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Traditional Catholic Faith => Catholic Living in the Modern World => Topic started by: Matthew on September 16, 2007, 03:13:45 PM

Title: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: Matthew on September 16, 2007, 03:13:45 PM
Title: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: Adesto on October 22, 2007, 02:45:42 PM
I find this topic fascinating because I've heard so much about TV both positive and negative for many years. We have never had TV at my family home and so in a way it's never been an issue for me- I have no strong feelings about it one way or another, except that obviously staying plugged into the TV is a bad thing if you're watching cruddy shows etc. When I had my own place in university with mates we had a TV and I can't say I ever watched anything enjoyable apart from reruns of movies, which aren't really TV at all.

I guess there are two cases to be made against TV. One is the fact that people waste a heck of a lot of time watching rubbish TV, a lot of which is insidious (I'm thinking of UK TV here, I'm not a prude, but a lot of morning TV here I would turn off because its so immoral) and as Catholics we should safeguard our homes against occasions of sin. I honestly think TV can be an occasion of sin (and often is) because not only are there many blatently immoral images and adverts on there, but because even the airtime which is not immediately offensive is filled with an atheistic and purely materialistic sentiment. It's like a constant barrage of drivel  :fryingpan:

The other reason is that TV drains kids (and adults!) of imagination. Books, even radio are "hot" media because they require one to engage actively with the mind. TV and movies are "cold" media because all the work is done for you. Nothing wrong with a good movie, but exercising choice power in watching a DVD or going to the cinema is very different from sitting in front of the TV and watching soaps. I know that's almost a philosophical point and doesn't smack of hardcore "resisting evil" but I think it's an important one too.
Title: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: Dulcamara on February 26, 2008, 09:09:23 PM
Quote from: Anne De Guigne
This is why I try to not watch television, or at least make rosaries while I do it.


 >nods< Unless perhaps you can actually find the rare one or two occasional movies worth watching. There are some religious movies, for instance, that were pretty well done. (Like Miracle of Fatima or The Song of Bernadette... both older but pretty good.) I guess it depends, too, on what you are putting on the tv set.

But television (literal, that is excluding movies) I think has gotten to the point where it's basically no good at all. I don't even watch the news anymore. There's just so much garbage on it.

Hopefully the people praying those rosaries you make will help salvage our modern situation (being a world of sin more or less).
Title: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: Caio di Corea on February 28, 2009, 09:03:38 PM
Important passage
Quote
Over the last 30 years, they have come to look at their television sets and the images on the screen as reality. You put something on television and it becomes reality. If the world outside the television set contradicts the images, people start changing the world to make it more like the images and sounds of their television.
Title: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: spouse of Jesus on May 06, 2009, 10:38:48 PM
What you said is true. But is there any remedy for those who were TV addicts before they give it up forever? What I mean is this: How can such people get rid of all of the effects of TV on their minds? (both conscious and unconscious)
Title: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: Lybus on May 11, 2009, 07:01:37 AM
I'm sure the subconscious mind would discard information that contradicted itself. Just read enough books, do puzzles, learn a new sport, travel places, etc until all the excess of watching TV has been shoved away. If you begin pouring water into a cup of filth, eventually the filth will go over the brim and will wash out, leaving pure water.
Title: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: spouse of Jesus on May 11, 2009, 08:38:07 AM
Thanks
Title: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: RomanCatholic1953 on September 25, 2009, 11:14:01 PM
The Television is the tool of the devil. Always say the Rosary. Stay away from the near occasion of sin.
The TV is full of sin, and has corrupted three generations
of people into pagan life styles, that will lead them into
hell fire.
Title: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: greenhill on November 08, 2009, 07:09:39 AM
I have no TV. It gives me nothing, made me impatient and itchy, and it is mostly lies, filth, violence or senseless "entertainment".
There are always better things to do

i.e. useful work, reading the bible, praying, saying the rosary, reading good, improving books, sleeping, exercise, thinking

 :reading:
 :pray:
 :smash-pc:

 :tv-disturbed: :devil2:
Title: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: greenhill on November 19, 2009, 01:08:19 PM
Quote from: RomanCatholic1953
The Television is the tool of the devil. Always say the Rosary. Stay away from the near occasion of sin.
The TV is full of sin, and has corrupted three generations
of people into pagan life styles, that will lead them into
hell fire.


True! When I was a kid in England, we had a lot of American shows on TV. I used to think that all Americans were like Lucy, Mr Ed, my favourite martian, Dick van Dyke, Mary Tyler Moore and Endora. That´s why I became a Communist!
Title: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: littlerose on January 15, 2010, 05:48:36 PM
One of the worst things about my last job was that my boss was addicted to television.  It was a live-in position so there was no escaping. She was actually freaked out that I could spend time without the tv on. To me, it is like having a pet demon in the house. I couldn't think while that thing was jabbering. Even when we stuck to a "safe" channel, they'd suddenly run a violent and sacrilegious or obscene commercial.

I now have no tv connection at all. Have not even turned on the one I own, which is connected to a dvd player, because I watch movies on my computer. I love being able to choose movies like books and I don't miss any news, because I have the radio on for the local report and I can pick up stories online.  
Title: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: Thurifer on January 15, 2010, 07:26:42 PM
Quote from: littlerose
To me, it is like having a pet demon in the house. I couldn't think while that thing was jabbering. Even when we stuck to a "safe" channel, they'd suddenly run a violent and sacrilegious or obscene commercial.


Aside from the violence, sacrilige, and obscenity, which I agree with you on, that constant jabbering and noise which you describe is spot on. It is like a pet demon. I first noticed it when hearing it in the background when talking on the telephone to friends or family. From that realization I couldn't stand it to be on in my own house.
Title: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: EcceAgnusDei on March 17, 2010, 02:32:36 PM
I'm so glad you posted this. I've been trying to get away from watching TV shows for a while but it's been proving to be difficult. I got rid of the TV in my room but I know where to find what I want to watch online so I end up watching TV on the computer. I think it is such a waste of my time but I keep doing it every day!! I find that if I don't do that when I get home I don't know what to do. It's like I'm lost if I'm not glued to my computer. Maybe what I need to do is remove the computer too!
Title: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: Belloc on March 17, 2010, 02:39:04 PM
Quote from: greenhill
Quote from: RomanCatholic1953
The Television is the tool of the devil. Always say the Rosary. Stay away from the near occasion of sin.
The TV is full of sin, and has corrupted three generations
of people into pagan life styles, that will lead them into
hell fire.


True! When I was a kid in England, we had a lot of American shows on TV. I used to think that all Americans were like Lucy, Mr Ed, my favourite martian, Dick van Dyke, Mary Tyler Moore and Endora. That´s why I became a Communist!


even worse, yrs later, in 70's, all people thought we were like JR Ewing......geesh.....
Title: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: Tradycja on April 06, 2010, 07:27:08 AM
Great article.  I agree 100 percent.  I haven't watched television in 2 years.  

One thing I have found is that my relatives say things such as "They said on TV that you shouldn't eat such and such a food" or "They said on TV that this politician is wrong..." etc.   To which I always respond, "WHO said it?  Who is this proverbial THEY".  

It no longer matters to people WHO said it, just that it was said on TV.  The TV is like a person to them.
Title: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: Thursday on June 17, 2010, 06:35:35 AM
Two books that convinced me never to watch TV again where Jerry Morans's Four arguments for the elimination of television and Edward Bernay's Propaganda.

You really have no idea how bad television is until you read that book. One thing I remember from the book was about brainwaves while watching television. The screen has a flickering that induces a hypnotic state so the messages that come on the screen are beamed deep into the psyche, therefore television is messing with people on a really deep level and people have no idea about it.

The other book propaganda, written in 1928, was shocking because of how advanced thr techniques for controlling thoughts and opinions was 80 years ago, I can't imagine what they have now. Whatever it is though you know its being transmitted through the television.

Bottom line is this, its doing things to you that you don't know about. Don't watch it.
Title: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: Trinity on June 17, 2010, 08:46:19 AM
I think it is safe to say that if we were tv watchers we wouldn't be on Cathinfo.  We gave up cable about 16 years ago and the only thing I missed was the weather channel.  I have certainly become counter cultural in those years.  However it blows the minds of the Cox Communication people when I tell them I don't want cable.
Title: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: Matthew on September 08, 2010, 11:28:58 PM
Yes, some people almost fall over when I tell them I don't have a TV or a cell phone. They probably wonder if I'm Amish!  I don't have a full beard though, and I certainly don't dress like one!

Title: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: Telesphorus on September 09, 2010, 04:24:29 AM
Quote from: Trinity
I think it is safe to say that if we were tv watchers we wouldn't be on Cathinfo.  


Right, we use the internet!
Title: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: DoubtingThomas on September 09, 2010, 06:03:50 AM
They Live!

We Sleep...
Title: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: Elizabeth on September 09, 2010, 06:29:42 AM
Quote from: Thursday


The other book propaganda, written in 1928, was shocking because of how advanced thr techniques for controlling thoughts and opinions was 80 years ago, I can't imagine what they have now. Whatever it is though you know its being transmitted through the television.

Bottom line is this, its doing things to you that you don't know about. Don't watch it.


TONS of money and resources have been invested in controlling the hearts and minds of TV viewers.  The sophistication of this work is probably off the charts by now!
Title: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: copticruiser on January 26, 2011, 12:04:42 AM
when u homeschool T.V becomes a huge nuisance. I do miss animal planet and the learning channel but the commercials drove me nuts especially Barbie one ewh.
I still like special effect movies but honestly Im re thinking that position as the immorality or sɛҳuąƖity or worse vocabulary bothers me. I have kids that know I watch these things so Im accountable.
I liked prince of persia but it didnt bring me closer to God. The mummy is way to demonic for me. I did like Hldalgo true story too.
It may be a process for some of us. I live off grid so a movie once in a blue moon is all I watch otherwise its pretty quiet in the home.   Annie
Title: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: MaterDominici on January 26, 2011, 12:25:51 AM
Quote from: copticruiser
I live off grid ...


Ooh... tell me more. Solar panels?
In another thread perhaps.
 :farmer:
Title: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: copticruiser on February 01, 2011, 10:01:18 PM
So we've all seen the "Song of Bernadette" the Ten Commandments (a few parts not needed in that one) but hey Im a young Catholic and didnt get the priviledge of growing up with these wonderfully made movies. I find the new catholic movies ( even endorsed by the vat) either the acting is poor or the substance is lacking. I recently watched St. Rita put out by St. Francis Book Store (not sure who made these ) I was very dissapointed and at one point squirmish at one scene that left sɛҳuąƖ conatations. I guess Im asking where are all the good catholic saint movies? When there are 4 versions of St. Joan of Arc do I have to watch em all to decide? I have 5 children and yes brought up in the T.V generation so sitting down to watch a family movie preferable about my 2000yr old faith would be wonderful.  Any recomendations would be great
Title: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: Darcy on April 02, 2011, 01:07:51 AM
Quote from: RomanCatholic1953
The Television is the tool of the devil. Always say the Rosary. Stay away from the near occasion of sin.
The TV is full of sin, and has corrupted three generations
of people into pagan life styles, that will lead them into
hell fire.


I'm sorry I meant to thumbs you up. I really am not used to this software. I suppose I will be making lots of mistakes til I get the hang of it.  
I can't even find an appropriate smiley to describe my remorse.
Title: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: Jitpring on April 15, 2011, 10:00:44 PM
Another article against television:

http://catholicintl.com/noncatholicissues/tv.htm

And this great book:

Amusing Ourselves to Death (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/014303653X/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=httpwwwchanco-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=014303653X)
Title: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: shin on April 22, 2011, 03:12:04 AM
Dominican Teaching Sisters - No TV. (http://olrl.org/misc/educ_TV.shtml)

And from Fr. Poncelet, who wrote on the subject, and founded Our Lady's Apostolate of No TV:

"A priest's primary duty is to save souls; he is responsible for prevailing moral atttitudes in his parish and specifically for the salvation of his parishioners' souls. . . The priest, then must come to an honest recognition of the primary avenue to the destruction of souls in his Catholic homes, as that window to the world of immorality -- the television set. And he must continually point out to his parishioners that acceptance of TV entertainment is simply not compatible with the Christian life of spirituality."

"The disintegration of real Catholic culture has been a slow process begun two generations back. It happens to be co-incident with the degradation of TV fare, which began its downward slide with the inception of the medium, and accelerated that trend at a precipitous rate from the 1960s onward."

"Thanks to the constant depiction -- in an entertainment mode -- of immoral acts. . . presentations once considered scandalous, perverse, and unfit for consideration by self-respecting people, now pass for commonplace, acceptable fare even among those claiming religious convictions."

"Such programming is often criticized mildly as being crude, in bad taste, or even as awful -- but hardly ever is it called sinful."

"James Drummey, in a recent question/answer column in The Wanderer wrote "Even the best intentioned Catholics can become desensitized. . . if they watch these portrayed on televisions in a favorable light, night after night in their own homes."

"We cannot hide from basic Catholic moral laws forever. And the sins that are most easily committed, and which involve most "grievous matter" are also the sins most exploited on television -- those against chastity and purity."

Fr. Frank Poncelet
Title: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: Graham on September 21, 2011, 11:26:41 AM
Quote
Four years ago, Bhutan, the fabled Himalayan Shangri-la, became the last nation on earth to introduce television. Suddenly a culture, barely changed in centuries, was bombarded by 46 cable channels. And all too soon came Bhutan's first crime wave - murder, fraud, drug offences. Cathy Scott-Clark and Adrian Levy report from a country crash-landing in the 21st century


http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2003/jun/14/weekend7.weekend2
Title: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: Graham on September 23, 2011, 11:03:51 AM
Quote from: Graham
Quote
Four years ago, Bhutan, the fabled Himalayan Shangri-la, became the last nation on earth to introduce television. Suddenly a culture, barely changed in centuries, was bombarded by 46 cable channels. And all too soon came Bhutan's first crime wave - murder, fraud, drug offences. Cathy Scott-Clark and Adrian Levy report from a country crash-landing in the 21st century


http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2003/jun/14/weekend7.weekend2


If anyone ever needed proof that TV is disastrous for traditional morals, it can be found in the case of Bhutan.
Title: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: pat on October 01, 2011, 08:02:11 PM
I always did say t.v. was my drug of choice.   it is quite a habit to overcome.

when I realized that cable was costing over 800 dollars a year (on a tight budget no less) I thought this is nuts! and cancelled. when I did have cable. I would mostly watch tlc, discover, history channel.

and a man of Levinson.. produces family, moral issue movies are very good and wholesome.

anyway... we have a small tv that has digital over the air and we still get 10 channels. (sorry this is a boring set-up isn't it)

that being said... with the exception of public broadcasting (ironically)  the programming is so offensive as a rule.

I know the Lord wants me to invest my time in Him and for Him... cold turkey is difficult. but with His help I pray to stop altogether.

Title: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: LordPhan on October 01, 2011, 09:10:08 PM
Pat noone here should be saying it's a 'boring set-up'. the SSPX as a rule is against TV period. The first, second and third orders are not supposed to watch tv at all unless it is neccessary. I personally have no cable, nor do I have over the air, I do watch old movies and old tv shows on dvd occasionally however.

Maybe that would work for you? At least you'll know what kind of things will be on since you will have picked it :)
Title: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: pat on October 02, 2011, 09:28:59 PM
Quote from: LordPhan
Pat noone here should be saying it's a 'boring set-up'. the SSPX as a rule is against TV period. The first, second and third orders are not supposed to watch tv at all unless it is neccessary. I personally have no cable, nor do I have over the air, I do watch old movies and old tv shows on dvd occasionally however.

Maybe that would work for you? At least you'll know what kind of things will be on since you will have picked it :)


thanks for the advice and actually starting there.(watching dvds)... an aside... my typing style is odd. what I meant by set-up was setting up my premise for the post.

I do agree that t.v. is not good.  
Title: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: shin on October 25, 2011, 03:47:07 PM
The before and after of Bhutan is a lesson. . .

But.. who is left to hear it?

The simple life is the only life.

'After Antichrist has been slain by lightning on Mount Olivet and his death has been made widely known through out the world, this our earth will exist for forty-five more days; I do not say years, but days. This is clearly to be seen in Daniel (12:11) : "And from the time when the continual sacrifice shall be taken away and the abomination of desolation shall be set up, there shall be one thousand, two hundred and ninety days. Blessed is he that waiteth and cometh unto the one thousand, three hundred and thirty-five days."

The Doctors say that these forty-five days will be given by God for the conversion of those who have been seduced by Antichrist, but Antichrist will have left behind him so great riches and pleasure that hardly any of the nations will be converted to the Faith of Christ. For there is no savior but Christ, and yet they will not be converted.'

St. Vincent Ferrer
Title: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: Pontifex Maximus on December 18, 2011, 09:57:24 PM
I like to think of it like this. Propaganda has always been a tool to sway the public mind. In the past it wasn't that powerful due to its limited scope. With the invention of the printing press and the eventual distribution of the newspaper, propaganda became much more powerful in its ability to control the hearts and minds of the masses. For example, Napoleon Bonaparte once said, "Four hostile newspapers are more to be feared than a thousand bayonets." Even in his time, the media was something to be feared.

Now imagine the power of such a media multiplied by like 1,000,000, perhaps even more, and you can get an idea of the power of the modern mass media over the minds of people. The primary culprits are television and Hollywood, but it exists everywhere. Books, magazines, newspapers, radio, internet--you name it. Any form of communicating information can be used toward the means of dispersing propaganda or disinformation.

Now, I am not sure if the people on this forum are aware of it, but the mass media is nearly entirely owned by a certain group of people. These people use the media not only for the purposes of political propaganda, but also to enforce the law of political correctness, to reinforce secular/leftist beliefs about reality, and to promote anti-Christian and anti-Western sentiment. One needs but turn on MTV to see what the youth of today are being fed to know something is not right.

It is no wonder the West is in such a sickly, degenerate state. It is no wonder that the youth are being led toward culturally Marxist views of the world and atheism. Couple the general message of the mass media being simultaneously promoted in public education and higher education, and you have whole generations of people who are, quite literally, brainwashed. Social engineering has become an art, and most of the West is subject to it.
Title: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: Marcelino on January 12, 2012, 10:15:03 PM
cool article.  t.v. is loaded with hypnotic suggestion stuff.  "The Hidden persuaders" kind of thing.  Or how about "Manchurian Candidate!"  


Title: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: Sede Catholic on March 05, 2012, 10:34:26 PM
Watching television is often a mortal sin.
We know that there will be Blasphemy and anti-Catholic ideas.
We know that there will be immodestly dressed women on almost every program.
As well as obscene and pornographic images.
If knowing all this we choose to watch television, we risk mortal sin.

Our Lord said in the Gospel of St. Matthew XVI:26,
"For what doth it profit a man, if he gain the whole world, and suffer the loss of his own soul? Or what exchange shall a man give for his soul?"

I read something about how one of the Saints saw a vision of a box in people's houses, and the devil came flying out of the box.
I believe she saw television in that vision.

Get rid of the box of satan.

Do not go to Hell because for refusing to give up the sinful "entertainment" we are fed by the anti-Catholic tv industry.

They are against Our Lord, so we should be against them.

Pray to the Immaculate Heart of Mary for the Graces to give up this sin.
This Lent, try to give up television as a penance.

Think how much that would please Our Lord.

You can spend more time really with your Family and with God.
Title: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: Maizar on March 12, 2012, 07:39:42 AM
We sold our television eight years ago because we needed the space in the flat. It is so easy to do, I wondered why we hadn't done it earlier. It is probably easier now than it was even then, since the Internet is now so prevalent. I have, however, heard many a sermon warning of the great dangers and temptations of the Internet. What would your words be about that, Sede Catholic?
Title: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: Sede Catholic on March 12, 2012, 09:17:03 AM
Yes,
The temptations of the internet are also very grave.
If the computer is an occasion of sin, put it in the garbage. Break it first so that no-one else can use it.
Never give away a television, DVD player, video player, or computer. They will almost certainly be used for sin.

If one just looks at Traditional Catholic sites on the internet, then the moral perils are less.

Ideally, one should go without television, computers, and all their sordid technological cousins.

The Saints were canonized without any of those things.

Padre Pio compared buying a television to inviting the devil into your home.

Padre Pio would probably have likewise condemned the internet.
Title: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: Reflection on March 12, 2012, 09:49:12 AM
I get angry with people who spend their days watching nothing but television. I know many people who will have the television on all day long, no matter what they're doing.

Some of my family members are like that and I worry about them.
Title: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: SantaMaria1 on March 22, 2012, 06:08:56 PM
Replacing tv with lots of other screen time is hardly any better.
Title: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: s2srea on March 26, 2012, 09:23:10 AM
Quote from: SantaMaria1
Replacing tv with lots of other screen time is hardly any better.


I would disagree SantaMaria. If you think about it, TV is very one directional. Information is just shot out at you. So if you're using it for anything other than DVDs/VHSs, you have no real control. Commercials, programs themselves, etc.

The internet, while it can indeed be used for sin and evil, also gives one much more control over what they do. As sedecatholic said, if its an occasion of sin, if you lack control in what websites you visit, you should not use it at all. However, you can indeed use it for only good, and indeed find very useful information.

I think danger can come in a different form, however, with the use of the internet. Its a intellectual one. A poster was banned here recently, CuriousCatholic, who essentially has fallen into the hands of heretics who've convinced him, for one, that all the posters here on Cathinfo are not Catholic. He went without the sacraments for the entirety of the time he was posting on this forum (at least a year), and began reading more and more from these so-called 'monks' whose sole job is to get people's money. They do this by convincing people all priests and other Catholics are not Catholic and, thusly, divert the money streams to themselves.
Title: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: Marcelino on March 26, 2012, 12:19:04 PM
Quote from: s2srea
Quote from: SantaMaria1
Replacing tv with lots of other screen time is hardly any better.


I would disagree SantaMaria. If you think about it, TV is very one directional. Information is just shot out at you. So if you're using it for anything other than DVDs/VHSs, you have no real control. Commercials, programs themselves, etc.

The internet, while it can indeed be used for sin and evil, also gives one much more control over what they do. As sedecatholic said, if its an occasion of sin, if you lack control in what websites you visit, you should not use it at all. However, you can indeed use it for only good, and indeed find very useful information.

I think danger can come in a different form, however, with the use of the internet. Its a intellectual one. A poster was banned here recently, CuriousCatholic, who essentially has fallen into the hands of heretics who've convinced him, for one, that all the posters here on Cathinfo are not Catholic. He went without the sacraments for the entirety of the time he was posting on this forum (at least a year), and began reading more and more from these so-called 'monks' whose sole job is to get people's money. They do this by convincing people all priests and other Catholics are not Catholic and, thusly, divert the money streams to themselves.



Is it really necessary to add more to this thread;  I think everything that needs to be said, has been said on the topic already  :sleep:



Title: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: Marcelino on March 26, 2012, 12:29:20 PM
Quote from: SantaMaria1
Replacing tv with lots of other screen time is hardly any better.


That's a good point SantaMaria1.  

Title: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: ggreg on April 12, 2012, 07:39:32 PM
Tv was better in the 1970s when I was growing up.  I loved watching mastermind, the two Ronnies, morecombe and wise, doctor who, star trek, I Claudius, Survivors, the professionals, the Sweeney and all that stuff.

Now it is utter utter rubbish  Over Easter we went to stay in a holiday house on the south coast where they have sky tv.  80 channels of crap, with loads of advertising.  It is as bad now here in the uk as American tv.  Just boring crap.

Every program worth watching mostly nature and history docuмentaries ends up either on iplayer or YouTube anyway.
Title: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: Clelia on April 20, 2012, 08:14:22 PM
T.V. is drivel. I watched it in the 60's-70's-1995 and quit.
Even though my interest waned more and more over the years, I am ashamed of not doing it sooner.

All I thought about was being famous and being an "Ar-teest" one day.

Just because we enjoyed many old shows, upon revisiting any one of them years later, I realized I was watching garbage and only excused it through the folly of youth and the excuse of an adult dimmed intellect.

