in control, you or your TV?
In the 1970s, that is the question that began to be asked by more and more people concerned about the hypnotic effect of television. Marie Winn’s landmark study, The Plug-In Drug: Television,Children and the Family, first published in 1977, shows how easy it is for children to get hooked on television and how hard it is for parents to control the situation because they themselves are too hooked on it to break the habit. Television is shown to be an addictive medium that holds the viewer in its thrall:
Just as alcoholics are only vaguely aware of their addiction, feeling that they control their drinking more than they do (“I can cut it out at any time I want – I just like to have three or four drinks before dinner”), people similarly overestimate their control over television watching. Even as they put off other activities to spend hour after hour watching television, they feel they could easily resume a different, less passive style. But somehow or other, while the television set is in their homes, the click doesn’t sound. [16]
Winn attributes bondage to the screen to the “television experience” itself, the seductive act of watching the box, regardless of the content. It is a one-way communication that requires the taking in of visual images in a particular way that “takes over “ people’s minds and can even alter children’s relationship with the real world.
The author cites studies which show a correlation between increased TV viewing and decreasing academic scores in children, and shows examples from the lives of families without TV of how breaking the habit is of enormous benefit, resulting in increased family interaction, more creative and satisfying pursuits and a better understanding of the real world. For those wishing to follow suit, Winn includes a helpful chapter entitled “Giving up Television for Good”, and says that her own grandchildren are growing up TV-free.
2. Is TV “neutral”?
Already in the 70s the argument that television was “neutral”, a harmless instrument in itself which, depending on the hands into which it falls, can be used for good or ill, was being seriously challenged. People were beginning to think that television as a medium was not only inherently mind-numbing but that it was also irreformable. It is all very well suggesting reforms to curb its worst elements – reduce violence, erotic material and aggressive advertising, raise the cultural standard of programmes etc., but if television is intrinsically biased towards passive viewing, mind-control and the creation of vicarious experiences and artificial realities, the fundamental problem remains. That is the central argument of Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television [17] by American author and former advertising executive, Jerry Mander, who was so concerned about the effects of television making people confuse reality with unreality (while watching TV they were not looking at the world as it is, but as it is “recreated” by TV presenters) that he wanted it banned – literally banned – forever! That was the first time that anyone had gone so far as to suggest that personal withdrawal from the medium or controlled watching were not enough, but that we should do away with television altogether.
Mander’s work is another step along the road of anti-televisionism. To the debate he adds his own insider’s point of view on TV advertising, having had knowledge of the extremely clever and sophisticated techniques used by commercial companies to create false needs and sell their products. His message is that both adverts and programmes are put together with the conscious objective of creating a consumer society. TV viewers are much more susceptible to the advertisers and the image makers than they realize, and have no control over the images.
3. Amusing Ourselves to Death
But the most significant leap forward in knowledge of how television exerts a negative influence on society was made by Neil Postman,[18] an intellectual heir to McLuhan. With Amusing Ourselves to Death (1985) he brought a new dimension to the question. The book is an indictment of television as an image-driven industry which reduces everything it broadcasts – history, science, current affairs, politics, art, religious thought, news and even the weather – to entertainment. "Television, in other words, is transforming our culture into one vast arena for show business," he declared. And as television is programmed for maximum ratings, its content is determined by commercial feasibility, not critical assessment, still less the concern for truth. Postman explains:
The problem is not that television presents us with entertaining subject matter, but that all subject matter is presented as entertaining, which is another issue altogether…it is the nature of the medium that it must suppress the content of ideas in order to accommodate the requirements of visual interest; that is to say, to accommodate the values of show business. [19]
And we know that those values have turned TV into an instrument of seduction which panders to people’s basest instincts and even the foulest perversions, an image-factory which produces obscenity, blasphemy, vulgarity and brutality in ever increasing quantities. As prurience on the screen means profits, those are the values which launch the careers of certain individuals who mock God and go sneering all the way to the bank.