A sinful waste of time, except for a few commercials. They were at least fun; but many, even back then, were sexy or stupid.

"You got PB in my chocolate... itd."
"Chow, chow, chow!"
"Ancient Chinese secret!"
"Take it XXX..." (Joe Namath in hose)
"Don't squeeze the Charmin!"
"Filter, flavour, pack, or box!"
"It's [h]erb, Herb!"
"Try it, you'll like it" = "I tried it: thought I was gonna die."
"Plop, plop, fizz, fizz, Oh! What a relief it is!"

These are the things I remember. I've forgotten what I had for dinner yesterday.



Title: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: Dino on April 21, 2012, 10:15:09 PM
Quote from: Sede Catholic
Watching television is often a mortal sin.
We know that there will be Blasphemy and anti-Catholic ideas.
We know that there will be immodestly dressed women on almost every program.
As well as obscene and pornographic images.
If knowing all this we choose to watch television, we risk mortal sin.

Our Lord said in the Gospel of St. Matthew XVI:26,
"For what doth it profit a man, if he gain the whole world, and suffer the loss of his own soul? Or what exchange shall a man give for his soul?"

I read something about how one of the Saints saw a vision of a box in people's houses, and the devil came flying out of the box.
I believe she saw television in that vision.

Get rid of the box of satan.

Do not go to Hell because for refusing to give up the sinful "entertainment" we are fed by the anti-Catholic tv industry.

They are against Our Lord, so we should be against them.

Pray to the Immaculate Heart of Mary for the Graces to give up this sin.
This Lent, try to give up television as a penance.

Think how much that would please Our Lord.

You can spend more time really with your Family and with God.



I believe that was St. Elizabeth Ann Seton....
Title: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: shin on April 22, 2012, 04:23:54 AM
'Decorum, however, as well as religion, requires that as a Christian, you not allow yourself to sing every sort of song and that you be especially on your guard not to sing indecent songs or those whose words are too explicit or contain double meanings. In a word, it is very unbecoming for a Christian to sing songs that might lead to impiety, that glorify loose living, or that contain expressions and words suggesting that it is an honor and a great pleasure to drink to excess. Besides the fact that it is very uncouth to have these words on your lips, such words might strongly contribute to having someone else fall into such excesses, even if he is not doing so at the moment. Songs can move you with the spirit they contain more strongly than do mere words.'

. . .

'There are amusements that will not be discussed at length here, because they are not at all permitted to Christians, either by the laws of religion or by the rules of decorum. Some of these are ordinarily available only to wealthy people, such as balls, dances, and the comedies of the theater. There are others that are more commonly available to artisans and the poor, such as watching charlatans, clowns, tightrope walkers, puppeteers, and so forth.'

. . .

'Although in the world theater is considered a refined form of amusement, the fact is that it is a shame and an embarrassment to Christianity. In fact, are not those who abandon themselves to this kind of work and make it their profession considered publicly infamous? Can you love a profession that covers with embarrassment those who practice it? Is that art not something infamous and shameful in which the skill of the actors consists in exciting in themselves and in others various shameful passions for which a wellborn person can feel nothing but repulsion?

If there is singing going on, the only airs one hears are those that strengthen these same passions. Is there anything conformable to refinement or to decorum in the costuming, the nudity, and the license taken by actors and actresses? Is there anything in their gestures, their words, and their postures that is not unbecoming for a Christian not only to do but even to see? It is, then, entirely against propriety to take pleasure in this form of amusement.'

St. Jean Baptiste de la Salle
Title: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: theology101 on May 04, 2012, 02:38:11 AM
I haven't owned a TV in over five years, and I feel more intelligent and better informed than I ever had. The other day I was at a friend's house and his TV was on to the news. He was watching so I watched some, too. After about five minutes I got the worst headache, a migraine really, and it would not go away until I left.
Title: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: Karl on May 04, 2012, 02:07:02 PM
Quote from: theology101
I haven't owned a TV in over five years, and I feel more intelligent and better informed than I ever had. The other day I was at a friend's house and his TV was on to the news. He was watching so I watched some, too. After about five minutes I got the worst headache, a migraine really, and it would not go away until I left.


Interesting, I've noticed the same for myself.

In 1987, Jєωιѕн businessman Sumner Redstone (born Sumner Murray Rothstein) purchased majority ownership of Viacom.

Redstone later acquired several television networks and turned the company into one of the largest media organizations in the world.

Viacom currently owns MTV, VH1, Nickelodeon, MTV2, Comedy Central, BET, Nick at Nite, Noggin, TV Land, CMT, Spike TV, and Showtime.

For the last 25 years, Americans have grown up watching these networks. Their values and beliefs were formed by The Real World, Cribs, Punk’d, True Life, and most recently Jersey Shore.

Jersey Shore revolves around a group of young adults living together in a beach rental home. By day they work at a T-shirt shop, and the rest of the time they drink, have sex and make jokes about each other.

The show has become MTV’s most watched series of all time.

MTV programs are clear examples social engineering, a media led effort to influence popular attitudes and social behaviors on a large scale.

Kids watch Jersey Shore and they see how “adults” behave. Male viewers learn from “The Situation” (Mike Sorrentino) and women learn from Snooki (Nicole Polizzi).

Read more about the MTV culture at JettandJahn.com (http://www.jettandjahn.com/2012/04/2012-ratings-dive-for-mtv-nickelodeon-comedy-central-bet/)
Title: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: theology101 on May 04, 2012, 08:35:05 PM
Quote from: Karl
Quote from: theology101
I haven't owned a TV in over five years, and I feel more intelligent and better informed than I ever had. The other day I was at a friend's house and his TV was on to the news. He was watching so I watched some, too. After about five minutes I got the worst headache, a migraine really, and it would not go away until I left.


Interesting, I've noticed the same for myself.

In 1987, Jєωιѕн businessman Sumner Redstone (born Sumner Murray Rothstein) purchased majority ownership of Viacom.

Redstone later acquired several television networks and turned the company into one of the largest media organizations in the world.

Viacom currently owns MTV, VH1, Nickelodeon, MTV2, Comedy Central, BET, Nick at Nite, Noggin, TV Land, CMT, Spike TV, and Showtime.

For the last 25 years, Americans have grown up watching these networks. Their values and beliefs were formed by The Real World, Cribs, Punk’d, True Life, and most recently Jersey Shore.

Jersey Shore revolves around a group of young adults living together in a beach rental home. By day they work at a T-shirt shop, and the rest of the time they drink, have sex and make jokes about each other.

The show has become MTV’s most watched series of all time.

MTV programs are clear examples social engineering, a media led effort to influence popular attitudes and social behaviors on a large scale.

Kids watch Jersey Shore and they see how “adults” behave. Male viewers learn from “The Situation” (Mike Sorrentino) and women learn from Snooki (Nicole Polizzi).

Read more about the MTV culture at JettandJahn.com (http://www.jettandjahn.com/2012/04/2012-ratings-dive-for-mtv-nickelodeon-comedy-central-bet/)



Yep, I grew up on all that stuff. Looking back I realize that even most of the "family" shows had an undertone of modernism and anti-Christianity. Jєωιѕн control of the media is a fact- all one must do is a little research into it. That might explain why Christianity is ALWAYS attacked in the media, especially TV. It is done in such a way that even shows like "It's a Wonderful Life" and other "Christmas" shows, seem to encourage a belief in the ʝʊdɛօ-Christian God, but not in Jesus Christ- the reason for the season. God is mentioned often in the Jєωιѕн media, and even with praise, but Jesus is NEVER portrayed in a good light, nor are his followers. Jєωs are master deceivers- just like their father. I am amazed at how many Protestants and even Catholics actually support Israel unconditionally, and will never speak a word against a Jєω, even a true word. They have been deceived into thinking that the Jєωs are still God's chosen, though they rejected and murdered Him. They think we somehow owe Judaism something for being our 'cousin' religion, when in fact we owe Jєωs as much as we owe any Christ-denying heathens: absolutely nothing.
Title: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: Neil Obstat on May 09, 2012, 11:21:11 AM
A monthly newsletter called "Our Lady's Apostolate for No TV" was run by
Fr. Frank Poncelet. It was started in A.D. 2000 and continued for several years.

Fr. Poncelet is the author of two books on television: Airwaves From Hell
and its sequel, Television, Prelude to Chaos.

From their website:

http://www.ourladysapostolatefornotv.org/

Our Mission

The mission of this Apostolate is to save souls and to make reparation for sins committed against the Divine Majesty and against the Immaculate Heart of Mary.  As many sins are committed as a result of television, our desire is to convince Catholics to rid their homes of its destructive influence. To accomplish this we need your help! By persuading your families and friends to go TV-free you share in this work for souls. If you are successful in your efforts, please let us know.

*******
His primary message was to eliminate TV in the Catholic home. I tried keeping it turned off, but it was a never-ending battle. Every time I came home it was on, and then I found out that my children learned to turn it off when they heard me coming in. I didn't get any support from my wife. She liked having her TV shows, too.

So I disabled the antenna, and only used it for video tapes. That was okay, for a while, then eventually one of my daughters decided that I was being oppressive and mean, so when she moved out, she got her own TV and had a lot of "catch-up" to do. Now she's abandoned all religion.

But overall, I think that having no TV in the house has been a benefit, if nothing else, for my own good, for this way I can spend more time reading good books and praying the Rosary, when I'm not posting a comment on the Internet!

The website linked above has 4 issues of the Newsletter that you can read online.
There were many years of issues but only these 4 from 2007 are viewable.

From the last one, December 2007:

TELEVISIO EJICIENDA EST!
(Television set must be thrown away)
by Father Jean-Luc Lafitte, SSPX
...

On The Christmas Season
Very slightly adapted from Bishop Challoner’s
Meditations for Every Day in the Year
...

Excepts from the Midnight Cave
by Father Frederick William Faber
...

It ends with this from the Editor:

 

From the Editor…

Exposing Children to Television

A while back, I was speaking with a Catholic friend about television.  She mentioned that she had television and used it sparingly because she wanted her children to be exposed to it so that when they went out into the world they would be less inclined to experiment with it.  Naturally, I was rather astonished at what, to me, was a novel idea.  She explained that her daughter had once noticed how her classmates at a Catholic school, who had never been exposed to television, were fascinated by the medium whenever they were exposed to it in stores.  

Desensitizing children to TV?

I was taken aback by this mother’s idea that by desensitizing her children to television, which is so often an occasion of sin, she hoped that they would use it “responsibly” when they were out in the world.  Our conversation started a train of thought in my mind:  Does the end justify the means?  Can exposing children to what is an addictive medium transmitting primarily sinful content, rather than teaching them to avoid it, make them less likely to avoid it in adult life?  Would anyone in their right mind use the same technique with drugs, alcohol, or pornography?  What does the Church have to say about exposing children to the proximate occasion of sin?

Television is an occasion of sin


The Catholic faith teaches us that occasions of sin are those places, persons, or things which as a rule are the means of leading us into sin.[1]  Does television qualify as an occasion of sin?  Given the pernicious content of the programs aired today and the morally corrosive advertising which accompanies them, television is decidedly an occasion of sin to those who watch it.  To expose oneself carelessly to an occasion of sin is in itself sinful and leads not only to a loss of divine grace, but to other more grievous sins.[2]  In the case of television it seems self-evident that a person who watches shows or commercials that are unchaste (and very few are not these days) allows into the soul unchaste desires which, aside from being temptations, may easily become the source of grievous sin.  To consent with the will to unchaste or unlawful thoughts is always sinful.  But from whence came these sinful desires?  From the tele-vision which has been the proximate occasion of sin.

What follows?

So what then are we to think of this idea of exposing children to television so that they lose any fascination for it?  Firstly, as Dr. Byrne’s article pointed out in the September 2007 Newsletter, television is an intrinsically addictive medium.  That being so it is very unwise to expose children to it at all.  Rather than making a child disinterested, exposure to television is likely to excite a desire to watch television which the child will not have the moral strength to resist.  Would there not be an outcry of rage if schools began exposing children to street drugs with the idea that by doing so they would ensure that the children lost all fascination for drugs?  Television is an electronic opiate, and once a person becomes “hooked” on it, it is exceedingly difficult to be weaned from the habit.  Secondly, television, because of the pernicious content of the programming, is a proximate occasion of sin and it is never lawful to deliberately expose anyone, especially children, to what may cause their moral and spiritual ruin.  St. Augustine says: “If thou persuade thy neighbor to sin thou art his murderer.”  Television, because it is a proximate occasion of sin, must be avoided by adult and child alike.

_______________________________________

[1] Fr. Francis Spirago, The Catechism Explained, TAN Books and Publishers, Rockford, IL, 1993, pg.475.

[2] Ibid, pg. 475
Title: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: Nadir on May 20, 2012, 05:36:20 AM
Excellent article!! Except that, instead of merely turning off the TV you must banish it outright by removing it from the home. :tv-disturbed:

I know that this topic has been started way back, and someone along the way said that it has been exhausted. I don't believe so. It won't be done until all those tvs are on the rubbish dump!

I wonder if Anne De Guigne (Feb 27, 2008)  succeeded in "trying to not watch television", or if she is still trying. Imagine how wonderful if instead of watching, or even trying not to, she is praying little aspirations for the salvation of sinners.

God bless her efforts!
:pray:
Title: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: Neil Obstat on June 15, 2012, 04:06:21 PM
A curious name. Blessed Anne de Guigne died 20 years before television first blinked
into existence.

The only way to really be free of TV is to put a brick through the screen.
But these days, with flat screens and computer hookups, it's more complicated.

I know families with TV in their living room who are entirely hooked, and there's no
getting around it. When they invite me to sit there and watch with them, I have
something to say every ten or 15 seconds, and they get upset that they can't hear
what's going on in their sacred false god's reality.

These are Catholics, who never spend that much attention in front of the Blessed
Sacrament. They complain that "nothing's going on" if a priest isn't at the altar
moving around somehow. Their whole perception is clouded by a lifetime
of TV viewing.

I had an acquaintance 20 years ago who was involved in "the industry" (that
means Entertainment, or movies, or TV -- to them it's the whole world) who
assured me that the power of TV was soon to become the principal device
of public opinion control, and that its power is impossible to overestimate.

Well, I have to say, that TV has no power at all over anyone who does not
watch it.


And those of us who don't watch TV, we are really duty-bound to talk about that
in the public arena. People really need to hear the testimony of us who are not
mind-numbed robots under the thumb of TV programmers.
Title: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: Tiffany on June 17, 2012, 07:56:25 PM
Quote from: Neil Obstat
A curious name. Blessed Anne de Guigne died 20 years before television first blinked
into existence.

The only way to really be free of TV is to put a brick through the screen.
But these days, with flat screens and computer hookups, it's more complicated.

I know families with TV in their living room who are entirely hooked, and there's no
getting around it. When they invite me to sit there and watch with them, I have
something to say every ten or 15 seconds, and they get upset that they can't hear
what's going on in their sacred false god's reality.

These are Catholics, who never spend that much attention in front of the Blessed
Sacrament. They complain that "nothing's going on" if a priest isn't at the altar
moving around somehow. Their whole perception is clouded by a lifetime
of TV viewing.

I had an acquaintance 20 years ago who was involved in "the industry" (that
means Entertainment, or movies, or TV -- to them it's the whole world) who
assured me that the power of TV was soon to become the principal device
of public opinion control, and that its power is impossible to overestimate.

Well, I have to say, that TV has no power at all over anyone who does not
watch it.


And those of us who don't watch TV, we are really duty-bound to talk about that
in the public arena. People really need to hear the testimony of us who are not
mind-numbed robots under the thumb of TV programmers.


If you have young children I would use caution when talking about no tv to others that do not agree. Some will view it as child abuse.
Title: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: PilgrimOfGrace on June 19, 2012, 08:49:49 AM
Television = Brain Rot

Title: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: Viva Cristo Rey on June 19, 2012, 04:00:26 PM
Yes,  television is being used to push liberal agenda.  There are many programs, shows which attack God, Our Blessd Mother and the Catholic faith, families, marriage, and good values.

They seem to push sex,  violence, destruction of family and marriages, teen age pregnancies, .  Most media even on internet is so liberal.

Thanks for sharing the article.



Title: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: theology101 on June 25, 2012, 07:42:39 PM
Quote from: Tiffany
Quote from: Neil Obstat
A curious name. Blessed Anne de Guigne died 20 years before television first blinked
into existence.

The only way to really be free of TV is to put a brick through the screen.
But these days, with flat screens and computer hookups, it's more complicated.

I know families with TV in their living room who are entirely hooked, and there's no
getting around it. When they invite me to sit there and watch with them, I have
something to say every ten or 15 seconds, and they get upset that they can't hear
what's going on in their sacred false god's reality.

These are Catholics, who never spend that much attention in front of the Blessed
Sacrament. They complain that "nothing's going on" if a priest isn't at the altar
moving around somehow. Their whole perception is clouded by a lifetime
of TV viewing.

I had an acquaintance 20 years ago who was involved in "the industry" (that
means Entertainment, or movies, or TV -- to them it's the whole world) who
assured me that the power of TV was soon to become the principal device
of public opinion control, and that its power is impossible to overestimate.

Well, I have to say, that TV has no power at all over anyone who does not
watch it.


And those of us who don't watch TV, we are really duty-bound to talk about that
in the public arena. People really need to hear the testimony of us who are not
mind-numbed robots under the thumb of TV programmers.


If you have young children I would use caution when talking about no tv to others that do not agree. Some will view it as child abuse.


It's sad, but I can seriously believe that, and I can even see some kid's parents being harassed because they are "denying" their children television. I've heard that the guy responsible for the invention of public television, was a marketer. His goal was nothing less than the "programming" of people to buy products. (This 'program' brought to you by...) Then of course even more evil people saw the benefits in propaganda and brainwashing. It's crazy how nobody even ever questions why they call it programming. When people spend up to six or more hours a day average in front of a television, of course they will think that to not have one is crazy- that's what some guy on T.V. said, anyway...
Title: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: Tiffany on July 01, 2012, 01:54:13 PM
Quote from: theology101
Quote from: Tiffany
Quote from: Neil Obstat
A curious name. Blessed Anne de Guigne died 20 years before television first blinked
into existence.

The only way to really be free of TV is to put a brick through the screen.
But these days, with flat screens and computer hookups, it's more complicated.

I know families with TV in their living room who are entirely hooked, and there's no
getting around it. When they invite me to sit there and watch with them, I have
something to say every ten or 15 seconds, and they get upset that they can't hear
what's going on in their sacred false god's reality.

These are Catholics, who never spend that much attention in front of the Blessed
Sacrament. They complain that "nothing's going on" if a priest isn't at the altar
moving around somehow. Their whole perception is clouded by a lifetime
of TV viewing.

I had an acquaintance 20 years ago who was involved in "the industry" (that
means Entertainment, or movies, or TV -- to them it's the whole world) who
assured me that the power of TV was soon to become the principal device
of public opinion control, and that its power is impossible to overestimate.

Well, I have to say, that TV has no power at all over anyone who does not
watch it.


And those of us who don't watch TV, we are really duty-bound to talk about that
in the public arena. People really need to hear the testimony of us who are not
mind-numbed robots under the thumb of TV programmers.


If you have young children I would use caution when talking about no tv to others that do not agree. Some will view it as child abuse.


It's sad, but I can seriously believe that, and I can even see some kid's parents being harassed because they are "denying" their children television. I've heard that the guy responsible for the invention of public television, was a marketer. His goal was nothing less than the "programming" of people to buy products. (This 'program' brought to you by...) Then of course even more evil people saw the benefits in propaganda and brainwashing. It's crazy how nobody even ever questions why they call it programming. When people spend up to six or more hours a day average in front of a television, of course they will think that to not have one is crazy- that's what some guy on T.V. said, anyway...



WITHHOLDING TELEVISION (http://www.hslda.org/docs/media/20060417/200606220.asp)
Title: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: Santiago on December 11, 2012, 07:18:08 AM
Watching too much TV makes one stupid. There is not much to learn from it.
Not only that, those tv programmes spread wrong ideas -- e.g. it's ok to let children play video games, or don't be too strict towards children, or that romantic love is the greatest thing in life, etc.

News on TV is also bad. The ads trivialize all the news.

I hate watching too much TV. I don't watch TV a lot, my secret of staying away from TV is to
read books and magazines. I have subscribed Catholic life, Vatican past and present, Gilbert magazine, etc.
Title: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: Dolorosa on December 11, 2012, 10:23:35 AM
              I cancelled my cable many years ago and stopped watching T.V.  I actually had withdrawal symptoms for awhile which was weird.  I talked to my parents about it and they decided to also cancel their cable and don't watch T.V.  We watch old classic movies, religious movies, and some youtubes.
Title: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: ancien regime on December 11, 2012, 02:47:33 PM
The forced move to digital television gave us the added impetus to abandon television altogether. We have an old, non-digital monitor on which to watch a variety of DVDs we have purchased from our savings from cancelling cable subscription years ago.

We do have a small sd-tv to watch news and weather on as we live in tornado alley. We have discovered that it is not very reliable as the stations kick out during bad weather  :tv-disturbed:--unlike analog programming, when the station goes, everything goes, picture and sound
. . .  probably should just go buy a weather radio and chuck the little monster box. :smash-pc:

I keep thinking of the book Farenheit 451 whenever I see the size of the flat-screen televisions that are out there.
Title: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: Viva Cristo Rey on December 12, 2012, 06:17:48 PM
Quote from: Karl
Quote from: theology101
I haven't owned a TV in over five years, and I feel more intelligent and better informed than I ever had. The other day I was at a friend's house and his TV was on to the news. He was watching so I watched some, too. After about five minutes I got the worst headache, a migraine really, and it would not go away until I left.


Interesting, I've noticed the same for myself.

In 1987, Jєωιѕн businessman Sumner Redstone (born Sumner Murray Rothstein) purchased majority ownership of Viacom.

Redstone later acquired several television networks and turned the company into one of the largest media organizations in the world.

Viacom currently owns MTV, VH1, Nickelodeon, MTV2, Comedy Central, BET, Nick at Nite, Noggin, TV Land, CMT, Spike TV, and Showtime.

For the last 25 years, Americans have grown up watching these networks. Their values and beliefs were formed by The Real World, Cribs, Punk’d, True Life, and most recently Jersey Shore.

Jersey Shore revolves around a group of young adults living together in a beach rental home. By day they work at a T-shirt shop, and the rest of the time they drink, have sex and make jokes about each other.

The show has become MTV’s most watched series of all time.

MTV programs are clear examples social engineering, a media led effort to influence popular attitudes and social behaviors on a large scale.

Kids watch Jersey Shore and they see how “adults” behave. Male viewers learn from “The Situation” (Mike Sorrentino) and women learn from Snooki (Nicole Polizzi).

Read more about the MTV culture at JettandJahn.com (http://www.jettandjahn.com/2012/04/2012-ratings-dive-for-mtv-nickelodeon-comedy-central-bet/)



Jersey shore gang is novus ordo "catholics"

Is this what Bishop Fellay  and Father Rostand wants for your children?  
Title: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: Neil Obstat on January 31, 2013, 08:48:01 PM
I'm proud to say that I've never seen an episode of Jersey Shore, nor do
I have any desire to ever see one.  I've read enough about it now to
know what to look out for, so that if I ever happen to be in a restaurant
or someone's home and it comes on a TV, I'll know not to watch it.  

I went through a phase in my younger days when I was getting hooked
on such things, and I somehow was able to rip that out by the roots.

A big part of what gave me the fortitude to stop watching TV was the
newsletter put out by Fr. Frank Poncelet, called "Our Lady's Apostolate
for No TV."  He was also the author of Air Waves from Hell, a book that
recommended putting a brick through the screen of your TV to be
sure that it is no longer useful for anyone.  He also wrote a sequel,
but neither of these books were very popular.  They came at a time
when TV was so pandemic that most people would never even dream
of not watching it, unfortunately.