Postman also rectifies a common presupposition that modern television can be educational - an impossibility for two reasons: because presentation always outweighs quality and because the compellingly visual nature of television’s fast moving graphic imagery requires only short attention spans; it gives us no time to reflect and invites emotional rather than intellectual responses. What is not often realized is that once a person becomes reliant on visual stimulation, there is an increased demand for constant entertainment of that nature, to the detriment of intellectual activities such as thinking and reading. In short, TV cannot be educational because it presents things that make good TV rather than food for the intellect. To put it even more succinctly, with television, seeing really is believing.
In an interview on Canadian Television, CBC, he summed up the changes to television in the last 25 years:
the main change that television has made…is that it's become the command centre of our culture…television has become a kind of analogue to what the medieval Church was in, say, the 14th or 15th centuries. For anything to be legitimate it has to come through television. And in that sense we have become a television people.
This touches on the very heart of the problem which is that TV has become a substitute for religion manoeuvering its viewers into a controlled environment where it can dominate collective consciousness and indoctrinate with falsehood and the gospel of consumerism. As Faith in the Box becomes our new religion and TV the only source of information to be believed, the danger is that the only world we would know is the television world.
(DR. BYRNE’S ARTICLE TO BE CONTINUED IN THE OCTOBER NEWSLETTER…)
[1] Roald Dahl, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, first published by Penguin (USA) 1964
[2] These include leaders of various Protestant sects, branches of the Greek Orthodox Church, Islamic Muftis and some Orthodox Jєωs who forbid their followers to have television in their homes or even to watch it at all.
[3] Since the 1980s anti-television groups have been operating world wide, such as Catholics Unplug your Television (CUT) and White Dot in Britain, Adbusters in Canada, The Society for the Eradication of Television (a.k.a. SET Free), Federation Without Television and TV Turnoff Network in the USA, the latter being endorsed by a large number of health, educational and social organisations.. Their aim is to make a public protest against television and spark debate about its harmful effects and the extent to which it has dominated our lives. Some even take direct action against TV sets in public places. The Guardian (25.4.05) reported that anti-TV activists operate during National TV Turnoff Week, an annual event that takes place in various locations in the UK in the last week of April.
Armed with a remote control called TV-B-Gone, they enter bars, cafes, stores and waiting rooms where they blank out TV screens by zapping them from a range of 45 feet. This information is not provided for the purposes of condoning aggressive policies of anti-TV groups, but simply to show that the SSPX is not alone in calling for the elimination of television from our lives.
[4] “However, religious ceremonies seen on television contribute greatly to strengthening the faith and renewing the fervour of all those who, for some reason, cannot be actually present. Consequently, We are convinced that We may wholeheartedly commend programs of this kind.” Miranda prorsus, On the Communications Field: Motion Pictures, Radio, Television, #150, 8 September 1957.
[5] "It is absolutely necessary that the bishops set up a permanent national office of supervision to encourage decent films, to give others a recognized classification, and then to publish their judgment and make it known to priests and faithful." Encyclical letter, Vigilanti cura, 29 June 1936, Acta Apostolicae Sedis, pp. 260-261.
[6] Miranda prorsus, #70
[7] In 1958, Pope Pius XII sent two emissaries from the Vatican, Mgr George Roche and Mgr (now Cardinal) Andrea Deskur, Undersecretary for the Pontifical Council for Cinema, Radio and Television, to Dublin to monitor the preliminary discussions of the Irish Television Commission and report back to Rome. The Pope had a great personal interest in the matter, seeing the potentialities of a television service under the auspices of a Catholic government to combat irreligion and materialism. (See Robert J. Savage, Irish Television. The Political and Social Origins, Praeger, Westport, Connecticut, 1996)
[8] The Committee was chaired by Leon O’Broin, a senior civil servant, to look into ways in which an Irish TV station could be established without financial backing from the State.