I just checked and found that Fr. Poncelet has passed away last week:

www.tributes.com/show/Frank-Poncelet-95157773

Fr. Francis "Frank" Poncelet, age 84 died January 24, 2013 at his residence near Hastings[MN]. Fr. Frank served numerous parishes in his years as a priest in the St. Cloud Diocese. Mass of Christian Burial was held Saturday, January 26, 2013 at St. Joseph's Catholic Church with Fr. Robert Altier officiating. Interment was in the church cemetery.


May the good Lord have mercy on his soul, and may he rest in peace.
May his soul and the souls of all the faithful departed rest in peace. Amen.




Title: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: Neil Obstat on January 31, 2013, 09:02:41 PM

I believe it was Fr. Poncelet who coined the phrase, "The Devil's Tabernacle."

This is a most powerful term that Catholics should know and use.  

A clearly demonic series like Jersey Shore should be nothing short of
evidence that television is indeed the devil's imitation, of the tabernacle
of Our Lord found in Catholic churches.  

Why would anyone want to have the Devil's Tabernacle in their home?  

It's a question you could not ask yourself if you ever read Fr. Poncelet's
books or newsletters.

Why would anyone want to have the Devil's Tabernacle in their home?

This question should come back and give you pause for thought.

Why would anyone want to have the Devil's Tabernacle in their home?

I'm sure there are a lot of answers, but I highly doubt that there is a
single one that is any good, all considered.  

Why would anyone want to have the Devil's Tabernacle in their home?

Remember Fr. Frank Poncelet in your prayers.  I'm sure Our Lady came
to his assistance in his time of need.  He did a lot of good in his lifetime.


Title: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: Neil Obstat on January 31, 2013, 11:26:35 PM
Some collected posts from this thread, for newcomers:




Post #31

Posted Apr 22, 2011, 2:12 am

Quote from: shin
Dominican Teaching Sisters - No TV. (http://olrl.org/misc/educ_TV.shtml)

And from Fr. Poncelet, who wrote on the subject, and founded Our Lady's Apostolate of No TV:

"A priest's primary duty is to save souls; he is responsible for prevailing moral atttitudes in his parish and specifically for the salvation of his parishioners' souls. . . The priest, then must come to an honest recognition of the primary avenue to the destruction of souls in his Catholic homes, as that window to the world of immorality -- the television set. And he must continually point out to his parishioners that acceptance of TV entertainment is simply not compatible with the Christian life of spirituality."

"The disintegration of real Catholic culture has been a slow process begun two generations back. It happens to be co-incident with the degradation of TV fare, which began its downward slide with the inception of the medium, and accelerated that trend at a precipitous rate from the 1960s onward."

"Thanks to the constant depiction -- in an entertainment mode -- of immoral acts. . . presentations once considered scandalous, perverse, and unfit for consideration by self-respecting people, now pass for commonplace, acceptable fare even among those claiming religious convictions."

"Such programming is often criticized mildly as being crude, in bad taste, or even as awful -- but hardly ever is it called sinful."

"James Drummey, in a recent question/answer column in The Wanderer wrote "Even the best intentioned Catholics can become desensitized. . . if they watch these portrayed on televisions in a favorable light, night after night in their own homes."

"We cannot hide from basic Catholic moral laws forever. And the sins that are most easily committed, and which involve most "grievous matter" are also the sins most exploited on television -- those against chastity and purity."

Fr. Frank Poncelet


Fr. Poncelet was not a boistrous or obnoxious person.  He was a very loyal and
faithful priest who served the Lord's flock with much pastoral care.  His care
was so effective that it reached out beyond the confines of his own personal
and real presence to an extended family of followers who would never meet
him face-to-face.  

May his soul and the souls of all the faithful departed, through the mercy of
God, rest in peace.  Amen.



Post #40 (http://www.cathinfo.com/catholic.php?a=topic&t=3196&min=40#p0)

Quote from: Sede Catholic
Watching television is often a mortal sin.
We know that there will be Blasphemy and anti-Catholic ideas.
We know that there will be immodestly dressed women on almost every program.
As well as obscene and pornographic images.
If knowing all this we choose to watch television, we risk mortal sin.

Our Lord said in the Gospel of St. Matthew XVI:26,
"For what doth it profit a man, if he gain the whole world, and suffer the loss of his own soul? Or what exchange shall a man give for his soul?"

I read something about how one of the Saints saw a vision of a box in people's houses, and the devil came flying out of the box.
I believe she saw television in that vision.

Get rid of the box of satan.

Do not go to Hell because for refusing to give up the sinful "entertainment" we are fed by the anti-Catholic tv industry.

They are against Our Lord, so we should be against them.

Pray to the Immaculate Heart of Mary for the Graces to give up this sin.
This Lent, try to give up television as a penance.

Think how much that would please Our Lord.

You can spend more time really with your Family and with God.



Post #49

Quote from: theology101
Quote from: Karl
Quote from: theology101
I haven't owned a TV in over five years, and I feel more intelligent and better informed than I ever had. The other day I was at a friend's house and his TV was on to the news. He was watching so I watched some, too. After about five minutes I got the worst headache, a migraine really, and it would not go away until I left.


Interesting, I've noticed the same for myself.

In 1987, Jєωιѕн businessman Sumner Redstone (born Sumner Murray Rothstein) purchased majority ownership of Viacom.

Redstone later acquired several television networks and turned the company into one of the largest media organizations in the world.

Viacom currently owns MTV, VH1, Nickelodeon, MTV2, Comedy Central, BET, Nick at Nite, Noggin, TV Land, CMT, Spike TV, and Showtime.

For the last 25 years, Americans have grown up watching these networks. Their values and beliefs were formed by The Real World, Cribs, Punk’d, True Life, and most recently Jersey Shore.

Jersey Shore revolves around a group of young adults living together in a beach rental home. By day they work at a T-shirt shop, and the rest of the time they drink, have sex and make jokes about each other.

The show has become MTV’s most watched series of all time.

MTV programs are clear examples social engineering, a media led effort to influence popular attitudes and social behaviors on a large scale.

Kids watch Jersey Shore and they see how “adults” behave. Male viewers learn from “The Situation” (Mike Sorrentino) and women learn from Snooki (Nicole Polizzi).

Read more about the MTV culture at JettandJahn.com (http://www.jettandjahn.com/2012/04/2012-ratings-dive-for-mtv-nickelodeon-comedy-central-bet/)



Yep, I grew up on all that stuff. Looking back I realize that even most of the "family" shows had an undertone of modernism and anti-Christianity. Jєωιѕн control of the media is a fact- all one must do is a little research into it. That might explain why Christianity is ALWAYS attacked in the media, especially TV. It is done in such a way that even shows like "It's a Wonderful Life" and other "Christmas" shows, seem to encourage a belief in the ʝʊdɛօ-Christian God, but not in Jesus Christ- the reason for the season. God is mentioned often in the Jєωιѕн media, and even with praise, but Jesus is NEVER portrayed in a good light, nor are his followers. Jєωs are master deceivers- just like their father. I am amazed at how many Protestants and even Catholics actually support Israel unconditionally, and will never speak a word against a Jєω, even a true word. They have been deceived into thinking that the Jєωs are still God's chosen, though they rejected and murdered Him. They think we somehow owe Judaism something for being our 'cousin' religion, when in fact we owe Jєωs as much as we owe any Christ-denying heathens: absolutely nothing.



It was the abiding message of Fr. Poncelet that the technology of TV gives a
great power to those who would program it because it is able to short-cut your
ability to make intelligent choices as you watch it.  TV controls your thinking,
and you are not aware of its workings when you passively let it happen to you.

You cannot make decisions regarding what you're seeing because you tend to
habituate yourself to watching it.  But by the time you may realize that you
are seeing something that you are not supposed to see, it is already too late
because you have seen it.  And so it goes, from moment to moment, which
turns into hours at a time.  How many of us have known someone who simply
could not tear himself away from the Boob Tube?

It's really the same message as the OP of this thread, without all the fancy
technical jargon.  

You can read 4 of his newsletters from 2007 on the website.  Maybe I should
post them here, so that in the event the website goes down, there will be
another copy here on CI.. He ran a newsletter for years, starting in 2000,
and now he has passed away, last week at the age of 84, on January 24th,
2013..........





Title: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: Neil Obstat on January 31, 2013, 11:59:42 PM
This is the first of 4 newsletters from the website,


http://www.ourladysapostolatefornotv.org/2007.htm



September 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.htm


Blasphemous 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.
Title: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: Neil Obstat on February 01, 2013, 01:14:18 AM
The second of 4 newsletters from the website:



October 2007 Newsletter

 
We continue with the last part of the article by Dr. Carol Byrne, which 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.  Parts 1 & 2 are republished in Our Lady’s Newsletter with the permission of the author.

 

Part 2

TV OR NOT TV?  THAT IS THE QUESTION

And why abstention rather than moderation is the answer

 

TV has become anti-Christian

TV broadcasting is dominated by a handful of giant media conglomerates whose producers and news directors have lost all knowledge of and contact with the Christian world view that had permeated and influenced the whole of the Western world for centuries. It follows that both the manner of presentation and the content of the programmes they produce are coloured by their ignorance of even the most basic concepts of the Christian Revelation, and reflect the often immoral life-styles which they seek to justify to the world. The devil writes the script, which explains why the view of the world as seen through the window of the TV is presented in an irresistibly enticing way, glamorizing immorality and exalting human happiness through the pursuit of pleasure, wealth, good looks, fame and worldly success.

This is obvious from the quality of TV which has taken a nose-dive in the last decade in terms of

a)      Violence, swearing and sɛҳuąƖly explicit scenes increasingly more frequent and more obscene

b)      the editing of news, discussion and docuмentary programmes all with a pronounced slant towards an anti-Christian viewpoint

c)      direct assaults on Catholic beliefs and practices because they are opposed to immorality and vice.

Let us take each of these points in turn. Firstly, that there has been a consistent effort to promote swearing, smut and vulgar language, including expletives of a religious nature, immorality and violence on TV, and that these have reached record level, is a fact reported in 2001 by the Broadcasting Standards Commission,[1] based in the UK. Members of the public had written to complain that more and more of this sort of material occurred during prime family viewing time, i.e. before the “watershed” of 9 p.m. But no effective action is taken to clean up TV.

Secondly, a defender of TV might uphold the value of “educational” programmes on science, history, geography etc., claiming that they open the mind to the truth about our world. But do they? It is highly unlikely, given that the main thrust of the producer’s work is to provide entertainment, capture eyeballs and hold the viewer’s attention through spectacle and special effects. Camera techniques like the close-up, the pan, the angle shot, the freeze-frame, the time lapse and the aerial view all influence our perceptions of a scene. With regard to scientific topics, the information given is often misleading or inaccurate, and would not stand up to the scrutiny of a real expert in the different areas who can detect the factual errors and false claims. The aim seems to be to create unreasonable levels of fear in the general public that the world is about to end, courtesy of a nuclear nightmare, or a cataclysmic eruption from a supervolcano, or that we will all disappear into a black hole. [2] Those who do not believe in the existence of God and the reality of the supernatural life of the soul, present man as an animal with a package of complexes and drives seeking fulfillment. They subtly inculcate notions of man being descended from the apes, a creature of biology, accidentally brought into existence. On social issues they give prominence to the feminist agenda with its concomitant propaganda in favour of pro-choice abortion and reproductive issues, increased child care, alternative life-styles and anti-family legislation. [3]

Thirdly, of all the media, TV has consistently displayed the most marked anti-Catholic bias in programmes dealing with specifically Catholic issues. As control of the network is in the hands of producers and editors who dismiss Christian belief as superstition, there is a tendency to broadcast programmes that hold the Church up to ridicule.  Galileo, the Inquisition, the Crusades – all have been presented in docudramas that deceive the public into believing the images of torture and genocide they portray and predispose viewers to think that the actions of the Church were inspired by greed, insensitivity and the lust for power.

The same strain of contempt runs through the treatment of social themes. BBC’s Panorama is only one of many programmes which constantly denigrate the Catholic Church, making accusations without substantiating and verifiable evidence. [4]  Similarly, in many other programmes, all the ills of society are laid at the door of the Church – celibacy is seen as the cause of clerical abuse, large families as the cause of overpopulation and starvation, the AIDS crisis in Africa where more than 25 million people have been infected with HIV is attributed to the “excessive rigidity” of the Church’s moral teaching, and “intolerance” has contributed to anti-semitism, bigotry and polarization. The obvious message underlying it all is that Catholicism should be eradicated for the good of the human race.

TV is obviously the perfect medium for the Father of Lies.

The Catholic Church has for decades been the object of scurrilous treatment in televised films, plays, comedies, and soaps, and throughout that time has even had to endure blasphemies. On Sunday 22 December 2002, BBC 1 screened a blasphemous attack on the virginity of the Mother of God, entitled The Virgin Mary. What was the reaction of the English episcopate? Did they make a strong and united public protest against this appalling insult to the Blessed Virgin as it was their solemn duty to do? No, their reaction was one of complete indifference. Apart from a rather muted objection from one bishop, they remained silent, leaving the defence of our heavenly mother to the only Catholic priest in the country to stage a public protest – Fr. Jacques Emily, then Superior of the SSPX in Great Britain.

Then in January of this year, under the directorship of Alan Bookbinder, Head of BBC Religious Broadcasting and a self-confessed agnostic, the BBC showed Jerry Springer – The Opera, which contained scenes of such unspeakable blasphemy against the Crucifixion that it drew record numbers of protests from the public.  Antony Pitts, a senior Radio 3 producer, found the televised Jerry Springer opera so offensive to Christianity that he resigned in protest. [5]  He made his reasons (blasphemy and mockery of God) clear to the Director General of the BBC, Mark Thompson, and signed a written statement to that effect.

Clearly the BBC has abandoned the Christian values upon which it was founded, encapsulated in this inscription (in Latin!) in the entrance hall of BBC Broadcasting House:

This temple of the arts and muses is dedicated to Almighty God by the first Governors of Broadcasting in the year 1931, Sir John Reith being director general. It is their prayer that good seed sown may bring forth a good harvest, that all things hostile to peace or purity may be banished from this house, and that the people, inclining their ear to whatsoever things are beautiful and honest and of good report, may tread the path of wisdom and uprightness.

Conclusion

No one who has examined the history of television can deny that, since the early days, the quality of material broadcast has degenerated, particularly in the last decade, dragging the lowest common denominator ever lower in a downward spiral of degradation, and that our culture has degenerated with it. The importance of this observation is that we have arrived at near-saturation point with a constant stream of filth flowing into every home to poison the souls of viewers of all ages.

Not only has TV hit depths of depravity unimaginable to people of previous generations, but its anti-Christian spirit has permeated the entire network, so much so that it is impossible even to flick through the channels to see what is on without a high chance of being exposed to some objectionable material, by which time it is too late: the sanctuary of your home has been breached. [6]

Equally problematic is the special ability of television to influence millions of viewers who are looking down the lens of a camera which is not capturing reality but is being directed by the hand and eye of a professional producer, “packaging” reality to increase ratings for commercial reasons.

The seductive nature of the medium makes it difficult for viewers to analyze and rationalize what they see on the screen and easy to confuse fact with fiction. We can conclude that the advice to use one’s discernment in viewing television is entirely misplaced.

The fact that TV has acquired talismanic status and is exceptionally adept at influencing public opinion makes it so difficult for many people, including some traditional Catholics, to make an objective assessment of the dangers of watching television. When asked to get rid of it from their homes, they react with shock and outrage. They take comfort in the fact that no pope has ever issued an outright ban on television, they claim that there are other, more pressing, issues in this world, and they clamour for the right to use their own discernment in viewing habits.

But in the haste and fervour with which they defend their position, they overlook a central point: for the reasons outlined above, “discernment” – which was once appropriate – has become redundant in the modern TV landscape and has become one of those useful myths that make it easier for people to dodge the Church’s teaching on the dangers of television and its implications for today.  

There is a logical connection between the Catholic hierarchy’s early warnings against the potentially destructive influence of television and the present day admonition of the SSPX to throw out the television set.   As all of the concerns voiced in the 1950s have come to full fruition, have been immeasurably surpassed in sheer wickedness in our time, and have been proved true by research, we can say that there is nothing which had not been foreseen, at least in embryonic form, both by the Church and some outstanding individuals in society.


Sr. Magdalen (see footnote 12), (she died in 1977 at the age of 86), had entered the convent as a young woman in the reign of Pope St Pius X. She understood what Catholic culture entailed and could foresee how it would be totally destroyed by television. Her message (“Don’t watch television”) was essentially the same as that of the traditional religious societies today – the SSPX, the Redemptorists of Papa Stronsay and the Dominican Sisters of Post Falls, Idaho - who tell us to get rid of it completely.

A more pervasive and inveterate disease than the television network is hard to imagine; as such it calls for more “aggressive” surgery than the exercise of individual “discernment”.  

It is the same lethal strain as before, the same poison for the mind being spoon-fed to us through seductive images. The good nun’s message was fundamentally the same as that of Pope Pius XII who warned that television showed signs of inflicting damage not merely on individuals but on the whole of human society. [7]  

So what “discernment” should we use to judge the TV situation today? The only appropriate solution comes in the form of the wisdom of the Church for which we must be thankful to the traditional priests for handing on to us. Their advice to ban TV is, after all, part of the same Wisdom prefigured in the Book of Ecclesiasticus as the personification of all virtue and rated by St Thomas Aquinas as even greater than Prudence, the first of the Cardinal Virtues. For whereas Prudence has to do with contingent affairs (shall we use TV in moderation or ban it from our homes?), Wisdom is concerned with supernatural ends (how do I please God and get to heaven?) and directs Prudence to make the right choice for the good of souls.  

The Society of St Pius X has been lampooned as puritanical, Jansenistic, sectarian and hopelessly unrealistic in its anti-television policy. But in applying that policy their priests, as their right and duty demand, remain faithful to the traditions of the Church which has always countered any form of evil that endangers the sanctity of the home. Most people, however, have convinced themselves that being “realistic” is more important than being right.

 

[1] Report in The Times, 29 January 2001

[2] E.g. in March 2005 the BBC in conjunction with Discovery Channel produced a “docudrama” called Supervolcano which presents a cataclysmic eruption of a volcano in Yellowstone National Park as a true story, calling it “factual” and “reality-based”, even though the event has not happened yet!  And there is no scientific evidence that an eruption of such magnitude is likely to happen for hundreds or even thousands of years, if at all. The scientist in charge of the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory, Jake Lowenstern, who was interviewed for the programme, complained afterwards that his expert evidence was twisted and sensationalized to make an entertaining show.

[3]  Arch-feminist columnist for The Guardian, Polly Toynbee, patron of the National Secular Society and “profoundly anti-religious”, as she describes herself, is occasionally allotted time on BBC TV news to represent womankind and inform the world as to “what women want”.

[4]  E.g. on 27 October 2003 SPUC national director, John Smeaton, sent an open letter to BBC Director General, Greg Dyke, challenging the BBC to back up claims made in its Panorama programme, Sex and the Holy City, broadcast on 12 October that the Catholic Church's pro-life teaching is responsible for the loss of millions of lives.   In his letter, SPUC national director John Smeaton stated: “Not only did Sex and the Holy City fail to support such serious charges with objective, verifiable evidence, but there were also many other claims made in support of the general thesis of the programme which fly in the face of statistical, medical and scientific evidence from recognised and authoritative sources."

[5] Reported in the national press, e.g. The Sunday Times 15 Jan  2005, “Why I resigned from the blasphemous BEEB”                                    

[6] Even the seasoned BBC Radio 4 presenter, John Humphrys, was so disillusioned with television that he got rid of his own set.  He has described British reality TV as "seedy, cynical and harmful" to society.  While delivering the Mac Taggart lecture at the Edinburgh Television Festival last year, he said:  “Much of modern television is not only bad but socially corrosive, coarsening and brutalising viewers through its obsessions with sex, aggression and voyeurism”, adding that “the violence and language made it almost impossible to switch on without encountering some sort of aggression even in the soaps”.  

[7] Miranda prorsus, 1957

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The following article is reproduced with permission from the District Superior of the Asian District of the Society of St. Pius X.  We are grateful to Fr. Daniel Couture for his kind cooperation.
A Father of the Church and Television

by Father Philippe Lovey, SSPX District Superior for Switzerland

 

"Cease therefore awaiting from God that which the devil alone can give. A contrite and humble heart, a soul thoughtful, reserved, chaste, mortified, these are the gifts of God, these are the required weapons in our hands. Are we not in battle against the invisible powers, against the malice of the devil and his odious attendants? Let us have therefore every vigilance and ardor to resist advantageously in this perilous fight. Joy, pleasure, this perpetual lethargy will place you out of combat even before you are faced with it. The Christian is not made for joys, amusements, pleasures. Leave all that to people of the stage, to the debauched, to sycophants of every shade, to the soldier enrolled under the standard of Satan; but all that does not suit Christians called to an eternal kingdom, those whose names are inscribed on the rolls of the heavenly city and who claim to be themselves members of spiritual militia. It is the devil, yes, the devil himself who makes an art of the televised spectacle to draw under his banners the soldiers of Jesus Christ, to deaden their, vigour and the very nerves of their virtue. It is with this intention that he invented television in which he exercises and shapes with his own hands these instruments of corruption to spread them through cities and through them to poison public morality.

"(...) But when the actors pronounce these unseemly and jesting words, when they introduce licentiousness and blasphemy, it is who will be first to laugh and to applaud instead of cursing the cursed instrument, it is who will pile on his head the burning coals which the Apostle threatens for these criminal enjoyments. You don't realise that to applaud these actors is to encourage them and thereby to risk as much as they and even more so to incur the punishment which they will deserve; because after all if there were no constant spectators of television, there would be neither actors nor television. But when, to sit in front of the box, you are seen to leave your occupations, your work, (...) in a word to sacrifice everything for the vain pleasure of looking at it! (...) What I want is to convince you that if the actors are at fault, you are even more so, you who watch these films and spend hours at it. It is you who, in front of these wretched shows, dishonour the sanctity of marriage and disgrace it by the ridicule which it portrays openly before all. This actor who belittles it on the screen, is less at fault than you who partake of these indecent jokes, you who through your assiduity, through your pleasure, through your laughter (...) encourage in every way the success of these works coming out of the devil's workshop. But tell me, in what way could you look into the eyes of a wife whom you have so cruelly offended under the guise of an actress? What will you think of the one to whom you are united when you have watched all her sex marked by infamy?

You will tell me that these are only fictions? These are the kinds of fiction which have generated so much adulteries and have disrupted so many families. And thus the viewing of nothing else but the representation of a crime so big and so important for the whole of society as is adultery provokes nothing else than laughs and cries and applauds of pleasure. It is only a representation and not the real thing?  I will tell you that this representation is criminal: that those who show them deserve the most severe punishment, to dare to reproduce by imitation that which all the laws forbid to commit.

"(...) But what I have not said yet is that all these fictions bring imitations only too real. How many adulteries are generated by these pictures of adulterous passions! How much impurity, dissoluteness! How lustful, how immodest is the eye which will consider such infamy! One would not allow at home or in public the sight of a shameful nakedness; one would feel dishonoured by an outrage; why switch on the small box to insult the honour of both sexes? (...) If there was no harm in these indecencies why would you be scandalised if you witnessed them outside the little box? Why do you turn away your eyes, stop your walk if, in the street, you see something lewd? Why should you cry about violation of public morals? The same action is an indecency in the street, and is it no lorger so when it appears on the little box? (...) How would your wife look at you if you returned from such a disgraceful spectacle? How respectful a reception would you expect? (...) If only I could sadden you by my reproaches! I would rejoice and you would be grateful to me. (...)"

"Today my talk has been more severe, more firm, it is because by burying deeper the iron on the wound, I wanted to drag you from this box of perdition and give back to your soul its innocence and its virtue and, would to God, we fully possessed it in order to deserve the rewards promised for good deeds."

That is how St. John Chrysostomus (+407 A.D.) spoke about public shows. We have simply changed the word "show" by "television".
But what would he say these days? When it is no longer necessary to go and show oneself outside, when all that is necessary is to press a small knob and the screen lights up at the risk of switching off in us the divine light? (Con trouerses, No. 38, Nov. 1991)

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OCTOBER: The Month of the Holy Rosary

Dear readers, this month of October has been dedicated by the Church to the honor of the most holy rosary.  This devotion is honored in a special way on the seventh day of the month by the feast of Our Lady of the Holy Rosary.  This year we have the special joy of celebrating as well, on October 13th, the ninetieth anniversary of the Miracle of the Sun which occurred at Fatima.  Such great feast days are times of grace for all who prepare their hearts and celebrate the feasts in a worthy manner.

The rosary is a most powerful weapon against heresy and against the assaults of hell.  First given to St. Dominic to aid in the conversion of the Albigensian heretics, the rosary has shown forth its power throughout history in remarkable ways.  

Perhaps one of the most memorable triumphs of the holy rosary occurred during the Turkish menace in 1571.   At that time Christendom was disunited and the Ottoman Turks took advantage of the situation by besieging and finally sacking Famagosta, and threatening to overrun all of Europe with fire and sword.  Seeing the imminent danger, Pope St. Pius V organized a Christen alliance between the Papal States, Spain, and Venice.  Together they formed a fleet of galleys to challenge the superior Turkish fleet on the Mediterranean Sea.  On Sunday, October 7, 1571, the two fleets met in what would come to be known to history as the Battle of Lepanto.  At the moment of conflict, the wind, which had favored the Turkish fleet, suddenly switched to favor the Christians.  A terrible battle ensued and ended, against all odds, in a Christian victory that broke the Turkish sea power forever and saved all of Europe.

Pope St. Pius V was made aware of the victory of the Christian fleet by a miracle at the very moment that victory was gained.  Leaving his work, he prostrated himself before the Blessed Sacrament in his private chapel, praising and thanking God for so great a blessing.  When official news of the victory came to Rome, the holy Pontiff commemorated the victory by designating October seventh as the feast of the Most Holy Rosary, to which devotion recourse had been sought for victory, and adding the invocation “Help of Christians” to the litany of Loretto.

Living as we are in times of great spiritual chaos, surrounded by a pagan world, and assaulted on all sides by temptations, we have great need of a strong devotion to the rosary.  In an interview given to Fr. Fuetes in December of 1957, the Fatima seer, Sr. Lucia, had this to say about the power of the rosary in our times:

"Look, Father, the Most Holy Virgin in these last times in which we live has given a new efficacy to the recitation of the Holy Rosary. She has given this efficacy to such an extent that there is no problem, no matter how difficult it is, whether temporal or above all, spiritual, in the personal life of each one of us, of our families, of the families of the world, or of the religious communities, or even of the life of peoples and nations, that cannot be solved by the Rosary. There is no problem, I tell you, no matter how difficult it is, that we cannot resolve by the prayer of the Holy Rosary. With the Holy Rosary, we will save ourselves. We will sanctify ourselves. We will console Our Lord and obtain the salvation of many souls." (Fatima Crusader 79, pg. 17)

Surely we can seek for no greater reason to take up the devotion of the holy rosary with renewed vigor, thereby sanctifying ourselves, saving souls, and consoling the outraged hearts of Jesus and Mary.  Let us begin this very month to pray the rosary daily with fervent hearts, asking Our Lady to protect us and the Church in these terrible times and to obtain for us the victory of eternal salvation. +

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God wishes to make use of Mary for the sanctification of souls. The Saints call Mary the treasure house of the Lord from which the whole Church is enriched. The Father has communicated to His Son the fullness of His being and similarly, Christ communicated to His mother all He has by merit. Do we not say that Christ has by nature what Mary has by Grace? In heaven Christ remains as much the Son of Mary as He was on earth and nothing pleases Him more than to grant her requests which are always humble and conformed to His will, and for this reason always heard. Her prayers are all-powerful with God in response to her profound humility. Mary has been charged to form Saints to fill the vacant thrones of the apostate angels; she is, “Sovereign of heaven and earth, General of His armies, Keeper of His treasures, Dispensatrix of His graces, worker of His wonders, restorer of the human race, Mediatrix of men, destroyer of the enemies of God and loyal companion of His greatness and His triumphs.”  

(St. Louis DeMontfort, True Devotion to Mary, 28)






[this is the paragraph right above the footnotes:]

The Society of St Pius X has been lampooned as puritanical, Jansenistic, sectarian and hopelessly unrealistic in its anti-television policy. But in applying that policy their priests, as their right and duty demand, remain faithful to the traditions of the Church which has always countered any form of evil that endangers the sanctity of the home. Most people, however, have convinced themselves that being “realistic” is more important than being right.

[I find it curious and noteworthy now, in January of 2013, how in 2007 this
good priest was expressing a reality that had been up until that time most
prevalent in the SSPX, but one which we would today have to admit, has been
changed.  There are a lot of threads here on CI that treat in great detail of
how the Society has gradually abandoned its longstanding traditions in favor
of some new, Rome friendly this-or-that, but I do not recall seeing the
admonition against TV viewing among them.  This is really important!  What
has happened, is, +Fellay and his minions have focused on "the Internet" as
being the terrible demon-in-the-home, but the REASON is that the Faithful,
by way of the Internet, have been able to keep abreast of his dirty deeds
and have been forewarned of his nefarious schemes..

..This is to say that TV is no longer denounced for the evil that it is because TV
is not telling the dark malicious secrets of the Secretive Society of +Fellay, and
as such "it is no longer evil," under his new "programme."  HOWEVER, the
most dangerous Internet, which IS TELLING the dark malicious secrets of the
Secretive Society of +Fellay
takes over as the ONLY evil of sound and screen..

..In this, the Second Newsletter of The Four from Our Lady's Apostolate, we
can see what has been going on..

..And now I am all the more convinced that copying these 4 newsletters here on
CI is a good thing, because I would not put it past the Menzingen-denizens
that now since Fr. Poncelet has passed away, they may find a way of shutting
down the website where these 4 Newsletters are kept.]

Title: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: Neil Obstat on February 01, 2013, 03:48:43 AM
The third of The Four Newsletters from the website
Our Lady's Apostolate for No TV..........



November 2007 Newsletter

A Moral Society to a Godless Society

 HOW DID IT HAPPEN?!


By Mrs. Patti Melvin

 

Incredibly, and without our realizing it, an entire generation has lost it’s family values, traditions, and roots.  

Never before in history has an era existed in which everything was questioned, changed, or compromised.

The family has become a democracy of individuals with no real direction other than the values society and culture dictate to it.  How did a God-fearing nation turn away from Him so quickly and lose its spirit of righteousness?  Fifty years ago, abortion, murder, corruption, pornography, and the multitude of evils which plague our society today would never have been tolerated.  Society would have revolted!

It was well calculated, planned, and cultivated over a period of time.  TV was introduced and we enjoyed the antics of I Love Lucy, Brady Bunch, and the fine entertainment of Lawrence Welk.  TV introduced a whole new world of new, exciting, and fascinating  entertainment.  America took the bait and we never saw the hook!  We left our backyards, quit spending time with our families on our front porches and got busier and busier.  Man became more reliant on himself and less reliant on God.  When we quit praying, we became less holy.  Because of our lack of virtue, we became more prone to sin.  This lack of holiness was a breeding ground for the great sins of our society.

This is the challenge: TURN OFF THE TV!

The pictorial history of Television describes TV as a magical, electronic “modern wizardry”.  The Church Fathers tell us that “The eyes are the windows of the soul.”  If protected, innocence dwells; if exposed to the world, filth dwells.  If the body is poisoned through the mouth, the heart is poisoned through the ear.  Television is often used as a habitual way to ‘wind down the day’ and relax.  Tragically, it is used to baby sit for our children and to keep our youth from making demands on our time.  There are three areas in which this medium is used to destroy our American culture:

MATERIALISM, sɛҳuąƖ REVOLUTION, PRIDE

The unending and loud ads at commercial time (which is now nearly one-third of air time) pound into our sub-conscious our need for endless savory comfort or luxury items that promise happiness and health.  We are programmed to believe we ‘deserve the best, we ‘owe it to our-selves’!  This is directly opposed to the Gospel, the life of Christ, the message of Our Lady at Fatima:

PENANCE

REPARATION

And PRAYER!

             The entire sɛҳuąƖ revolution has been launched by television and brought into the sacred confines of our home, imprinted on our minds, and is a constant torment to the natural piety and modesty of our souls.  The American Heresy is planted firmly in both the young and the old:  “I am #1, I will do it my own way, I gotta be me!”  It is an entire philosophy of self-glorification, instant and complete, which has snuffed out the noble deeds of sacrificing oneself for the sake of one’s brethren.

Padre Pio was disturbed and disgusted by television.  He realized that, in time, it would destroy family life and told everyone not to allow this devil into their homes, saying, “SIN ema: the devil is in it”!  

St. Cyprian said, “Theaters are a school of impurity and a place where modesty is prostituted.”

St. John Crysostom stated in 347: “All should fly from theaters as from a plague.”

Jesus Christ said, Whoever allows adultery into his heart, commits the sin.  

Doesn’t TV constantly put in front of its viewers innumerable accounts of infidelity and adultery, and are these not occasions of sin?  A man is a fool to think that he can sit in front of this mire of impurity and not be affected by it.  

American saint, Elizabeth Seton, had a vision which she could not drive from her mind.  In the early 1800’s, she saw in “Every American home a BLACK BOX through which the devil would enter.”  

Pope Pius XII made a prophetic statement about TV back in the days of Ozzie and Harriet:

“Children can often avoid the transient attack of a disease outside their home, but cannot escape the disease when it resides in the home itself.  It is wrong to introduce any occasion of sin, whatever, into the sanctuary of the home.”

We should replace the TV with an altar and get rid of our mountains of newspapers and magazines!  These are the tools of propaganda the adversary uses "insomuch as to deceive (if possible) even the elect" (Mt. xxiv. 24).

Listen to God!  

Never let a day go by without doing your spiritual reading and praying the Holy Rosary.  

The television, especially the commercials, is the most destructive thing that has ever been unleashed against the souls of mankind.  

The shepherd of the family is the father, not the TV!


The Medium is the Message

It is the TV that shapes the people.  The greatest disaster of the 20th Century may well be “American Television,” a vast wasteland of blood, thunder, mayhem, violence, sadism, murder, lust, gangsters, cartoons, and endless commercials.

Watching TV is a passive sport, which promotes loss of imagination, fantasy and day-dreaming.  Soap operas and sitcoms entertain the heart with thoughts that are in constant violation of God’s precepts of holiness and purity.  Their message reaches people of all walks, even those who cannot read.  Television entrances people, and seduces them by its dictates while entertaining the tendency to sin.  Television’s BLACK BOX is everywhere and its margins are nowhere.  It is all-seeing, omniscient, all-pervasive, all-encompassing; television comforts us in our loneliness and is always there in our time of need, ministering and giving unceasingly, and this free of charge!

Abstinence from this medium gives us the ability to think more clearly and to discern more correctly.  The family that gathers before this medium is mesmerized, and no one dares to interrupt the sound.  Family and friends become fools sitting together in silence while the sound blares all around.  There is a real sound of silence with no communication between loved ones.  Silence, like a cancer, grows!  It kills the social exchange between one human and another.  This anti-human medium can make a can of soup dance across the table, giving life to that which is without life, while real life is diminished.

To allow our children to see a movie, produced by people whose [own] lives they believe are normal, but whose lifestyle Christianity teaches to be an abomination, makes about as much sense as letting our children play with rattlesnakes.  Do I want the immoral to define for my children what family, home, or environment is?  Television is a thief, stealing from us time that could be given to prayer, good works, and visiting the sick.  

In this late hour, when Satan firmly controls most of television media, our only recourse is to attack the instrument.  When a gunman is at our door, poised to kill the family, we cannot address a letter to our congressman, nor are we even interested in attacking the instrument holding the gun, but we take our aim directly at the deadly weapon, in order to save our family.  Our only recourse is to get the gun out of his hands.

While we cannot say that TV breaks our free will, its enslavement comes as close as one can get without doing so, and that in itself is dangerous and a violence to the free will God has given man.

We accepted this “thing” without question.  We quit praying and we were deceived.  How can we expect to lead holy lives and possess spiritual wisdom without praying?  We wake up to the TV, get out of the shower to it, get into the car with it, jog with it, eat with it, and are put to bed with it.  We cannot escape it: public stores, bathrooms, restaurants, all resound with its message.  

What else has honored Satan and promoted his interests so much?  What kind of beast could have authority over every language, let alone “every tribe and people... and nation?” (Apoc. xiii. 7)

Science has shown us that TV deceptively stamps an image on the right side of our brain while bypassing our logical, analytical left side.  

There are one-hundred-million-dollar companies guided by people who understand these powerful methods.  They use them to sell products, and to influence the viewers politically.  

More and more, everything bought and sold is beginning to come under the control of this unseen force.

“In Wonderment, the Whole World Followed After the Beast!”

["And all the earth was in admiration after the Beast" (Apoc. xiii. 3).
"Who is like to the Beast?" (v. 4)]

Our children are gifts from God.  As parents, we have been entrusted with them and asked by God to lead them to holiness of life.  

Television interferes with our role as parents.  

The BLACK BOX is an eye and, through this medium, it will watch your children for you, making them docile and quiet.  This is a very tempting thing for a parent who longs for a little quiet.  

Where are the children who gathered around the fire, listened to stories, helped with chores, and sat at table with mom and dad for the evening meal?

What dealt the death-blow to the Family Rosary?  The TV is the real, living, thief, stealing memories and joys while implanting its godless ideals.  To keep it in your home is to harbor a burglar within the confines of your sacred dwelling.

Recently, when asked what the greatest threat is to Russia, a professor from Russia said:  “TELEVISION!  TV is a total waste of time, crushing creativity and destroying the youth in Russia.  It leads to the destruction of respect, honor, and values.  It is sadly sweeping through Russia, leading the youth to all kinds of fads that lack purpose and wisdom..  

“..Since TV entered our homes a short time ago, crime has drastically increased;  divorce, which was unheard of among those who are Christians, is rapidly increasing, and families are breaking up…  We survived Communism, but we will not survive TV!”

We might argue that some programs are still good.  Still, it is important to note that Satan always packages things this way, presenting some good, which he hates, in order to be successful in bringing about much bad.  Even if shows of merit are viewed, the time might have been better used for the greater good of prayer, works of charity, reading, or being with family.  

Life without television can only blossom if we fill that space of time with something wholesome.  Sweeping our house clean leaves a vacuum for vice.  

This will take effort, sacrifice, love, and courage.  Read aloud to the family lives of the saints, tell stories, share the special joys and challenges of your day, play games, visit shut-ins and take time to listen to your children and your spouse.

Appreciate each other and cherish the presence of Christ in each family member.

Be vigilant, therefore, and hold fast to your faith!  

Take care to see that the numerous dangers and temptations by which you are surrounded do not darken the light of faith within your soul.  

Through constant vigilance that light of faith will shine with increasing brightness, guiding you and your family on your heavenward journey.
+

Mrs. Patti Melvin is the Director of the Universal Living Rosary Association.  For information on the Universal Living Rosary, or to join, write:

The Universal Living Rosary Association

PO Box 1303

Dic-kinson, TX 77539

USA

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As November is dedicated by the Church to the Souls in Purgatory, it is fitting that we include an article or two in this month’s newsletter on the subject of Purgatory:

[What has become of these Redemptorists after they made their 'deal' with Rome - a 'deal' not unlike the one that +Fellay now pushes steadily toward for the Secretive Society he has transformed from the one founded by Abp. Lefebvre?  These preachers have gone silent now, ever since a few weeks after their 'deal,' and now it's only 5 years after they disseminated this article in The Catholic:]
 

What is Purgatory
By a Redemptorist Missioner

 
Thank God that the great Pope Gregory XVI in 1841 raised up monuments in this desert and darkness and established solid arrangements whereby the Eternal Sacrifice could be offered up for many, at once, and for as long as there are number of priests forming a living chain across the generations through the Purgatorian Archconfraternity.

Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord’, shall enter into the kingdom of Heaven; but he who doth the Will of My Father Who is in heaven, he shall enter into the kingdom of Heaven” (Mt. vii. 21). In these words, our Divine Saviour means to say that no-one, whosoever he may be, and whatsoever exterior good works he may perform for His Name’s sake, shall be admitted in to the glory of life everlasting if he has not performed all according to His Will. Let us now imagine a soul on the point of leaving this world in perfect charity with God - a soul that has spent her life in perfect conformity to the holy commandments of God. That soul, no doubt, will immediately be admitted into the presence and enjoyment of God; for Jesus Christ assures us that “the clean of heart shall see God” (Mt. v. 8).

If, on the contrary, a soul leaves this world in disgrace with God, and dead to Him by the guilt of mortal sin, that soul will undoubtedly be condemned to hell. The soul, at the moment of its separation from the body, naturally gravitates towards its centre. If in a state of deadly sin, or with a will wholly opposed to the Divine Will, it goes to its appointed place, carried there by the very nature of sin - a perverse will. It is this perverse will of man that constitutes sin, and the guilt of sin cannot be effaced from the soul while it is under the dominion of that evil will. So God is obliged to withhold His goodness from such a soul, and let it remain in a fixed state of despair and malignity; let it go to the place towards which it gravitates - to hell, assigned it for its destination.

As the soul departed this life with a perverse will, its guilt could not be washed away, and now cannot be, because death has rendered its will unchangeable. The soul is forever fixed in a state of good or evil, according to the disposition of the will at the moment of death. Wherefore it is written: Ubi te invenero; that is to say, wherever I find thee at the hour of death - with a will to sin or to repent of sin - Ibi te judicabo, there will I judge thee; and from this judgment there is no appeal, because, all freedom of choice ceasing with life, the soul must remain unalterably fixed in the state of damnation in which death finds it.

But when a soul leaves this world in the friendship of God, yet sullied with the stains of venial sins and imperfections, or without having fully satisfied the Divine justice for the debt of temporal punishment due for her smaller sins, or for her more grievous sins whose guilt has already been forgiven in the sacrament of penance, it is plain that such a soul cannot, in that state, go to Heaven, where “nothing defiled can enter” (Apoc. xxi. 27); neither can it be condemned to hell, because it is in friendship with God, and a living member of Jesus Christ.

Therefore there must be some middle state, where such a soul is confined for a time, till, by suffering, it is cleansed and purged from all these defilements of venial sins, and rendered fit to be admitted to the presence and enjoyment of God. In this regard Our Blessed Saviour says: “He that shall speak against the Holy Ghost, it shall not be forgiven him, neither in this world nor in the world to come” (Mt. xii. 32); in which words he plainly insinuates that some sins shall be forgiven in the world to come; otherwise it would be superfluous and trifling to say of the sin against the Holy Ghost in particular, that it shall never be forgiven, either in this world or in the next.

Now this truth necessarily establishes a middle state, where some sins shall be forgiven. This place cannot be Heaven, for no sin can enter there to be forgiven; it cannot be hell, for in hell there is not forgiveness; therefore it must be in a middle place distinct from both. Neither can these sins which are forgiven in the next life be mortal sins, for a soul that dies in mortal sin is immediately condemned to hell, like the rich glutton in the gospel. Therefore it is only venial sins from which the soul is purged in Purgatory. The true reason for this doctrine in found in God’s infinite sanctity, justice and love.

His sanctity requires such an expiatory punishment, because everything that is not good and perfect is essentially opposed to His Divine nature: hence He cannot admit into Heaven, to the contemplation of His Divine essence, a soul that is still defiled with the least stain of sin.

His justice requires no less severity than His sanctity, because every sin is an offence and outrage to His Divine majesty: for this reason He cannot help defending His Divine right and absolute dominion over all creatures, by requesting full satisfaction from every soul that offends against His Divine majesty.

Neither can His infinite love be less severe, because He wishes to see His elect quite pure, quite beautiful, quite perfect; for this reason He purifies them from every stain, as gold is refined in the furnace, until they are His true image and likeness, according to which He created the first man in sanctity and righteousness. He takes no pleasure in seeing these souls suffer, but wishes to render them capable and worthy of being united to Him as to their supreme happiness.

We may then fairly conclude, with St Thomas Aquinas, that those who speak against this doctrine, “speak against God’s justice” (IV Sent. Dist. lxv. Qu. 1), sanctity and love. The belief in this doctrine is much more ancient than Christianity itself. The Jєωs, who were the chosen people of God before the coming of Christ, looked upon prayer for the dead as a holy and laudable work; they believed that, by offering up prayers for the dead, they could free the souls of the departed from their sins. We find in the second Book of Machabees a striking example of their charity towards the departed souls. About 200 years before Christ, they gained a brilliant victory over the enemies of their religion. Now, as many of the Jєωs had been slain in the battle, Judas Machabeus, their valiant general, took up a collection, and sent 12,000 drachmas of silver to Jerusalem for a sacrifice to be offered for the sins of the dead. The Holy Ghost praises the Jєωιѕн people for this charity of theirs towards the departed, saying “that it is a holy and wholesome thought to pray for the dead, that they may be loosed from their sins.” (II Mcb. xii. 43)†

Taken from the January–February 2004 issue, The Catholic.

[These are the Redemptorists of Papa Stronsay, who have been suppressed by
the heel of the Beast in modernist Rome, because of their "normalization." -2012]

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A Bishop’s Well-Grounded Fear
Written by A Redemptorist Missioner, 1874

 

In about 1860 a fervent young priest had the following conversation with a holy bishop on his way to Rome. The bishop said to him: “You make mementos, now and then, for friends of yours that are dead - do you not?” The young priest answered: “Certainly, I do so very often.” The bishop rejoined: “So did I, when I was a young priest. But one time I was grievously ill. I was given up as about to die. I received Extreme Unction and the Viaticuм. It was then that my whole past life, with all its failings and all its sins, came before me with startling vividness. I saw how much I had to atone for; and I reflected on how few Masses would be said for me, and how few prayers. Ever since my recovery I have most fervently offered the Holy Sacrifice for the repose of the pious and patient souls in Purgatory; and I am always glad when I can, as my own offering, to make the intention of my Masses for the relief of their pains.”

Indeed, dear Reader, no one is more deserving of Christian charity and sympathy than the poor souls in Purgatory. They are really poor souls. No one is sooner forgotten than they are.

How soon their friends persuade themselves they are in perfect peace! How little they do for their relief when their bodies are buried! There is a lavish expense for the funeral. A large sum of money is spent where the means of the family hardly justify the half of it. Where there is more wealth, even greater and much greater sums are expended on the poor dead body. But let me ask you what is done for the poor living soul? Perhaps the soul is suffering the most frightful tortures in Purgatory, while the lifeless body is laid out in state and borne pompously to the graveyard. You must not misunderstand me: it is right and just to show all due respect even to the body of your deceased friend, for the body was once the dwelling place of his soul.

But tell me candidly, what joy has the departed, and, perhaps, suffering soul in the fine music of the choir, even should the choir be composed of the best opera singers in the country? What consolation does the poor suffering soul feel in the superb coffin, in the splendid funeral? What pleasure does the soul find in the costly marble monument, in all the honours that are so freely lavished on the body? All this may satisfy, or at least seem to satisfy the living, but it is of no avail whatever to the dead.

Poor unhappy souls! How the diminution of true Catholic faith is visited upon you while you suffer; those that loved you in life might help you, and do not, for want of knowledge or of faith!  Poor, unhappy souls! Your friends go to their business, to their eating and drinking, with the foolish assurance that the case cannot be hard on one they knew to be so good! Oh, how much and how long this false charity of your friends makes you suffer!

It is related in the life of St. Mary Magdelene de Pazzi that one day she saw how the soul of one of her deceased sisters was kneeling in adoration of the Blessed Sacrament in the Church, all wrapped up in a mantle of fire, and suffering great pains, in expiation of her neglecting to go to Holy Communion on one day, when she had her confessor’s permission to communicate.