[9] Fr Agnellus Andrew, Advisor for Catholic broadcasts in the Religious Broadcasting Department of the BBC.
[10] This was in accordance with Pope Pius XII’s directive that “Insofar as television is concerned, it is indispensable for the Church to be represented on the committees entrusted with organising programmes and for Catholic experts to be among the producers.” (“Guiding Principles of the Lay Apostolate. Address of His Holiness Pope Pius XII to the Second World Congress of the Lay Apostolate”, 5 October 1957)
[11] Mentioned by Fr Morgan in the District Newsletter, January/February 2005
[12] That was exactly what we were told when I went to a convent school in 1958. I have a lasting recollection of being rooted to the spot by the account which our Headmistress, Sr Magdalen, gave of a scene she had witnessed on television. “The devil walked on to the screen”, she said. I conjured up in my mind the figure of a two-legged creature with horns and hooves staging a dramatic appearance. I was not far wrong: it turned out to be indeed a two-legged creature in the form of a lady dancing in a state of semi-undress!
[13] Miranda prorsus #152
[14] Professor of English at Toronto University, he was appointed in 1963 as Director of the University’s Centre for Culture and Technology, and after his conversion he lectured at various Catholic institutions, including Fordham University.
[15] In his article “G. K. Chesterton, A Practical Mystic”, (Dalhousie Review 15, (4), 1936), he stated that making idols of modern technology can produce bad effects on mankind: “Similes fiant illis qui faciunt ea” (Let them that make them become like them) – Psalm 113, 8.
[16] Marie Winn, The Plug-In Drug: Television, Children and the Family, Viking Penguin, USA, 1977, p. 24
[17] Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business, William Morrow & Co., New York, 1978
[18] (1931-2003), formerly Professor of Media Ecology at New York University. His books include The Disappearance of Childhood, Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology, The End of Education and Amusing Ourselves to Death in which he discusses the harmful affects of television on people’s ability to think clearly and critically.
[19] Amusing Ourselves to Death, pp. 87-88
“People who truly care about 'working out their salvation in fear and trembling' should ask themselves what would be the best use of their time. How long has it been since families played games together? What a wonderful way of connecting with your children! When our time at home is spent mute before the television, it is impossible to develop normal relationships that build respect, love, understanding and cooperation between children and parents. People who have thrown out the television have discovered, to their delight, that life becomes more interesting, children gradually become calmer and draw closer to the family. Innocence and peace slowly return to the home.”
– Quoted from Christine Fitzgerald, The Nefarious Power of Television, Tradition In Action:
http://www.traditioninaction.org/Cultural/D006cpTelevision_Fitzgerald.htmBlasphemous Movie Alert
City Lights Pictures has released a vile and blasphemous movie called The Ten into theaters. The movie purports to be a comedy spoof of the Ten Commandments. It is filled with graphic sɛҳuąƖ scenes, including a horrible and blasphemous portrayal of Our Blessed Lord committing fornication. Such a grievous crime against the Divine Majesty is clearly the work of Satan and comes straight out of hell. Please pray and make reparation against this monstrous attack upon Our Lord!
[I have a friend who ordered one of these devices, and is able to turn off the
TV in restaurants when he goes to eat there. Sometimes, he has to turn it off
multiple times. The waiter may keep turning it back on, as if it's his job to
do so, and perhaps it is, but at some point, he may realize that by not serving
the tables that will give him tips, and by playing with the TV remote, he is going
to lose tip revenues, then maybe he'll back off....... TV-B-GONE....]
[copied from above, in footnote 3..]
Some even take direct action against TV sets in public places. The Guardian (25.4.05) reported that anti-TV activists operate during National TV Turnoff Week, an annual event that takes place in various locations in the UK in the last week of April.
Armed with a remote control called TV-B-Gone, they enter bars, cafes, stores and waiting rooms where they blank out TV screens by zapping them from a range of 45 feet.
Topic: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read! (Read 104537 times)