If a holy nun who spent her life in a convent had to suffer most excruciating pains in Purgatory in expiation of small faults, what reason have you to imagine so easily that the souls of your departed friends are already enjoying the beatific vision of God - they who perhaps were never very much in earnest to lead a holy life; they who perhaps made light of venial faults, who perhaps often spoke uncharitably of their neighbours; who perhaps neglected so many Holy Communions and other means of grace and sanctification; who, in their youth, may have committed hundreds of secret mortal sins, and may perhaps never have conceived for them any other than imperfect sorrow or attrition; they who perhaps spent their whole lives in the state of mortal sin, and were converted only on their death-bed?

Ah! How much combustible matter - how many imperfections, venial sins, and temporal punishments due to mortal and venial sins - do you think they took with them to be cancelled in the flames of Purgatory?  





[The following seems to be something like what +Williamson was talking about
when he said in a recent EC to "fortify your homes," without getting into details:]

Life without television can only blossom if we fill that space of time with something wholesome.  Sweeping our house clean leaves a vacuum for vice.

This will take effort, sacrifice, love, and courage.  Read aloud to the family lives of the saints, tell stories, share the special joys and challenges of your day, play games, visit shut-ins and take time to listen to your children and your spouse.

Appreciate each other and cherish the presence of Christ in each family member.

Be vigilant, therefore, and hold fast to your faith!  

Take care to see that the numerous dangers and temptations by which you are surrounded do not darken the light of faith within your soul.  

Through constant vigilance that light of faith will shine with increasing brightness, guiding you and your family on your heavenward journey.





Title: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: Neil Obstat on February 01, 2013, 04:33:39 AM
4 of 4 ~  This is the fourth of The Four Newsletters from the website (http://www.ourladysapostolatefornotv.org) that stands
in commemoration of the holy priest, Fr. Francis Poncelet, who founded Our Lady's
Apostolate for No TV..........




December 2007 Newsletter

 

TELEVISIO EJICIENDA EST!


(Television set must be thrown away)

by Father Jean-Luc Lafitte, SSPX

 

Our Lord Jesus Christ tells us: “if you wish to be perfect, deny yourself, take up thy Cross, and follow Me”. Humanly speaking, the Catholic Church is not at first glance attractive, but grows in its attractiveness only when and as long as we quietly think about it. The devil will tempt us to find an easier way, to lead us slowly away from the Cross of the Calvary. He will provide something immediately attractive and increasingly enchanting: television.

Television is attractive only as long as we think about nothing. The ever-widening mental void encouraged by television is an open invitation to the seven thousand devils who are abroad these days. This is reason enough for resisting this marvelous gadget with all our might. But why is television so dangerous?

Television destroys the abstractive power of our intellect.

Our soul is a spiritual substance gifted with intelligence and will, capable of knowing God and possessing Him. The object of our intelligence is the truth, and we are correct if there is an equality between the thing existing in reality and its image in our intellect. Our intellect will receive from our five senses much valuable information, screen it and keep an interior image, which will be stored inside our memory. We call this process “knowledge by abstraction”. Television destroys this abstraction in two ways.  First, the pictures race through the mind so fast that the intellect does not have the time to screen them. Second, because of the speed of the pictures, the capability of thinking is virtually suspended. The television is a huge uncontrollable distraction.

It can therefore be easily proven that television acts as an opiate, and has all the characteristics of a powerful narcotic which works on the spirit of man rather than on his body. It is a pain-killer. Some pain-killers paralyze or soothe the wound, others cut off the communication of pain to the nerve centers of the brain. The general effect of narcotics is on the brain. They induce a stupor, a sort of sleep, a dulling of the brain, which prevents the pain from registering. With television, it is the same. It does not make the unhappy marriage happy, or the boring job creative. In place of hope, it gives forgetfulness and daydreams. The real world looks endlessly boring in contrast to the television screen. The usual television owner is drawn daily to his screen as is the drug-addict to his hypodermic needle. Slowly but surely, television is turning people into vegetables! They sit down and watch the screen endlessly, thinking about nothing, like the Buddhist enslaved in his “nirvana”.

If the television is an opiate, this screened box is essentially bad. (Though, accidentally and occasion-ally, it may have a good program of a stimulating nature. To be essentially bad does not mean totally bad. Nothing can be totally bad. The bad always needs to grow on something good. Even the devil himself is not totally bad: his angelical nature is good!). The need for dope in our dehumanized society is a serious problem. The hypnotic effect of the television on people is partly the result of their dehumanized and Godless work-lives. Destroying the abstractive power of the soul, the flashiness, glitter and childishness of television prevents the development of inner maturity, of which self-control and discernment are two manifestations. Television will help you avoid having to make a decision, it will provide a pleasant and easy escape.

The destruction of our power of abstraction leads to stupidity and laziness. Chesterton long ago pointed out that there is an inverse ratio between what contemporary men have to say and their power to say it. News of a good and important product passes rapidly from housewife to housewife, whereas bad and unnecessary stuff needs wide advertising. It is only when men have little or nothing to say that they have to shout it

Television bears witness to the world’s emptiness. Television is in a continuous hurry, in a flippant frame of mind, carried along upon the crest of an ocean of words becoming a crescendo of noise, losing the significance of the word like so many drops in the sea. Television accentuates the negative aspects of the clamor and belittles by its very nature the good elements through a hypnotic affect; it is very difficult to further this struggle between light and darkness by a noisy, flashing, hypnotic gadget.

Television is only that: a gadget for lazy people who refuse to use their brain. To refuse to use your brain is sinful. If you do not want to think by yourself, other people will think for you and will put in your brain dangerous and perverse thoughts. In fact, how many virtues are needed to be able to utilize technology and its apparatus without substantial loss to men’s souls?

The evil is not that man possesses technology, but that technology possesses man and makes him a slave in one way or another, fascinating and hypnotizing the spiritual in man and later blunting and dulling his faculties. If man was not under the curse of original sin, television would be acceptable. However, because of the weakness, malice, concupiscence and ignorance coming from original sin, television must be discarded. To believe that we can watch hours and hours of television without being affected is a serious fault of Judgment which is the result of naturalism which denies original sin and its consequences. Our minds are too weak to withstand the brainwashing techniques of the network controlling our television channels.

Television will push us to consider ugliness as something normal and nice.

The lack of intelligence in most television programming is obvious, especially in the cartoons. A child exposed to so many ugly movies will lose love for beauty. The Gift of Wisdom must be used by our soul to love beauty, and The One Who is the root of all beauty: God Himself. Those living in the state of mortal sin have lost divine charity, and by consequence, the Gifts of the Holy Ghost. Wisdom is gone, and they will be attracted by ugly things, and by the one who is the root of all ugliness: the devil. One who loves ugly things does not have the correct use of his brain. He is either crazy or he lives in the state of mortal sin.

Television destroys family life.

With television in the house, there is no longer time to pray, or to-speak with one another. The television becomes the center of the family, the new god everyone must worship. A Catholic family is God centered; the Cross is the center of everything, illuminating all the family activities. Needless to say, it would almost be a miracle to find a perseverant religious vocation from a family with a television.

The only way to protect oneself from the television is to get rid of it, completely, totally. God will reward you with His graces for the sacrifice you make for Him. But our faith and will are weak, and we are so afraid to become saints. We are too cowardly to fight behind Our Lord who said: “the violent will possess the Kingdom of God.” Please, reread these pages slowly. If you can truly say, before God, that all I have written is wrong, if you really believe you can safely ignore the warnings I have given, then keep your television. However, if you agree with my reasoning, even in part, then you do not have the right to keep your television.

If you recognize that this television is a voluntary, proximate occasion of mortal sin, you sin seriously by keeping it in your house. Destroy it! Put it away before it is too late. If it is difficult for us to do this now, it will be virtually impossible once the human pain has been deadened by this powerful new drug. To the extent that we resist television ourselves, so much the more apostolic zeal will we possess. To the extent that we can persuade others to resist so much the more possible will it be to get through to them with the Good News. The absence of television is no more a negation than sobriety is. It is more like the minimum condition of receptivity to the words of salvation. The television is the symbol of the spirit of the world, but the absence of television in your home is the symbol of your Catholic spirit, the symbol of your public denial of the world, which is the enemy of God.

[This article was composed of excerpts from Fr. Lafitte’s longer discourse.]

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“In this our day there is much that is contrary to the word of God, a spirit of worldliness that reaches us all too easily. Often it invades our homes through wireless and television screen. At times, there are to be heard the broadcast voices of men and women whose complacent agnosticism and positive unbelief form, we believe, a disproportionate part of the material that reaches the ears of a nation still boasting the Christian name.” - Archbishop Godfrey (Westminster)

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On The Christmas Season

Very slightly adapted from Bishop Challoner’s

Meditations for Every Day in the Year

 

The devotion of this holy time calls us to the crib of Bethlehem to contemplate our infant Saviour, and to entertain our souls with Him.  Oh what a large field have we here opened to us for our meditations!

Christians, place yourselves in spirit near the manger of our Lord, and fix the eyes of your soul upon Him.  Reflect who this is whom you see here lying before you as a helpless infant in this open stall.  See Him suffering and weeping, poor and humble, wrapped up in these mean swaddling clothes, and laid in this crib between an ox and an ass.  Oh!  your faith will inform you that under all these mean appearances lies concealed the King of Glory!  This infant, not yet one day old, is the eternal Son of the eternal God.  This weak helpless Babe is He, who by His almighty power made both heaven and earth; He who is here wrapped up so straitly and confined to this narrow crib, fills heaven and earth with His incomprehensible immensity!  This speechless Child is God’s own Word, who called all things out of nothing, and whom all things obey.  Oh wonderful mystery, which has thus joined together the highest and the lowest; all that is great in heaven with all that is little and contemptible on earth, in the person of this infant God!  But what is the great meaning of all this?  What has brought this great God down to this stable and to this crib?  Why has He thus debased and perfectly annihilated Himself?  Oh my soul, it is for your sake- it is for the love of you, to redeem you, and to deliver you from sin and from hell.  It is to give an example of all virtue, to draw your heart to Himself, and to engage you to love Him.

Consider and study well the great lessons, which the Son of God desires to teach you from the crib.  Learn to be humble by the contemplation of His unparalleled humiliations, which He here so joyfully embraces for your sake.  Learn to be poor in spirit by the consideration of His voluntary poverty.  Learn mortification and self-denial by the view of His sufferings, which are all of His own choice.  Learn of Him here to despise this cheating world and all its empty shows, its painted toys, its childish amusements, and all the allurements of its sensual pleasures, which He who is the Wisdom of God despises and condemns in His birth.  But especially apply yourself to study well and to learn from the contemplation of the Son of God in the crib, the infinite charity of God, His infinite love for you, and the infinite enormity of sin, by which we continually rebel against this infinite charity.  Oh my soul, if you could but penetrate with your inward eye into the heart of this your infant God, what heavenly flames would you there discover of a more than seraphic love for you!  You would there meet yourself, in the midst of the heart of your Saviour, where He has so long ago given you a place.  Oh there you would effectually learn both to hate your sins and to love your God.

Consider the affections with which you ought to accompany your meditations in the stable of Bethlehem if you desire to entertain therein a proper manner your newborn King and Saviour.  Here you must exercise yourself in acts of all the three divine or theological virtues.  Firstly, in a lively faith in this your infant God and in all His sacred truths, which lie here concealed in this mystery of His incarnation and birth, and in all the wonders of His almighty power, wisdom, and goodness, which He has here wrought for the love of us; and of all the treasures of heaven, which He here brings with Him to communicate to our souls.  Secondly, in a most firm hope and confidence in His infinite power, mercy, and goodness, which He discovers to you in this mystery.  Lastly, in a most ardent love for Him in return for all the love that He shows you here.  Then pour forth your soul in His presence in acts of adoration, praise, and glory; in thanksgiving for all He has done for you and for the whole world; in acts of oblation of your whole being and of all the powers of your soul to His love and service.  Make at His feet (who is come to be the great high priest of God and man) a humble confession of all your sins, with a most hearty sorrow and contrition for having ever offended so good a God, craving mercy, pardon, and absolution of Him and through Him, and firmly resolving upon a new life for the future.

Let this be your daily exercise during this holy time of Christmas, and do not suffer worldly entertainments or diversions keep you out of the company of your Saviour.  At the very least, do not permit them to hinder you from waiting on Him often and spending a suitable part of your time with Him in proper meditations and affections. +

 

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Excepts from the Midnight Cave

by Father Frederick William Faber

 

The sorrows and the joys of men have brought about many pathetic occurrences, while their virtues and their vices have led to many catastrophes of the most thrilling dramatic interest. Indeed, the constantly intersecting fortunes of men are daily acting tragedies in real life, which, like the too faithful sunset of the painter, would seem in fiction to be unreal and exaggerated. There have been mysteries, too, on earth, in which man was comparatively passive, and God acted by Himself; times which the Creator Himself has been pleased to fill the whole theater of His own creation; times, also, as in the cool evenings of Eden or at the door of Abraham's tent, when He has mingled with marvelous condescension among His creatures. But earth has seldom witnessed such a scene as Mary, and Joseph, and the Eternal Word, in the streets of Bethlehem at nightfall. The cold, early evening of winter was closing in. Mary and Joseph had striven in vain to get a lodging.

St. Joseph was such a saint as the world had never seen heretofore. Mary was above all saints, the first in the hierarchy of creatures, the Queen of Heaven, whose power was the worthiest similitude of omnipotence, and who was the eternally predestinated Mother of God. Within her bosom was the Incarnate God Himself, the Eternal Word, the Maker and Sovereign of all in Bethlehem, the actual Judge of every passing soul that hour. But there was no room for them. The village was occupied with other things, more important according to the world's estimate of what is important. The imperial officers of the census were the great men there. Rich visitors would naturally claim the best which the inns could give. Most private houses would have relations from the country. Every one was busy. This obscure group from Nazareth—that carpenter from Galilee, that youthful Mother; that hidden Word—there was no room for them. They did not even press for it with enough of complimentary importunity.

It is not often that modesty is persuasive. A submissive demeanor is not an eloquent thing to the generality of men. If God does not make a noise in His own world, He is ignored. If He does, He is considered unseasonable and oppressive. Here in Bethlehem is the true Caesar come, the monarch of all the Roman Caesars, and there is no room for Him, no recognition of Him. It is His own fault, the world will say. He comes in an undignified manner. He makes no authentic assertion of His claims. He begins by putting Himself in a false position; for He comes to be enrolled as a subject instead of demanding homage as a sovereign. This is His way; and He expects us to understand it, and to know where to look for Him and when to expect Him. There was even a shadow of Calvary in the twilight which gathered round Bethlehem that night. Just as no one in Jerusalem would take Him in during Holy Week, or give Him food, so that He had each night to retire to Bethany, in like manner no one in Bethlehem will take Him in, or give Him a shelter beneath which He may be born.

To all but its Creator the world makes no difficulty of at least a twofold hospitality—to be born and to die, to come into the world and to go out of it. Yet how did it treat Him in both these respects? He was driven among the animals and beasts of burden to be born. That little village of the least of tribes said truly, it had no room for the Immense and the Incomprehensible. Bethlehem could not indeed hold her who held within herself the Creator of the world. There was an unconscious truth even in its inhospitality. He was to be born outside the walls of Bethlehem, as He died outside the walls of Jerusalem. Thus He had truly no native town. The sinless cattle gave Him a roof somewhat less cold than the starry sky of a winter's night. So far as men were concerned, it was as much as He could do to get born, and obtain a visible foothold on the earth. So He was not allowed to die a natural death. His life was trampled out of Him, as something tiresome and reproachful, or rather dishonorable and ignominious. He was buried swiftly, that His body might not be cuмbering the earth... and all the while He was God! These are old thoughts; but they are always new. They grow deeper, as we dwell upon them. We sink further down into them, as we grow older. Every time we think them, they so take us by surprise that it is as if we were now thinking them for the first time. No words do justice to them. The tears of the saints are more significant than words; but they cannot express the astonishing mystery of this inhospitable Bethlehem, which will not give its God room to be born within its walls.

Alas! the spirit of Bethlehem is but the spirit of a world which has forgotten God. How often has it been our own spirit also! How are we through churlish ignorance forever shutting out from our doors heavenly blessings! Thus it is that we mismanage all our sorrows, not recognizing their heavenly character, although it is blazoned after their own peculiar fashion upon their brows. God comes to us repeatedly in life; but we do not know His full face. We only know Him when His back is turned, and He is departing after our repulse. Why is it that with a theory almost always right our practice should be so often wrong? It is not so much from a want of courage to do what we know to be our duty, although nature may rebel against it. It is rather from a want of spiritual discernment. We do not sufficiently, or of set purpose, accustom our minds to supernatural principles. The world's figures are easiest to count by, the world's measures the most handy to measure by. It is a tiresome work to be always looking at things from a different point of view from these around us; and, when this effort is to be lifelong, it becomes a strain which cannot be continuous; and it only ceases to be a strain by our becoming thoroughly supernaturalized. Thus it is that a Christian life, which has not made a perfect revolution in man's worldly life, becomes no Christian life at all, but only an incommodious unreality, which gets into our way in this life without helping us into the life to come. Hence it is that we do not know God when we see Him. Hence it is that we so often find ourselves on the wrong side, without knowing how we got there. Hence it is that our instincts so seldom grasp what they are feeling after, our prophecies so often come untrue, our aims so constantly miss their ends. God is always taking us by surprise, when we have no business to be surprised at all. Bethlehem did not in the least mean what it was doing. No one means half the evil which he does. Hence it is a grand part of God's compassion to look more at what we mean than what we do. Yet it is a sad loss for ourselves to be so blind. Is it not, after all, the real misery of life, the compendium of all its miseries, that we are meeting God every day, and do not know Him when we see Him?

Nothing can trouble the inward peace of those who are stayed on God. If a gentle sadness passed over Joseph, as he was repulsed from house to house, because he thought of Mary and the Child, he doubtless smiled with holy peacefulness when he looked into her face. The unborn Babe was rejoicing in this foretaste of His coming humiliations. Each unsympathetic voice that spoke, the noise each door made as it was closed against them, was music to His ear. This was what He had come to seek. This, almost more than the virginal purity of Mary's bosom, was what had drawn Him down from heaven. It was the want of this which had made the Father's Bosom lacking in something which He craved.

Doubtless Mary and Joseph, who knew Him so well already, and were versed in His unearthly ways, shared something in this His exultation. It was plain there was to be no home there. They knew how to excuse each refusal. They, in their unselfishness, were almost ashamed to ask for hospitality which the exquisite considerateness of their charity made them see might be thought unseasonable in the crowded condition of the town. They would be pained to put others to the pain of refusing them. They would only ask because it was a duty to ask, and they would not ask twice anywhere. They quit the town, therefore, in sweetness, patience, and love, leaving a blessing, as un-bought as it was unsuspected, behind them. It is not infrequent for God to leave a blessing even when He is rejected; for His anger is so gentle that sin must have gone far indeed before His unrequited love becomes dislike. Yet His blessings are strange, and sometimes wear the aspect of a punishment—as perhaps the women of Bethlehem thought when they became the mothers of martyrs and were ennobled by their children's blood.

The twilight deepens. Mary and Joseph descend the hill. They find the Cave—a Stable-Cave—a sort of grotto, with an erection before it, so common in those lands, by which depth and coolness are both attained. The cavern seems to draw them, like a spell. Souls are strangely drawn, and to strangest things and places, when once they are within the vortex of a divine vocation.

There are the lights and music of the crowded village above them, turning into festival the civil obligation which has brought such unwonted numbers thither. Beneath that gαy street a poor couple from Nazareth have sought refuge with the ox and ass in the stable. What is about to happen there! It must be differently described according to the points of view from which we consider it.

Angels would say that some of God's eternal decrees were on the eve of being accomplished in the most divine and beautiful of ways, and that the invisible King was about to come forth and take visible possession of a kingdom not narrower than a universe, with such pomp as the spiritual and godlike angels most affect.

The magistrate in Bethlehem would say that, at the time of the census, a pauper child had been added to the population by a houseless couple who had come from Nazareth—noting, perhaps that the couple were of good family but fallen into poverty. This would be the way in which the world would register the advent of its Maker. It is a consistent world—only an un-teachable one. It has learned nothing by experience. It registers Him in the same manner this very day. +

How would it be if the Holy Family were to seek shelter in our midst today?  Would we have room for them?  Would we even hear their gentle knock at our door over the clamor of the television and radio?  Would we be willing to tear ourselves away from our computer games to minister to their wants?

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

From the Editor…

Exposing Children to Television

A while back, I was speaking with a Catholic friend about television.  She mentioned that she had television and used it sparingly because she wanted her children to be exposed to it so that when they went out into the world they would be less inclined to experiment with it.  Naturally, I was rather astonished at what, to me, was a novel idea.  She explained that her daughter had once noticed how her classmates at a Catholic school, who had never been exposed to television, were fascinated by the medium whenever they were exposed to it in stores.  

Desensitizing children to TV?

I was taken aback by this mother’s idea that by desensitizing her children to television, which is so often an occasion of sin, she hoped that they would use it “responsibly” when they were out in the world.  Our conversation started a train of thought in my mind:  Does the end justify the means?  Can exposing children to what is an addictive medium transmitting primarily sinful content, rather than teaching them to avoid it, make them less likely to avoid it in adult life?  Would anyone in their right mind use the same technique with drugs, alcohol, or pornography?  What does the Church have to say about exposing children to the proximate occasion of sin?

Television is an occasion of sin.

The Catholic faith teaches us that occasions of sin are those places, persons, or things which as a rule are the means of leading us into sin.[1]  Does television qualify as an occasion of sin?  Given the pernicious content of the programs aired today and the morally corrosive advertising which accompanies them, television is decidedly an occasion of sin to those who watch it.  To expose oneself carelessly to an occasion of sin is in itself sinful and leads not only to a loss of divine grace, but to other more grievous sins.[2]  In the case of television it seems self-evident that a person who watches shows or commercials that are unchaste (and very few are not these days) allows into the soul unchaste desires which, aside from being temptations, may easily become the source of grievous sin.  To consent with the will to unchaste or unlawful thoughts is always sinful.  But from whence came these sinful desires?  From the tele-vision which has been the proximate occasion of sin.

What follows?

So what then are we to think of this idea of exposing children to television so that they lose any fascination for it?  Firstly, as Dr. Byrne’s article pointed out in the September 2007 Newsletter:  Television is an intrinsically addictive medium.  

That being so it is very unwise to expose children to it at all.  

Rather than making a child disinterested, exposure to television is likely to excite a desire to watch television which the child will not have the moral strength to resist.  

Would there not be an outcry of rage if schools began exposing children to street drugs with the idea that by doing so they would ensure that the children lost all fascination for drugs?

Television is an electronic opiate, and once a person becomes “hooked” on it, it is exceedingly difficult to be weaned from the habit.  

Secondly, television, because of the pernicious content of the programming, is a proximate occasion of sin and it is never lawful to deliberately expose anyone, especially children, to what may cause their moral and spiritual ruin.  

St. Augustine says:
“If thou persuade thy neighbor to sin,
thou art his murderer.”


Television, because it is a proximate occasion of sin, must be avoided by adult and child alike.

_______________________________________

[1] Fr. Francis Spirago, The Catechism Explained, TAN Books and Publishers, Rockford, IL, 1993, pg.475.

[2] Ibid, pg. 475






[In summary, these 4 Newsletters are rather representative of the entire body
of Newsletters over the years, but they lack a tremendous amount of detail.
Fr. Poncelet devoted many years of his life to diligently compiling the letters of
his readers with their personal testimonies of working with family members
to resist getting rid of Television, the "Devil's Tabernacle."  Reading those
excerpts of their spiritual struggles was then a consolation and an incentive
for other readers to do the same.  I believe his life's work was an important
part of Catholic Tradition's doctrine to free the Catholic home of TV, and I
would like to see some comments from other priests who found encouragement
from the Newsletter over the years, or perhaps from reading the two books
that Fr. authored, Airwaves From Hell and Television: Prelude to Chaos.]

[Finally, here is the content found on the About Us page of the website:]

Our Founder:  Father Frank Poncelet
(http://ourladysapostolatefornotv.webs.com/Fr%20Poncelet.jpg)


Born in 1928, Fr. Poncelet was raised in the Bellchester, MN, area.  A World War II veteran, Father was a flying instructor in Albert Lea, MN, for three years and then worked as a commercial airline pilot for several years.  Returning to school, he graduated from Winona State College with a BA in Philosophy.  He attended Holy Apostles Seminary near Hartford CT, graduating a Master of Divinity.  He was ordained to the priesthood in the St. Cloud, MN, Diocese by Bishop Speltz on May 30th, 1987.  For many years he offered the traditional Latin Mass in he St. Cloud Diocese until his retirement.  In the year 2000, Father founded Our Lady's Apostolate for No TV and was the sole Editor of the Newsletter put out by the Aopstolate until he was forced by ill health to retire from his work in 2007.  His work is carried on by his long-time secretary, Mrs. Patti Petersen.  Fr. Poncelet is the author of two books on television: Airwaves From Hell and its sequel, Television, Prelude to Chaos.

 
R.I.P

Our Founder, Fr. Frank Poncelet, passed away on Thursday, January 24, 2013, at the age of 84.  Please pray for the repose of his soul.  May he rest in peace.
Title: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: Neil Obstat on February 01, 2013, 05:14:38 AM
Quote from: Matthew
Turn Off Your Television
9/15/2007

Read this powerful indictment of uncontrolled TV viewing written in the early 1990s and then take stock of how much the Boob Tube is on in your own home. Its message is even more important today with TVs blaring in airports, bars, even offices. It is time to try Mr. Wolfe's therapy: "Do you want to stay stupid and let your country go to hell in a basket? Why don't you just walk over to the set and turn it off. That's right, completely off. Go on, you can do it. Now isn't that better? Don't you feel a little better already? You've just taken the first step in deprogramming yourself. It wasn't that hard, was it? Until we speak again, try to keep it off. Now that will be a bit harder." - Jim Marrs

...


I just noticed that this article is apparently dated September 2007, and that is
the same month that the first of the 4 Newsletters comes from, all four of which
I have duplicated, above.  I did not plan it that way, it's just here.  

What was going on in that year?  

It was before America had been apprised of the looming threat of BO in the
WH, and it was during the tail end of W's presidency, that is, Dubya.

It was just 6 years after the WTC controlled demolition, I mean, "terrorist attacks."

Columbine was a distant memory, Waco, Aflred P. Murrah building, even
the Fall Guy had been long since executed, what's-his-name.  Funny how details
get lost, ain't it?  

We as a nation had perpetrated retaliation on certain middle east nations, almost
as if someone was going by a script titled "1984."  We have always been at war with Eastasia.  

2000 years ago St. John wrote a better book, that would give us consolation
in these latter days.  It's a really good one to read, along with the others under
the same cover, you know, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and so on.  

Oh, right;  Tim McVeigh.  His story doesn't really add up until you read St. John's
masterpiece and study it.


There are two referenced works on the website as well.  Maybe I'll make a
thread for them in the Library forum.........................



Fr. Poncelet, I've got an idea:  I won't forget you, and please, don't forget me.  
Okay?  





Title: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: shin on February 03, 2013, 01:30:56 PM
What a loss.

We will not forget you Father Poncelet. And we can only pray for more and more priests to lift up the banner against television.

It is only every Christian's duty in some degree or another to let others know of this great danger to souls. And how much more the shepherd to guide the sheep away from the wolves. We have to support shepherd's in this strongly..

And tell of the great benefits to the soul that occurs when it is given up.

How many souls make no progress because they have simply not given up what it never occurs to them to. They wonder, and wander, and think perhaps they are in a place they will always be, that nothing further can be done.. Dryness in prayer, stuck in ruts, and why? Because they will not give up this and all like it.

But give up the TV, and your soul will be refreshed and proceed on the spiritual journey happily once again.

Christian conversation.. how to conduct it is so very important. What must be said, what must not be said. How modest it must be. . .

And how the family life must be lived.. Christian culture is the opposite of the world's which is spread on TV and adopted by the viewer, whether the viewer wishes it or not, the evil effects and the displeasure of God at what is said and shown, is always there.

What Christians take pleasure in is quite different than what the world takes pleasure in. Learning to take pleasure in virtue rather than vice.. what a happy journey it is, however difficult may be at the beginning.
Title: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: Napoli on February 03, 2013, 10:39:42 PM
I recommend a good hobby like hunting. There will come a day when our religious freedoms are threatened and that blackbox hanging on yyour wall isn't going to do you any good, but, that beautiful 9mm in your night table will.
God bless
Title: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: ora pro nobis 2 on February 06, 2013, 12:15:51 PM
Quote from: Matthew
Turn Off Your Television
9/15/2007

Read this powerful indictment of uncontrolled TV viewing written in the early 1990s and then take stock of how much the Boob Tube is on in your own home. Its message is even more important today with TVs blaring in airports, bars, even offices. It is time to try Mr. Wolfe's therapy: "Do you want to stay stupid and let your country go to hell in a basket? Why don't you just walk over to the set and turn it off. That's right, completely off. Go on, you can do it. Now isn't that better? Don't you feel a little better already? You've just taken the first step in deprogramming yourself. It wasn't that hard, was it? Until we speak again, try to keep it off. Now that will be a bit harder." - Jim Marrs


The subconscious is powerful. It is aware of every particle and detail around you. But it doesn't know the difference between fact or fiction and acts on all information passing through the conscious mind as fact, and responds to it. So what do you think happens when you watch silly, moron, goofy commercials and television programs? They are training your thought processes. -Hey buddy, I'm talking to you. Yes, you, the guy sitting in front of the television. Turn down the sound a bit, so that you can hear what I am saying. Now, try to concentrate on what I am going to say. I want to talk to you about your favorite pastime. No, it's not baseball or football, although it does have something to do with your interest in spectator sports. I'm talking about what you were just doing: watching television.

Do you have any idea about how much time you spend in front of the television set? According to the latest studies, the average American now spends between five and six hours a day watching television. Let's put that in perspective: that is more time than you spend doing anything else but sleeping or working, if you are lucky enough to still have a job.

That's more time than you spend eating, more time than you spend with your wife alone, more time than with the kids. It's even worse with your children. According to these same studies, young children below school age watch more than eight hours each day. School age children watch a little under eight hours a day. In 1980, the average 20-year-old had watched the equivalent of 14 months of television in his or her brief lifetime. That's 14 months, 24 hours a day.

More recent figures show that the numbers have climbed: the 20-year-old has spent closer to two full years of his or her life in front of the television set. At the same time, the researchers have noted a disturbing phenomena. It seems that we Americans are getting progressively more stupid. They note a decline in reading and comprehension levels in all age groups tested. Americans read less and understand what they read less than they did 10 years ago, less than they have at any time since research began to study such things.

As for writing skills, Americans are, in general, unable to write more than a few simple sentences. We are among the least literate people on this planet, and we're getting worse. It's the change--the constant trendline downward--that interests these researchers. More than one study has correlated this increasing stupidity of our population to the amount of television they watch.

Interestingly, the studies found that it doesn't matter what people watch, whether it's ``The Simpsons'' or ``McNeil/Lehrer,'' or ``Murphy Brown'' or ``Nightline':' the more television you watch, the less literate, the more stupid you are. The growth in television watching had surprised some of the researchers. Back a decade ago, they were predicting that television watching would level off and might actually decline. It had reached an absolute saturation point.

They were right for so-called network television; figures show a steady dropoff of viewership. But that drop is more than made up for by the growth of cable television, with its smorgasbord of channels, one for almost every perversion. Especially in urban and suburban areas, Americans are hard-wired to more than 100 different channels that provide them with all news, like CNN, all movies, all comedy, all sports, all weather, all financial news and a liberal dose of straight pornography.

The researchers had also failed to predict the market penetration of first beta and then VHS video recorders; they made it possible to watch one thing and record another for later viewing. They also offered access to movies not available on networks or even cable channels as well as home videos, recorded on your own little camcorder. The proliferation of home video equipment has involved families in video-related activities which are not even considered in the cuмulative totals for time Americans spend watching television.

You might not actually realize how much you are watching television. But think for a moment. When you come home, you turn the television on, if it isn't on already. You read the paper with it on, half glancing at what is on the screen, catching a bit of the news, or the plot of a show. You eat with it on, maybe in the background, listening for a score or something that happens to a character in a show you follow.

When something you are interested in, a show or basketball game, is on, the set becomes the center of attention. So your attention to what is on may vary in intensity, but there is almost no point when you are home, and inside, and have the set completely off. Isn't that right? The studies did not break down the periods of time people watched television, according to the intensity of their viewing.

But the point is still made: you compulsively turn the television on and spend a good portion of your waking hours glued to the tube. And the studies also showed that many people can't sleep without the television turned on! Brainwashing Now, I'm sure you have heard that watching too much television is bad for your health. They put stories like that on the evening news. Bad for your eyes to stare at the screen, they say. Especially bad if you sit too close. Well, I want to make another point.

We've already shown that you are addicted to the tube, watching it between six and eight hour a day. But it is an addiction that brainwashes you. There are two kinds of brainwashing. The one that's called "hard" brainwashing is the type you're most familiar with. You've got a pretty good image of it from some of those old Korean war movies. They take some guy, an American patriot, drag him into a room, torture him, pump him full of drugs, and after a struggle, get him to renounce his country and his beliefs. He usually undergoes a personality change, signified by an ever-present smile and blank stare.

This brainwashing is called hard because its methods are overt. The controlled environment is obvious to the victim; so is the terror. The victim is overwhelmed by a seemingly omnipotent external force, and a feeling of intense isolation is induced. The victim's moral strength is sapped, and slowly he embraces his torturers. It is man's moral strength that informs and orders his power of reason; without it, the mind becomes little more than a recording machine waiting for imprints. No one is saying that you have been a victim of hard brainwashing. But you have been brainwashed, just as effectively as those people in the movies. The blank stare? Did you ever look at what you look like while watching television?

If the angle is right, you might catch your own reflection in the screen. Jaw slightly open, lips relaxed into a smile. The blank stare of a television zombie. This is "soft" brainwashing, even more effective because its victims go about their lives unaware of what is being done to them. Television, with its reach into nearly every American home, creates the basis for the mass brainwashing of citizens, like you.

It works on a principle of tension and release. Create tension, in a controlled environment, increasing the level of stress. Then provide a series of choices that provide release from the tension. As long as the victim believes that the choices presented are the only choices available, even if they are at first glance unacceptable, he will nevertheless, ultimately seek release by choosing one of these unacceptable choices. Under these circuмstances, in a brainwashing, controlled environment, such choice-making is not a ``rational'' experience. It does not involve the use of man's creative mental powers; instead man is conditioned, like an animal, to respond to the tension, by seeking release.

The key to the success of this brainwashing process is the regulation of both the tension and the perceived choices. As long as both are controlled, then the range of outcomes is also controlled. The victim is induced to walk down one of several pathways acceptable for his controllers. The brainwashers call the tension-filled environment "social turbulence." The last decades have been full of such social turbulence--economic collapse, regional wars, population disasters, ecological and biological catastrophes. Social turbulence creates crises in perceptions, causing people to lose their bearings.

Adrift and confused, people seek release from the tension, following paths that appear to lead to a simpler, less tension-filled life. There is no time in such a process for rational consideration of complicated problems. Television is the key vehicle for presenting both the tension and the choices. It brings you the images of the tension, and serves up simple answers. Television, in its world of semi-reality, of illusion, of escape from reality, is itself the single most important release from our tension-wracked existence. Eight hours a day, every day, through its programming, you are being programmed.

If you doubt me, think about one important choice that you have made recently that was not in some way influenced by something that you have seen on television. I bet you can't think of one. That's how controlled you are.

Who's Doing It?

But don't take my word for it. Ten years ago we spoke to a man from a think tank called the Futures Group in Connecticut. Hal Becker had spent more than 20 years of his life manipulating the minds of the leaders of our society. Listen to what he said: ``I know the secret of making the average American believe anything I want him to. Just let me control television. Americans are wired into their television sets. Over the last 30 years, they have come to look at their television sets and the images on the screen as reality. You put something on television and it becomes reality. If the world outside the television set contradicts the images, people start changing the world to make it more like the images and sounds of their television. Because its influence is so great, so pervasive, it has become part of our lives. You lose your sense of what is being done to you, but your mind is being shaped and molded.''

``Your mind is being shaped and molded.'' If that doesn't sound like brainwashing, I don't know what is. Becker speaks with the elan of a network of brainwashers who have been programming your lives, especially since the advent of television as a ``mass medium'' in the late 1940s and early 1950s.

This network numbers several tens of thousands worldwide. Occasionally one appears on the nightly news to tell you what you are thinking, by reporting the latest ``opinion polls.'' But for the most part, they work behind the scenes, speaking to themselves and writing papers for their own internal distribution. And though they work for many diverse groups, these brainwashers are united by a common world view and common method. It is the world view of a small elite, whose financial and political power rests in institutions that pass this power on from generation to generation.

They view the common folk like yourself as little better than beasts of burden to be controlled and manipulated by a semi-feudal international oligarchy, whose wealth, power and bloodlines entitle them to rule. One of the oligarchy's institutions for manipulation of populations is located in a suburb of London called Tavistock. The Tavistock Institute for Human Relations, which also has a branch in Sussex, England, is the ``mother'' for much of this extended network, of which Becker is a member. They are the specialists in both hard and soft brainwashing.

The Tavistock Institute is the psychological warfare arm of the British Royal household. The oligarchs behind Tavistock, and similar outfits in the United States and elsewhere, are determined that you should be a television addict, sucking up a daily dose of brainwashing from the ``tube;'' that is how they control you. Like his fellow brainwashers, Becker prides himself in knowing the minds of his victims.

He calls them ``saps.'' Man, he told an interviewer, should be called ``homo the sap.''

``Soft'' brainwashing by television works through power of suggestion. Television watching creates a state of drugged-like oblivion to outside reality. The mind, its perceptions dulled by habituated viewing, is ready to accept any new illusion of reality as presented on the tube. The mind, in its drugged-like stupor of television watching, is prepared to accept that the images that television {suggests} as reality {are} reality. It will then struggle to form fit a contradictory reality into television image, just as Becker claims. Another Tavistock brainwasher, Fred Emery, who studied television for 25 years, confirms this.

The television signal itself, he found, puts the viewer in this state of drugged-like oblivion. Emery writes: ``Television as a media consists of a constant visual signal of 50 half-frames per second. Our hypotheses regarding this essential nature of the medium itself are:

1) The constant visual stimulus fixates the viewer and causes the habituation of response. The prefrontal and association areas of the cortex are effectively dominated by the signal, the screen.
2) The left cortical hemisphere — the center of visual and analytical calculating processes — is effectively reduced in its functioning to tracking changing images on the screen.
3) Therefore, provided, the viewer keeps looking, he is unlikely to reflect on what he is doing and what he is viewing. That is, he will be aware, but unaware of his awareness....

``In other words, television can be seen partly as the technological analogue of the hypnotist.''

The key to making the brainwashing work is the repetition of suggestion over time. With people watching the tube for 6 to 8 hours a day, there is plenty of time for such repeated suggestion. Some Examples Let's look at an example to make things a bit clearer. Think back about 20 years ago. Think about what you thought about certain issues of the day. Think about those same issues today; notice how you seemed to change your mind about them, to become more tolerant of things you opposed vehemently before.

It's your television watching that changed your mind, or to use Becker's terms, ``shaped your perceptions.''

Twenty years ago, most people thought that the lunacy that is now called environmentalism, the idea that animals and plants should be protected on an equal basis with human life, was screwy. It went against the basic concept of Christian civilization that man is a higher species than and distinct from the animals, and that it is man, by virtue of his being made in the image of the living God, whose life is sacred.

That was 20 years ago. But now, many people, maybe even you, seem to think otherwise; there are even laws that say so. This contrary, anti-human view of man being no more than equal to animals and plants was inserted into our consciousness by the suggestion of television. Environmental lunacy was scripted into network television shows, into televised movies, and into the news. It started slowly, but picked up steam. Environmental spokesmen were increasingly seen in the favorable glow of television.

Those who opposed this view were shown in an unfavorable way. It was done over time, with repetition. If you weren't completely won over, you were made tolerant of the views of environmental lunatics whose statements were morally and scientifically unsound. Let's take a more recent example: the [1991] war against Iraq. That was a war made for television. In fact, it was a war organized through television. Think back a year: How were Americans prepared for the eventual slaughter of Iraqi women and children? Images on the screen: Saddam Hussein, on one side, Hitler on the other.

The images repeated in newscasts, backed up by scenes of alleged atrocities in Kuwait. Then the war itself: the video-game like images of ``smart'' weapons killing Iraqi targets. Finally, the American military commander-in-chief Gen. Norman Schwartzkopf, conducting a final press briefing that was consciously orchestrated to resemble the winning Superbowl coach describing his victory.

Those were the images that overwhelmed our population. Only now, months later, do we find out that the images had nothing to do with reality. The Iraqi ``atrocities'' in Kuwait and elsewhere were exaggerated. Our ``smart'' weapons like the famous Patriot anti-missile system didn't really work.

Oh, and the casualty figures: it seems that we murdered far more women and children than we did soldiers. Hardly a ``glorious victory.'' But while it might have made a difference if people knew this while the war was being planned or in progress, polls show that Americans no longer find the war or any stories about it ``interesting.''

Looking at the question more broadly, where did your children get most of their values, if not from what they saw on television? Parents might counteract the influence of the infernal box, but they could not overcome it. How could they, if they themselves have been brainwashed by the same box and if their children spend more time with it than them? Studies show that most of television programming is geared to a less than 5th grade comprehension level; parents, like you, are themselves being remade in the infantile images of the television screen. All of society becomes more infantile, more easily controllable.

As Emery explains: ``We are proposing that television as a simple constant and repetitive and ambiguous visual stimulus, gradually closes down the central nervous system of man.''} Becker holds a similar view of the effect of television on American's ability to think: "Americans don't really think--they have opinions and feelings. Television creates the opinion and then validates it.''

Nowhere is this clearer than with politics. Television tells Americans what to think about politicians, restricting choices to those acceptable to the oligarchs whose financial power controls networks and major cable channels. It tells people what has been said and what is ``important.'' Everything else is filtered out. You are told who can win and who can't. And few people have the urge to look behind the images in the screen, to seek content and truth in ideas and look for a high quality of leadership.

Such an important matter as choosing a president becomes the same as choosing a box of laundry detergent: a set of possibilities, whose limits are determined, by the images on the screen. You are given the appearance of freedom of choice, but that you have neither freedom nor real choice. That is how the brainwashing works. ``Are they brainwashed by the tube,'' said Becker to the interviewer.``

It is really more than that. I think that people have lost the ability to relate the images of their own lives without television intervening to tell them what it means. That is what we really mean when we say that we have a wired society.'' Turn It Off! That was ten years ago. It has gotten far worse since then.

In coming issues, we will show you the brainwashers' vision of a hell on earth and how television is being used to get us there; we will discuss television programming, revealing how it has helped produce what is called a ``paradigm'' shift in values, creating an immoral society; we will explain how the news is presented and how its presentation has been used to destroy the English language; we will discuss the mass entertainment media, showing who controls it and how; we will deal with America's addiction to spectator sports and show how that too has helped make you passive and stupid; and finally, we will show where we are headed, if we can't break our addiction to the tube.

So, after what I just told you, what do say, buddy? Do you want to stay stupid and let your country go to hell in a basket? Why don't you just walk over to the set and turn it off. That's right, completely off. Go on, you can do it. Now isn't that better? Don't you feel a little better already? You've just taken the first step in deprogramming yourself. It wasn't that hard, was it? Until we speak again, try to keep it off. Now that will be a bit harder.


Always good to bump an anti-TV thread!  
Title: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: Caviezel Fan on March 04, 2013, 11:13:16 AM
I don't watch TV nearly as much as I used to (mostly because I am at work); 99% of the shows are trash.  The only show I watch is "Person of Interest", my fave TV show.  I had gotten so sick of all the reality shows, which happen to be taking over, and all of the ridiculous drama.  I did watch the Weather Channel from time to time, but don't even do that anymore (I can get weather info online).  I have my DVDs I watch, and my one and only fave TV show, so now, the TV spends more time off than on.
Title: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: Matto on March 04, 2013, 11:17:19 AM
I don't watch regular TV shows. I do watch sports sometimes.

I rarely watch anything else.
Title: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: Caviezel Fan on March 04, 2013, 11:20:05 AM
I am with you, Matto.  I watch some sports, like football.  If "Person of Interest" wasn't on, then my TV time would be even smaller.
Title: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: Pelly on March 08, 2013, 01:19:38 PM
St. clare Assisi as the parton saint of television? Facepalm. This should be a NO invention I think.
Title: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: Alan on March 29, 2013, 01:03:11 AM
The TV stations love to give the impression that they are not as bad as you think.

To create the impression, between their useless or stupidifying or immoral programmes (depending on time of the day), they would insert some good meaningful programmes. Just to FOOL people. It is just a bait.

They have to do that, otherwise the number of viewers would continue to decrease
if all they offer is rubbish programmes.

When you see that there are meaningful programmes , you'll think TV is not that bad after all.

But even their best programmes cannot be compared to READING.

I would advise people to turn off the TV set unless they have subscribed to Catholic TV channels.

(I am only talking about the situation in HONG KONG -- especially TVB)
Title: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: Neil Obstat on April 22, 2013, 10:26:59 PM
Post (http://www.cathinfo.com/catholic.php?a=topic&t=3196&min=65#p1)


This is the first of 4 newsletters from the website,

Our Lady's Apostolate for No TV (http://www.ourladysapostolatefornotv.org/2007.htm)

http://www.ourladysapostolatefornotv.org/2007.htm



September 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.htm


Blasphemous 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.
Title: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: Dolorosa on May 02, 2013, 11:48:08 PM
             I don't watch TV and got rid of my cable long ago and saved money doing so but most important was the peace from not watching some much garbage and especially the controlled news media.  I thank Fr. Peter Scott for encouraging catholics to not watch the TV.  Even my Dad decided to stop the cable and not watch TV.  So we started watching the classic movies and religious movies on the VHS/DVD.
Now today I also watch the resistance youtubes and some other classic movies on youtube as well.
Title: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: Gimli on May 08, 2013, 02:39:17 PM
I throw out my TV six years ago. I could not stand the racism against whites, the hate against Jesus and the fanatic oversɛҳuąƖized programs. Most of them are supposed to be for children and teens! I do miss some programs about archeology and nature. But the internet got a lot of docuмentarys though.

A traditional catholic see television as pure evil. It is all about decadence and degeneration. I think the main purpose with TV is to break up white Christian family,s steal the soul from young innocent people and make them zombies.

Throw away those machines out of the homes! Says my beloved and brave Bishop Williamson with a passion and concern in a great sermon about parenthood. You may find it on youtube. I love when he says that. It is black and white and nothing in between, that's Catholicism right there.
Title: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: Neil Obstat on July 28, 2013, 12:23:11 PM
.
Here is the first of the posts I made on Fr. Poncelet (RIP).  
4 of the subsequent posts are copies of his Newletters that
are still on his website, run by his faithful he left behind when
he went to his eternal reward.



Post (http://www.cathinfo.com/catholic.php?a=topic&t=3196&min=60#p3)
Quote from: Neil Obstat

I believe it was Fr. Poncelet who coined the phrase,


"The Devil's Tabernacle."


This is a most powerful term that Catholics should know and use.  

A clearly demonic series like Jersey Shore should be nothing short of
evidence that television is indeed the devil's imitation, of the tabernacle
of Our Lord found in Catholic churches.  

Why would anyone want to have the Devil's Tabernacle in their home?  

It's a question you could not ask yourself if you ever read Fr. Poncelet's
books or newsletters.

Why would anyone want to have the Devil's Tabernacle in their home?

This question should come back and give you pause for thought.

Why would anyone want to have the Devil's Tabernacle in their home?

I'm sure there are a lot of answers, but I highly doubt that there is a
single one that is any good, all considered.  

Why would anyone want to have the Devil's Tabernacle in their home?

Remember Fr. Frank Poncelet in your prayers.  I'm sure Our Lady came
to his assistance in his time of need.  He did a lot of good in his lifetime.






Title: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: Viva Cristo Rey on July 28, 2013, 12:54:52 PM
I agree that jersey shore tv series is evil like the jersey devil.

It offends God
The real Italian Catholics

NJ is evil and liberal state. Especially no Catholics of nj.

And getting back to topic.  






Title: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: Neil Obstat on July 29, 2013, 06:36:59 PM
.

I have found that Catholics are very receptive to my use of the term,


"The Devil's Tabernacle!"


I recommend that everyone on CI tries this in conversation!  Whenever
the subject being discussed turns to TV, use "the Devil's Tabernacle" in
place of TV or Television, and see what happens, and you won't be
disappointed.  It's rather educational to see it.  


And if you can remember to do so, mention the name of Fr. Frank
Poncelet in context of  NO TV.  His priestly life was dedicated to the
battle against the mind-numbing TV in the home, and many families
are today free of this pernicious influence because of his apostolate,


"Our Lady's Apostolate for No TV!"



Title: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: Kephapaulos on February 05, 2014, 07:30:24 PM
Bump! :jumping2:
Title: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: Anthem on March 02, 2014, 05:38:08 PM
I call it "satan's lantern".  I do watch a little tv once in a while, usually some practical show if I do, perhaps a sporting event now and then.  Two weeks ago, I got a survey form from Nielsen, the rating company.  I sent it back accurately showing I had watched zero television for a whole week.
Title: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: glaston on April 02, 2014, 07:26:45 AM
Quote from: Gimli
I throw out my TV six years ago. I could not stand the racism against whites, the hate against Jesus and the fanatic oversɛҳuąƖized programs. Most of them are supposed to be for children and teens! I do miss some programs about archeology and nature. But the internet got a lot of docuмentarys though.

A traditional catholic see television as pure evil. It is all about decadence and degeneration. I think the main purpose with TV is to break up white Christian family,s steal the soul from young innocent people and make them zombies.

Throw away those machines out of the homes! Says my beloved and brave Bishop Williamson with a passion and concern in a great sermon about parenthood. You may find it on youtube. I love when he says that. It is black and white and nothing in between, that's Catholicism right there.


No TV in abode for years either.

Harry Potter, books/Dvd's, interwoven witchcraft, sneakily teaching your kids from an early age about spells, incantations etc is what you have to ban.

I actually used to know the (тαℓмυdist?) Jєω who was Potter book production manager in printing works!
Title: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: Neil Obstat on April 04, 2014, 07:14:51 AM
.

One of the red flags that convinced me that NovusOrdo regulars had lost the Faith was when I questioned them about their wisdom in encouraging their children to read Harry Potter books.  

They universally defended it, saying things like,


At least the kids are reading books now.
See how much vocabulary and good grammar they're being exposed to.
It increases their enthusiasm for good literature.
They learn to appreciate SPELLING when they see how properly done "spells" have to be.
The author of the Potter books is now very wealthy :  She Must Be Doing SOMETHING Right.
Are you somehow opposed to making a good living?
Are you just jealous?
What's the matter, can't you write a best-seller?


The popularity of Harry Potter books goes hand-in-hand with the popularity of the Devil's Tabernacle.  

I have known people who could not understand why Catholics practice Eucharistic Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament.  They say things like, "All these people are just sitting there, staring at the Monstrance or at the tabernacle, and there's NOTHING GOING ON."  They're so accustomed to the nonstop action and changing camera angles displayed on TV that sitting still in front of the "Hidden Jesus" for a few minutes is more than they can bear.  

They rush home from work on a crowded freeway, listening to foul-mouthed radio broadcasts of stupid ninnies jabbering with nothing important to say, and they're in THE HABIT of going into their house to plop down on the couch and stare at the drivel on TV, the Devil's Tabernacle.  That is their daily habit.

So You can't expect entirely different outlook when they rush from a busy work day to the chapel, and then scamper out of their hot car to go sit or kneel in a chapel on First Friday evening or whatever.   Why would they not then suddenly think, "I should be seeing some ENTERTAINMENT here, or something, but there's nothing happening."  -because that's what they're habituated in seeing when they rush home from a busy day at work.

Note: Today is First Friday in Lent.  


.
Title: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: Tiffany on April 04, 2014, 07:17:34 AM
I'm glad you wrote that Neil because I didn't allow them either (and screened all books in the early years for witchcraft) but would question my judgement when other mothers would talk about them.
Title: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: Neil Obstat on April 04, 2014, 07:58:27 AM
.

Post (http://www.cathinfo.com/catholic.php?a=topic&t=3196&min=40#p1)
Quote from: Marcelino
Quote from: s2srea
Quote from: SantaMaria1
Replacing tv with lots of other screen time is hardly any better.


I would disagree SantaMaria. If you think about it, TV is very one directional. Information is just shot out at you. So if you're using it for anything other than DVDs/VHSs, you have no real control. Commercials, programs themselves, etc. ...


Is it really necessary to add more to this thread;  I think everything that needs to be said, has been said on the topic already  :sleep:



(Two months later):

Post (http://www.cathinfo.com/catholic.php?a=topic&t=3196&min=50#p0)
Quote from: Neil Obstat
A monthly newsletter called "Our Lady's Apostolate for No TV" was run by
Fr. Frank Poncelet. It was started in A.D. 2000 and continued for several years.

Fr. Poncelet is the author of two books on television: Airwaves From Hell
and its sequel, Television, Prelude to Chaos.

From their website:

http://www.ourladysapostolatefornotv.org/

Our Mission

The mission of this Apostolate is to save souls and to make reparation for sins committed against the Divine Majesty and against the Immaculate Heart of Mary.  As many sins are committed as a result of television, our desire is to convince Catholics to rid their homes of its destructive influence. To accomplish this we need your help! By persuading your families and friends to go TV-free you share in this work for souls. If you are successful in your efforts, please let us know.


******* etc........ ********


Fr. Poncelet's primary message was to eliminate TV in the Catholic home. I tried keeping it turned off, but it was a never-ending battle. Every time I came home it was on, and then I found out that my children learned to turn it off when they heard me coming in. I didn't get any support from my wife. She liked having her TV shows, too.

So I disabled the antenna, and only used it for video tapes. That was okay, for a while, then eventually one of my daughters decided that I was being oppressive and mean, so when she moved out, she got her own TV and had a lot of "catch-up" to do. Now she's abandoned all religion.

But overall, I think that having no TV in the house has been a benefit, if nothing else, for my own good, for this way I can spend more time reading good books and praying the Rosary, when I'm not posting a comment on the Internet!



The website linked above has 4 issues of the Newsletter that you can read online.
There were many years of issues but only these 4 from 2007 are viewable.


From the last one, December 2007:

TELEVISIO EJICIENDA EST!
(Television set must be thrown away)
by Father Jean-Luc Lafitte, SSPX
...

On The Christmas Season
Very slightly adapted from Bishop Challoner’s
Meditations for Every Day in the Year
...

Excepts from the Midnight Cave
by Father Frederick William Faber
...

It ends with this from the Editor:

 

From the Editor…

Exposing Children to Television

A while back, I was speaking with a Catholic friend about television.  She mentioned that she had television and used it sparingly because she wanted her children to be exposed to it so that when they went out into the world they would be less inclined to experiment with it.  Naturally, I was rather astonished at what, to me, was a novel idea.  She explained that her daughter had once noticed how her classmates at a Catholic school, who had never been exposed to television, were fascinated by the medium whenever they were exposed to it in stores.  


Desensitizing children to TV?

I was taken aback by this mother’s idea that by desensitizing her children to television, which is so often an occasion of sin, she hoped that they would use it “responsibly” when they were out in the world.  Our conversation started a train of thought in my mind:  Does the end justify the means?  Can exposing children to what is an addictive medium transmitting primarily sinful content, rather than teaching them to avoid it, make them less likely to avoid it in adult life?  Would anyone in their right mind use the same technique with drugs, alcohol, or pornography?  What does the Church have to say about exposing children to the proximate occasion of sin?


Television is an occasion of sin


The Catholic faith teaches us that occasions of sin are those places, persons, or things which as a rule are the means of leading us into sin.[1]  Does television qualify as an occasion of sin?  Given the pernicious content of the programs aired today and the morally corrosive advertising which accompanies them, television is decidedly an occasion of sin to those who watch it.  To expose oneself carelessly to an occasion of sin is in itself sinful and leads not only to a loss of divine grace, but to other more grievous sins.[2]  In the case of television it seems self-evident that a person who watches shows or commercials that are unchaste (and very few are not these days) allows into the soul unchaste desires which, aside from being temptations, may easily become the source of grievous sin.  To consent with the will to unchaste or unlawful thoughts is always sinful.  But from whence came these sinful desires?  From the tele-vision which has been the proximate occasion of sin.


What follows?

So what then are we to think of this idea of exposing children to television so that they lose any fascination for it?  Firstly, as Dr. Byrne’s article pointed out in the September 2007 Newsletter, television is an intrinsically addictive medium.  That being so it is very unwise to expose children to it at all.  Rather than making a child disinterested, exposure to television is likely to excite a desire to watch television which the child will not have the moral strength to resist.  Would there not be an outcry of rage if schools began exposing children to street drugs with the idea that by doing so they would ensure that the children lost all fascination for drugs?  Television is an electronic opiate, and once a person becomes “hooked” on it, it is exceedingly difficult to be weaned from the habit.  Secondly, television, because of the pernicious content of the programming, is a proximate occasion of sin and it is never lawful to deliberately expose anyone, especially children, to what may cause their moral and spiritual ruin.  St. Augustine says: “If thou persuade thy neighbor to sin thou art his murderer.”  Television, because it is a proximate occasion of sin, must be avoided by adult and child alike.

_______________________________________

[1] Fr. Francis Spirago, The Catechism Explained, TAN Books and Publishers, Rockford, IL, 1993, pg.475.

[2] Ibid, pg. 475




Note:  Regarding "occasions of sin,"  there is another thread where this topic is being explored.  In a form for an Act of Contrition that I was taught in 1963 by Franciscan nuns (in full habits) it ended with, "I firmly resolve to sin no more and to avoid the near occasions of sin."  So is "occasions of sin" the same thing as those "near occasions of sin?"  Furthermore, what about "unnecessary occasions of sin?"  Is there any such thing as "NECESSARY occasions of sin?"  Or, is "UNAVOIDABLE near occasions of sin" a more accurate term, for hospital emergency workers or rescue workers or bishops working as liturgical sensors or exorcists, for example?

In any case, the watching of the Devil's Tabernacle is certainly avoidable.  

How many Americans today are so thoroughly hooked to TV that they'll practically go into financial ruin before they would ever give up on their addiction to Cable Movies on Demand?



.
Title: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: Neil Obstat on April 04, 2014, 08:09:29 AM
Quote from: Tiffany
I'm glad you wrote that Neil because I didn't allow them either (and screened all books in the early years for witchcraft) but would question my judgement when other mothers would talk about them.


It seems to me your judgment is just fine, Tiffany.  That's what having Catholic friends is for:  you can support each other in times of trial.  It can get a LOT worse than this.  

I'm very appreciative of Fr. Frank Poncelet.  He lived the Faith and died a dry martyrdom.  He was a very brave priest of God.  

He reminds me a lot of Fr. Fredrick Schell and Fr. Michael Alexander Jarecki and Fr. Hector Bolduc and Fr. Paul Wickens, and others.  They're all deceased now.  May they rest in peace.  

None of these fine priests ever had a single good word to say about the Harry Potter books.  That's a very powerful testimony.  


.
Title: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: Neil Obstat on April 04, 2014, 08:44:26 AM
Quote from: theology101
Quote from: Tiffany
Quote from: Neil Obstat
A curious name. Blessed Anne de Guigne died 20 years before television first blinked
into existence.

The only way to really be free of TV is to put a brick through the screen.
But these days, with flat screens and computer hookups, it's more complicated.

I know families with TV in their living room who are entirely hooked, and there's no
getting around it. When they invite me to sit there and watch with them, I have
something to say every ten or 15 seconds, and they get upset that they can't hear
what's going on in their sacred false god's reality.

These are Catholics, who never spend that much attention in front of the Blessed
Sacrament. They complain that "nothing's going on" if a priest isn't at the altar
moving around somehow. Their whole perception is clouded by a lifetime
of TV viewing.

I had an acquaintance 20 years ago who was involved in "the industry" (that
means Entertainment, or movies, or TV -- to them it's the whole world) who
assured me that the power of TV was soon to become the principal device
of public opinion control, and that its power is impossible to overestimate.

Well, I have to say, that TV has no power at all over anyone who does not
watch it.


And those of us who don't watch TV, we are really duty-bound to talk about that
in the public arena. People really need to hear the testimony of us who are not
mind-numbed robots under the thumb of TV programmers.


If you have young children I would use caution when talking about no tv to others that do not agree. Some will view it as child abuse.


It's sad, but I can seriously believe that, and I can even see some kid's parents being harassed because they are "denying" their children television. I've heard that the guy responsible for the invention of public television, was a marketer. His goal was nothing less than the "programming" of people to buy products. (This 'program' brought to you by...) Then of course even more evil people saw the benefits in propaganda and brainwashing. It's crazy how nobody even ever questions why they call it programming. When people spend up to six or more hours a day average in front of a television, of course they will think that to not have one is crazy- that's what some guy on T.V. said, anyway...


While I don't disagree, that the Devil's Tabernacle is used to 'PROGRAM' the viewers' minds to buy products and subscribe to worldliness in general, it is curious that theology101 has presumed that the word is therefore derived from that concept.  

The use of modern computers is the connotation being referred to, as in computer programming.  A computer program instructs the machine what to do, and how to process particular data, when the data will be input at a later time.  When TV was first developed, there were no computers as we know them today.  When "the guy responsible for the invention of public television" invented public television, there were no computers.  That would have been post WWII, for the technology to transmit moving images and sound via radio waves was an outgrowth of the war.  Radar was a brand new concept in 1939, and it was only in its infant stages in December 1941, at the time of Pearl Harbor.  There was no public awareness of its value and power in warfare.  Nobody asked any questions about the fact that US radar in Hawaii saw and reported the incoming Zeros hours before they arrived in Honolulu.  That's because nobody was aware of how radar worked or that it did work.


Quote
the guy responsible for the invention of public television, was a marketer. His goal was nothing less than the "programming" of people to buy products. (This 'program' brought to you by...)


In those days, "program" meant a list of presentations or activities, such as the plan for an evening's entertainment, or an anniversary party or a celebrity celebration.  Therefore, "programming" was in reference to the schedule of what would be broadcast over a TV channel, or, since there were no multiple channels yet, they would have said, "frequency."  

An example of "programming" for Catholics would be the list of Masses to be offered at a given parish on Sunday and during the week, along with other activities such as Catechism, Open House, Confessions, Rosary, Stations of the Cross, Women's Club, Legion of Mary, etc., and the days and times for each activity or "program."  The astronomy club is offering a program on keeping track of the retrograde motion of Mars this coming month.  

It would not be for another 10 years that computer programming would find any real improvement, and then, the computers that were used were the size of a house, and they required the combined efforts of several air conditioners to keep them cooled, since their amplification systems and processors used VACUUM TUBES instead of integrated circuits -- because there were no ICs yet, they had not been invented at the time.  Texas Instruments did not exist yet.  When the Space Program (another program!!)  got started, the computing power of an entire spacecraft was no more than what is now contained in a handheld calculator, or a digital wristwatch.  


.
Title: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: Neil Obstat on April 04, 2014, 08:51:28 AM
.

When the Women's Club produced a program that included a "Welcome" by the Chairwoman, followed by a buffet lunch, followed by a couple of songs from the small choir, and a few short stage skits and a final "thank you for coming" by the Chairwoman, they did not have in mind any conditioning or "programming" of the audience to go out and start acting or believing in their agenda.  It was all for enjoyment and a sense of community.  

.
Title: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: glaston on April 13, 2014, 05:19:46 PM
Quote from: Tradycja
Great article.  I agree 100 percent.  I haven't watched television in 2 years.  

One thing I have found is that my relatives say things such as "They said on TV that you shouldn't eat such and such a food" or "They said on TV that this politician is wrong..." etc.   To which I always respond, "WHO said it?  Who is this proverbial THEY".  

It no longer matters to people WHO said it, just that it was said on TV.  The TV is like a person to them.


hint - Orwell's "Big Brother"

2006/7 telly out.
They really started "white screen flashing" after gruesome shots/etc which I realised was Tavistock brainwashing. They usually flash blank white picture 3 times (most effective)
They are pigeonholing, gruesome/trauma/stressfull/max-emotional scenes into your memory banks with which they can trigger emotional stress/anguish/terrified=adrenal rushes - from at a later date.

I remember exact period it started.

The BBC in UK got rid of all of it's human staff who controlled strobe-like flashes on TV progs for people who get affected by them, they said they were replacing them with automatic machines!!

You then get to go to your Dr with unexplained high blood pressure, stomach ulcers etc cos the elite scuм don't tell us about how fantastic our body is at self healing - they occultly brainwash & turn your body against you - Satanically
Title: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: Kyd Catholic on February 01, 2015, 01:10:22 PM
Some really great books on the TV topic are: "The Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television" by a former media guy, "Airwaves From Hell" and "Prelude to Chaos" both by a Catholic priest. Every Catholic should be acquainted with one or all these books....

Kill your TV!
-Kyd Catholic
Title: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: londonmark on March 14, 2015, 11:30:56 AM
Two things:

I am thankful that when I reverted to the true Faith a while back I was given spiritual direction before my confession by a good traditional priest. As part of my commitment to abjure heresy he ensured that I made certain commitments to live a Catholic lifestyle from that day on. One of my commitments was not to watch television. it was the right commitment and I glad that he "forced" me to make it, even though it was hard at first.

Secondly it can be hard to impose a no-TV rule on teenagers. My 15 year old cousin has tried to rebel (he has school friends whose parents are liberal). We remind him of his obligation to obey his parents and that the absence of mindless and dangerous TV in the evenings gives time for family prayer (especially the daily rosary), catechism and study, examination of conscience and most importantly time before the Blessed Sacrament. He acknowledges all this but I can see the regret in his eyes sometimes as he resists temptation.

I ma glad that next year he may well be going to a school where there home-school agreements prohibits TV.
Title: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: ClarkSmith on March 14, 2015, 06:32:09 PM
Question: Why would anyone watch TV?


My local paper comes with a TV guide. Today the TV guide featured a new comedy called One Big Happy. The sitcom is about a lesbian woman that is pregnant with her best friends baby.  Produced by Ellen Degenerece and created by some Jєωιѕн woman.  

 :heretic:


 
Title: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: Centroamerica on April 16, 2015, 09:26:27 AM



I don't own a TV, but should one consider it prohibited to own a TV or watch TV.  Is the act of watching TV in itself wrong?

Title: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: Nadir on August 14, 2015, 06:05:25 PM
Quote from: Centroamerica



I don't own a TV, but should one consider it prohibited to own a TV or watch TV.  Is the act of watching TV in itself wrong?



I believe that watching TV is wrong because of its mind-numbing effect. Moreover it alienates people from the real world and each other and therefore is anti-social.

Here is an interesting article I just found this morning:
Suburbs are Sinister Places
http://henrymakow.com/2015/08/suburbs-are-sinister-places.html
Title: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: Geremia on September 06, 2015, 07:38:21 PM
Something similar could be written about computers and the Internet, no?

But computers and the Inernet are a two-way communication medium.
Title: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: Geremia on September 06, 2015, 07:59:22 PM
This AudioSancto sermon, Pornography, Freedom, and Social Destruction (http://www.romans10seventeen.org/audio-files/20130922-Pornography-Freedom-and-Social-Destruction.mp3), draws from E. Michael Jones's Libido Dominandi and Jєωιѕн Revolutionary Spirit to show how the CIA used psychological warfare by playing shows like Baywatch to destabilize the Middle East before invading. He also mentions how (Counterfeit) Israel broadcasted hardcore porn prime-time to create apathy in Palestinian resurgents.

Working for Randal Terry, showing graphic abortion footage in our campaign ads, I've seen the ugliness of TV networks firsthand. Television content is controlled by a small group of people, literally a few dozen! Some regional networks/markets even violated FCC law and flatly refused to show our campaign ads (northern California, for example).
Title: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: Brian R on October 20, 2015, 01:15:32 AM
This goes way beyond the TV. Read this...

PsyOps and SocialBots
http://resources.infosecinstitute.com/psyops-and-socialbots/

Title: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: Patrick JK Gray on October 20, 2015, 10:14:04 AM
It's Satanic. I've fallen, but never, never again.
Title: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: Brian R on October 23, 2015, 05:33:58 PM
"Active Measures" is the KGB/FAPSI word used to describe demoralization efforts used by pro-communists to weaken and destabilize a population to make them more vulnerable to infiltration and propaganda-driven change.

Here is KGB intelligence defector Yuri Bezmenov describing active measures in an interview --
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qlpODYhnPEo

Note that several KGB intelligence defectors wrote books claiming that the Communist power behind the Soviet Union never lost its grip, and that the collapse of Communism was an organized media event designed to move attention away from Soviet power. The "former" Soviet oligarchy aligned with the worldwide central banking system to create UN Agenda 21. Gorbechev, the last Soviet leader, helped create the Earth Charter which is at the heart of UN Agenda 21.
Title: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: LaughingAmigo on November 30, 2015, 10:49:00 AM
Lol "boob tube."  I prefer to call it the "JєωTube."  Almost synonymous I guess.
Title: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: LaughingAmigo on November 30, 2015, 10:51:04 AM
Quote from: Brian R
"Active Measures" is the KGB/FAPSI word used to describe demoralization efforts used by pro-communists to weaken and destabilize a population to make them more vulnerable to infiltration and propaganda-driven change.

Here is KGB intelligence defector Yuri Bezmenov describing active measures in an interview --
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qlpODYhnPEo

Note that several KGB intelligence defectors wrote books claiming that the Communist power behind the Soviet Union never lost its grip, and that the collapse of Communism was an organized media event designed to move attention away from Soviet power. The "former" Soviet oligarchy aligned with the worldwide central banking system to create UN Agenda 21. Gorbechev, the last Soviet leader, helped create the Earth Charter which is at the heart of UN Agenda 21.


Interesting, tell me more.  I knew the Cold War and Soviet collapse were just media stunts.  How correct is it to say the USSR simply transferred itself to Israel and the U.S.?  Surely Russia can't be called Communist anymore, Putin seems to be reversing a lot of its influence.
Title: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: Steve Hanniwald on October 25, 2016, 06:35:32 AM
Please learn about Soviet active measures --

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=facg5prt6uM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJKJM36lMTE

The Soviet oligarchy never lost power. The downfall of the USSR was a planned media event, to distract from the communist agenda.

Active measures is the plan to demoralize the West.

From “Masters of Seduction,” by Jeri Lynn Ball:

At the Sixth Party Congress held in Moscow in 1928, Communists wrote and approved “The Program” to bring in the nєω ωσrℓ∂ σr∂єr. What most Americans don’t know is the real nature of this diabolical criminal scheme. The Program of the Third International called for a global environmental program and for the transformation of all human beings on earth to accept the nєω ωσrℓ∂ σr∂єr. The Communists planned to use the global environmental program as a means of eradicating national sovereignty and creating a world dictatorship. All nations, nationalities, and national boundaries were to be replaced by an omnipotent, one-world government and regional governances. The Communists did not want the American approach to liberty, with individual God-given rights protected by a government with limited powers. The Communists did not want the American concept of rule of law. They wanted unrestrained despotic government, power without limit, a world without laws—a brutal, terror-inspiring global totalitarian police state which could smash all laws of justice, launch campaigns of enslavement and mass murder, and eliminate opponents of the nєω ωσrℓ∂ σr∂єr. Twenty delegates from the U.S. voted for the 1928 Program of the Third International.
Title: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: cora890 on November 07, 2016, 11:35:20 PM
Thanks for sharing. Tv has always been a good debatable topic for years since it has equal number of benefits and problems as well.
Title: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: jen51 on December 17, 2016, 10:11:45 AM
We decided, well, my husband decided, that he doesn't want our daughter watching T.V. ever, except the occasional good movie. That's fine by me. It does bring up a problem when visiting family around Christmas time. Does anyone else restrict their children from watching T.V. while visiting family, and how did that go for you? We aren't expecting them to turn off the T.V., but I'm fully expecting a lot of tension to arise when I take my daughter from the room when the TV comes on.
It's so frustrating. My side of the family doesn't even know how to socialize anymore. Our get together's are everyone staring at their phones and watching the T.V.
Title: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: Nadir on December 17, 2016, 02:36:29 PM
They will be watching TV while celebrating Christmas? It is good manners to turn it off when you have visitors. Is there no way to gently hint at the obvious? Wouldn't it be nice to actually talk to each other, since you have taken the trouble to visit? It goes to show just how low we have fallen.
Title: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: jen51 on December 19, 2016, 01:06:30 PM
Quote from: Nadir
They will be watching TV while celebrating Christmas? It is good manners to turn it off when you have visitors. Is there no way to gently hint at the obvious? Wouldn't it be nice to actually talk to each other, since you have taken the trouble to visit? It goes to show just how low we have fallen.


They are incredibly sensitive about what we say. When we mention something along those lines my father tells me our extreme ideas are stupid and my mom flails her arms in the air, chokes out through tears "we just aren't good enough for you" and stomps into the other room. Then the ruined get together is blamed on us. My parents also demand that if we have a problem with anything regarding our daughter that it must be voiced through me, and not my husband. I fear that anything I say will turn the get together into a horrible event for everyone.  We are dreading it so much. I've been anxious the past couple of weeks just thinking about it.

Christmas is nothing sacred to them. It's a time that they've cherished for sentimental reasons. Back before I was Catholic, our tradition was to get up Sunday morning, open presents, and then watch movies and TV all day. No mention of Jesus what-so-ever. Even as a Protestant it always bothered me but it was my parents house so I was always scared of saying something. Every year the TV is on all the time- it's very deeply engrained.



Title: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: Nadir on December 19, 2016, 02:43:25 PM
I am so sorry, Jen! There is only prayer, it seems.If it's some consolation, yes, it's just as the Gospel says:

Luke 12: [51] Think ye, that I am come to give peace on earth? I tell you, no; but separation. [52] For there shall be from henceforth five in one house divided: three against two, and two against three. [53] The father shall be divided against the son, and the son against his father, the mother against the daughter, and the daughter against the mother, the mother in law against her daughter in law, and the daughter in law against her mother in law.

Title: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: jen51 on December 26, 2016, 07:26:08 PM
Quote from: Nadir
I am so sorry, Jen! There is only prayer, it seems.If it's some consolation, yes, it's just as the Gospel says:

Luke 12: [51] Think ye, that I am come to give peace on earth? I tell you, no; but separation. [52] For there shall be from henceforth five in one house divided: three against two, and two against three. [53] The father shall be divided against the son, and the son against his father, the mother against the daughter, and the daughter against the mother, the mother in law against her daughter in law, and the daughter in law against her mother in law.



Thankyou, Nadir. There is a lot of comfort in that piece of scripture. I am always happy to be reminded of it. We cannot lose our souls to stay in good graces with family. The way truly is narrow and filled with strife. The destination is worth it all!


Title: Re: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: stevusmagnus on June 24, 2017, 06:50:43 PM
Where is the "Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!"?
Title: Re: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: Nandarani on February 26, 2018, 04:14:09 PM


Thankyou, Nadir. There is a lot of comfort in that piece of scripture. I am always happy to be reminded of it. We cannot lose our souls to stay in good graces with family. The way truly is narrow and filled with strife. The destination is worth it all!
Am appreciating what you have written in detail, and your honesty about your family.  I was happy in reading seeing that you have a wonderful husband to guide the family.  I was born protestant, too.  Television is no issue for me and haven't watched since grade school.  In Hawaii, having a big screen tv is seen as a must.  When the state had its missile alert false alarm I was one of the very few who knew nothing until the headlines in the paper the next day in huge letters   "OOOPS."   That was because neither own tv, nor am into fb twitter, etc.  Lots of people were distraught and tearful goodbyes to family on the mainland were commonplace, evidently.  But it all happened online.  No evidence in people around me before I saw the headline on the next day.
Title: Re: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: Viva Cristo Rey on June 16, 2018, 09:31:07 AM
https://youtu.be/8Yb8JfYxN_Y (https://youtu.be/8Yb8JfYxN_Y)
Title: Re: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: Luca on June 25, 2018, 08:03:12 AM
I think the subject is very interesting and that TV is very much controlled by mass media and lobbies. much depends on the way we use them, I also think about how I use the Internet and how much information there are without values and contents. but I also think of my son as teaching him how to use TV and computers.
Like all things, even TV can be an instrument for evangelization and bring people closer to Jesus and the Church or an instrument for their own and others' perdition.
Luca
Title: Re: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: Croix de Fer on June 25, 2018, 08:53:19 AM

TV is the tabernacle of Satan.
Title: Re: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: ClarkSmith on June 25, 2018, 01:36:55 PM
There was a study that said 47% off millennials & gen-x don't even watch television. That sounds like good news but the study found that they're just streaming media through other devices like tablets and smartphones. 

Title: Re: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: Geremia on June 26, 2018, 05:51:12 PM
TV is the tabernacle of Satan.
or monstrance of Satan
Title: Re: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: Vintagewife3 on July 06, 2018, 06:43:56 AM
I don’t think people even know how to properly socialize. My in laws turn the tv on first thing, and then they are lost to it. It’s so frustrating too that they aren’t careful about what they view. During the regular day the kids have a play room they use, and I’m usually doing chores, if the tv is on its I love lucy, leave it to beaver, our miss brooks, I married Joan, or the Donna Reed show. I try to keep everything super pg for them. 
Title: Re: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: Geremia on July 06, 2018, 02:53:53 PM
My in laws turn the tv on first thing, and then they are lost to it.
Yeah, TV hypnotizes many people.
I try to keep everything super pg for them.
A disconnected TV is "super pg".
Title: Re: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: Troubled30 on August 30, 2019, 07:18:34 PM
TV ruined the western civilization.
Better to turn it off.
Title: Re: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: Meg on August 31, 2019, 08:01:32 AM
TV ruined the western civilization.
Better to turn it off.

I tried to view the article in the OP, but it's not there anymore. I see that this is an old thread.

I agree, it did ruin western civilization. We're too distracted with all of the screens (I know I am) in our lives. Not to mention that it's easy to access immoral material, and it takes work to make sure that we don't view it.

I doubt that our now pagan/secular society could have been implemented without television.
Title: Re: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: Viva Cristo Rey on August 31, 2019, 09:05:39 AM
Cellphones, laptops and tablets have replaced tv.  

Cathinfo, Facebook is enough for me to handle.  I don’t twitter or instagram. I have no problem with turning off tv.   I showed my husband the many reasons why we can no longer watch Notre Dame football.  He finally agreed.  I have been taking baby steps. My husband and parents get upset when I go somewhere without cell phone.  There are days when I don’t charge the darn thing.  I just figured out another reason why I like to take trips to mountains ..no cell or technology.  
Title: Re: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: Troubled30 on September 07, 2019, 08:23:25 AM
I tried to view the article in the OP, but it's not there anymore. I see that this is an old thread.

I agree, it did ruin western civilization. We're too distracted with all of the screens (I know I am) in our lives. Not to mention that it's easy to access immoral material, and it takes work to make sure that we don't view it.

I doubt that our now pagan/secular society could have been implemented without television.
Big point.
Without TV, baby boomers could have not normalized a lot of sinful practices as divorce, abortion, promiscuity, children left at day care, etc....
I thought about my mother's generation. She grew up with TV. In the 80s and 90s, she normalized it was aceptable to separate from husband if he didn't allow you to work outside home. She normalized it was OK to live with other people without being married and even being in adultery.
My grandma never acepted those things. She watched TV, sure, but she never grew up with it. She was raised cstholic before CVII, went to a nuns school and when TV came, she was 40 and she didnt have time to watch a lot until she was 60 ... 
My mothers generation were exposed to a lot of sinful ideas when they were growing up and young. 
Of course TV its not a big thing today in the internet era, but the generation that raised millennials was raised with TV. 
BABY BOOMERS=TV.
Title: Re: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: Syracuse on September 07, 2019, 08:35:13 AM
TV is the tabernacle of Satan.

Facebook is a hub for the mentally ill.
Title: Re: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: Meg on September 07, 2019, 11:41:16 AM
Big point.
Without TV, baby boomers could have not normalized a lot of sinful practices as divorce, abortion, promiscuity, children left at day care, etc....
I thought about my mother's generation. She grew up with TV. In the 80s and 90s, she normalized it was aceptable to separate from husband if he didn't allow you to work outside home. She normalized it was OK to live with other people without being married and even being in adultery.
My grandma never acepted those things. She watched TV, sure, but she never grew up with it. She was raised cstholic before CVII, went to a nuns school and when TV came, she was 40 and she didnt have time to watch a lot until she was 60 ...
My mothers generation were exposed to a lot of sinful ideas when they were growing up and young.
Of course TV its not a big thing today in the internet era, but the generation that raised millennials was raised with TV.
BABY BOOMERS=TV.

So true! Indeed, so many problems in today's society were introduced and promoted in television. Do you think that maybe it was a slow process of being indoctrinated, so that it was difficult to see that we were being slowly led to accept sin as being a normal, and not sinful at all?

It's interesting that your grandma never grew up with TV, and she didn't accept those things on TV. I spent a lot of time with my great-grandmother, who also wasn't raised with TV (she was a lapsed Quaker), and she also never accepted sinful lifestyles like others in the family.

Somehow, there's a certain amount of trust that has been given to TV over the years; too much trust, as if television is the new religion which tells people how they should live. Many people tend to look for meaning in TV, without even realizing it. But that's the worst place to look.

Television in the early days may have seemed innocent enough in that it wasn't overtly sinful, and there were standards in the old days, due to the Catholic Church insisting on them. But of course that eventually changed, and since Jєωs run Hollywood (and they have a lot of help from non-Jєωs), there isn't any sin that isn't promoted by them. Now they can get away with terrible sins being promoted. It's so obvious that they hate Christ and the Catholic Church.

I admit I like to watch mysteries, like Agatha Christi. But I am bothered by the idea of being entertained by stories where mortal sin is the main feature. It's probably not a good idea to be entertained with mortal sin (murders and such), even if there isn't any crudity or sensuality. It's difficult or near impossible to find anything innocent on TV. It's also all tainted with feminism.
Title: Re: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: Troubled30 on September 12, 2019, 06:31:26 PM
So true! Indeed, so many problems in today's society were introduced and promoted in television. Do you think that maybe it was a slow process of being indoctrinated, so that it was difficult to see that we were being slowly led to accept sin as being a normal, and not sinful at all? 

It's interesting that your grandma never grew up with TV, and she didn't accept those things on TV. I spent a lot of time with my great-grandmother, who also wasn't raised with TV (she was a lapsed Quaker), and she also never accepted sinful lifestyles like others in the family. 

Somehow, there's a certain amount of trust that has been given to TV over the years; too much trust, as if television is the new religion which tells people how they should live. Many people tend to look for meaning in TV, without even realizing it. But that's the worst place to look. 

Television in the early days may have seemed innocent enough in that it wasn't overtly sinful, and there were standards in the old days, due to the Catholic Church insisting on them. But of course that eventually changed, and since Jєωs run Hollywood (and they have a lot of help from non-Jєωs), there isn't any sin that isn't promoted by them. Now they can get away with terrible sins being promoted. It's so obvious that they hate Christ and the Catholic Church. 

I admit I like to watch mysteries, like Agatha Christi. But I am bothered by the idea of being entertained by stories where mortal sin is the main feature. It's probably not a good idea to be entertained with mortal sin (murders and such), even if there isn't any crudity or sensuality. It's difficult or near impossible to find anything innocent on TV. It's also all tainted with feminism
I agree with you.

My grandma saw actors, actresses and TV people with sinful lifestyles as "mentally unstable, mad people, never to be imitated". Maybe she saw some tv shows and soap operas but she always remained catholic and she knew the lifestyles promoted by TV were not for catholics...

Baby boomers generation saw those people with admiration...instead of having the saints as models, they saw the TV fiction caracters as models.

And normalized situations saying "its not too bad ... a lot of people do (insert sinful behavior)"

And "people" for them were the people on TV ... :facepalm:
Title: Re: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: Viva Cristo Rey on September 15, 2019, 08:58:02 PM
In the past I thought old shows were wholesome but there were small bits of liberalism.   Like the time I love Lucy.  Lucy reads book by Dr Spock.  She sends little Ricky to pre school.  Watching Blondie and Dagwood was pushing feminism.  Then another episode shows Dagwood throwing out a home made lunch. Then he goes out to lunch.  Then many westerns depicted Irish as saloon-girls and Irish men as bad guys.   
Title: Re: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: Viva Cristo Rey on September 23, 2019, 07:31:53 AM
https://youtu.be/bF0n3hltmy0 (https://youtu.be/bF0n3hltmy0)
Title: Re: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: Alan on September 23, 2019, 09:14:07 AM
My grandma saw actors, actresses and TV people with sinful lifestyles as "mentally unstable, mad people, never to be imitated". Maybe she saw some tv shows and soap operas but she always remained catholic and she knew the lifestyles promoted by TV were not for catholics...

Baby boomers generation saw those people with admiration...instead of having the saints as models, they saw the TV fiction caracters as models.

And normalized situations saying "its not too bad ... a lot of people do (insert sinful behavior)"

Agreed. TV is not worth watching a lot, it could change people's thinking and behaviours without they knowing it. Serial dramas and comedies are their powerful weapons - you absorb their wrong ideas easily while enjoying them.
I prefer reading books than watching TV, now I only watch DVDs - I choose what to watch, no garbage ads, full control.
Title: Re: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: St Anne on November 03, 2019, 06:11:24 PM
The Television is the tool of the devil. Always say the Rosary. Stay away from the near occasion of sin.
The TV is full of sin, and has corrupted three generations
of people into pagan life styles, that will lead them into
hell fire.
:applause:
Title: Re: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: St Anne on November 03, 2019, 06:19:27 PM
The Television is the tool of the devil. Always say the Rosary. Stay away from the near occasion of sin.
The TV is full of sin, and has corrupted three generations
of people into pagan life styles, that will lead them into
hell fire.
Indeed! Took me months to wean myself off of TV. It's all filth and scandal. Don't forget anti-Catholic in all programs. I am working on reducing my computer time, now. I only view holy and/or wholsesome sites. Never felt better than I ever have before. Carry on!    :jumping2:
Title: Re: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: St Anne on November 03, 2019, 06:38:48 PM
Agreed. TV is not worth watching a lot, it could change people's thinking and behaviours without they knowing it. Serial dramas and comedies are their powerful weapons - you absorb their wrong ideas easily while enjoying them.
I prefer reading books than watching TV, now I only watch DVDs - I choose what to watch, no garbage ads, full control.
Title: Re: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: JOANORCM on July 26, 2021, 05:43:59 AM
I grew up with tv but became redpilled on it earlier than most. I gave up watching regular shows in the late 70s/early 80s. I did occasionally watch it for news though.

When I started homeschooling my children in 1995 I tried to keep tv away from them but my husband is a tv addict (he grew up with dad away in Vietnam, and a mom who worked outside the home and left him with babysitters who sat him in front of the tv, or took him to McDonalds...so now he has a tv and fast food habit which as a t2 diabetic is hard for him to break.)

Title: Re: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: Viva Cristo Rey on January 31, 2022, 03:26:13 AM
TELEVISION:
Deadly poison for your family life

Your homes must be sanctuaries where God is honored, loved, served, where the parents watch vigilantly over the education of their children.
What is television doing in the middle? It is breaking family life. It is keeping the father or the mother from talking, rectifying, advising, encouraging. The television is the stranger who has the place of honor in the home, the place that belongs to God, the place that belongs to the parents.
And there is no more family life, no more home where the flame is burning, from where it lights and warms all those who come near. You have simply people next to each other, separated, in fact, instead of being united; for the bond of unity is lacking, it is ruptured by the presence of television, which dictates its programs, its opinions, its lies. Well? What is the conclusion? It is easy. Get rid of the television. Throw it into the garbage. That is where it belongs. Do it this evening. Do not wait until tomorrow; your courage might fail. Tonight while your children are sleeping, without asking their opinion, of course!
And you will be surprised to see how much time you will then have to enjoy your family life and to look after each other. You will be surprised to see how fast the level of your conversations will go up, to see how docile your children will become to your authority. Family prayer, morning and night, family rosary, will take back their place of honor.

Title: Re: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: OneShotPaddy on January 31, 2022, 05:01:45 AM
"Having a television in your home is like having a Jєω in your living room." - Fr. Leonard Feeney
Title: Re: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: DigitalLogos on January 31, 2022, 08:27:43 AM
What happened to JOANORCM? She hasn't posted since July
Title: Re: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: Matthew on January 31, 2022, 09:56:53 AM
Boy, this has got to be the longest still-running thread on CathInfo. Started in 2007 for crying out loud!

Go back to page 1, and most of the names you'll be like "WHO?" 

Unless you're Gladius or roscoe, you won't even remember most of those screen names.
Title: Re: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: Viva Cristo Rey on January 31, 2022, 06:11:47 PM
The Television is the tool of the devil. Always say the Rosary. Stay away from the near occasion of sin.
The TV is full of sin, and has corrupted three generations
of people into pagan life styles, that will lead them into
hell fire.
Title: Re: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: beevbovebiv on February 14, 2022, 02:39:21 AM
I'm new to this forum, and I've attached a screenshot of what I see when I view the first page of this thread.

Would somebody mind re-posting whatever was originally there?
Title: Re: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: Viva Cristo Rey on February 16, 2022, 04:05:29 PM
Catholic movies?  Or movies to get Catholics to buy and watch tv?

“Those who knew the brilliant but mercurial Selznick understood his obsessive need for control. In finding Phylis Isley — and “discovering” Jennifer Jones — he now had a beautiful and talented young woman whose career and persona he could meticulously shape.


But his interest was more than professional, and by the time he cast her in the film that would make her famous —1943’s “The Song of Bernadette (https://www.bestmoviesbyfarr.com/movies/the-song-of-bernadette/1943)” — the two were lovers.


This was a tricky situation, even for the seemingly omnipotent Selznick. He was nearly two decades older than Jennifer, and married to Louis B. Mayer’s elder daughter Irene. Jennifer, in turn, was still wed to Walker, who was as emotionally fragile as he was gifted.”
Title: Re: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: Viva Cristo Rey on February 16, 2022, 05:02:12 PM

Lucy quotes one sentence from Dr Benjamin Spock's "Baby and Child Care" to support her position that Little Ricky should not go to nursery school: "A good nursery school does not take the place of home." Ricky is suspicious, so he takes the book, repeats what Lucy has read, then continues the quotation: "A good nursery school doesn't take the place of the home; it adds to it. Most children benefit from a good nursery school. It is particularly valuable for the only child, for the child without much chance to play with others, and for the child who lives in a small apartment." Ricky's reading is faithful to the original, except that he leaves out the last part of Spock's advice: ". . . for the child whose mother finds him difficult to manage for any reason." (from the Pocket Book Edition, 1956, p.275


Pushing government pre school... 
Title: Re: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: Viva Cristo Rey on February 16, 2022, 05:08:39 PM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Spock#Early_life_and_education
Title: Re: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: Viva Cristo Rey on February 16, 2022, 05:14:17 PM
“Gene Roddenberry's daughters Darleen and Dawn were born in 1948 and 1953, respectively. Gene's claim that had never heard of Dr. Spock is a bit hard to swallow when you consider that in the 1950s and '60s, practically every American household with children had a copy of Dr. Spock's Baby and Child Care (first published in 1946).“
Title: Re: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: Viva Cristo Rey on February 16, 2022, 05:33:10 PM
How the Devil Uses Television and Christians Accept It
[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.74902)]Christian Living (https://christian-faith.com/articles/christian-living/)
[/iurl], [color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.74902)]Apostasy in the Church[/color] (https://christian-faith.com/articles/apostasy-in-the-church/)[/font][/size][/font][/size][/color]
Back in the 1950s, television was first brought into family homes all over the developed world, and from there it spread to virtually every home. I think it is fair to say that it has been used to make a massive impact on culture and society. While television has brought some useful knowledge to people, I would say that the way it has been used overall has been extremely detrimental to the spiritual health of people everywhere. It has especially affected to spiritual potency of the people of God in a negative way. To put it more simply – it has been a major stumbling block which has caused multitudes of Christian people to sin and ultimately to shipwreck their faith.
I knew intuitively as I was growing up that spending lots of time watching TV was not consistent with taking the gospel of Jesus Christ seriously. But strangely, I never heard one sermon preaching against television watching. I think that is because basically everyone was doing it, including me. I did hear one reference against the show "The Love Boat" once at the Anglican church I attended.
There were a lot of standards initially that governed what could and could not be shown on TV. I suppose this made a lot of Christians feel relatively safe. And who could argue with shows like Play School and Sesame Street which helped and still do help young children to develop mentally? But as time went on, standards were relaxed more and more. The focus always seemed to be on "how far can we go"? "Should we show this kind of program with all its racy, sexy content at 8:30 p.m. or should it be only after 10:30 p.m.?" The question was not put as often, "Should we show this at all?" In Australia where I grew up, the church was losing more and more cultural influence with time, and the people going to church were becoming more and more conformed to the world. Television had no small part to play in this. We just floated with the current.
Today most mainstream television is so spiritually and morally toxic that switching it on and just watching it at random could be compared to going into a wild party and letting anyone there put unknown mind-altering drugs in your coke. We have TV shows with nudity, TV shows with witchcraft, TV shows about nature that instead of glorifying God constantly assume and imply naturalistic darwinistic models of the world, TV shows teaching the love of money, TV shows that glorify all kinds of vacuous and sensual celebrities that are somehow supposed to be newsworthy – you know, people like Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian. We also have a lot of false prophets, money-hungry sensual compromisers who degrade the name of Christ by their various antics and scams. Even the children's cartoons frequently glorify the occult and satanic philosophies. You cannot trust the world to lead you to truth and righteousness. If you do, you are a fool. "The whole world lieth in the evil one" (1 John 5:19).
I personally stay away from TV. We don't have an antenna connected to our TV, it is only used for videos which we choose. We don't let someone else choose for us what we are going to watch. We also have to be very careful about youtube. The only difference with youtube is that the evil stuff generally only comes before your eyes if you search for something related to it. 
Are you Going  to Let Some Ungodly Person Brainwash You?
Most of the people who write scripts for TV or movies are ungodly. Many of them practice witchcraft in one form or another, or wholeheartedly believe in anti-christian philosophies. They might be New Agers, or Buddhists, or Atheists, or Agnostics – most of them are Humanists of one form or another. Such people work with an agenda in mind. Are you going to relax in front of a television set and allow such people to work on your mind? Is this going to please Jesus Christ, who has bought you at a price and commands you to be transformed by the renewing of your mind?
The agenda of these godless producers and script writers is to get you to accept certain things you previously might not have accepted – and the way much of this is done is through fantasy and entertainment. A lot has been done for the ɧoɱosɛҳųαƖ activist agenda through TV shows and movies, just to give one example. Adulterous behavior is considered normal thanks to the influence of TV. Fictional soap-operas are created and the message of these stories, if there is one, is almost always totally GODLESS. God is not acknowledged, and His values and commandments are ignored or derided, often subtly. This all has an effect on your mind and your spiritual state, if you watch it.
Satan Won't Oppose you Watching TV
Satan won't oppose you watching TV, because he is the inspiration behind many of the values it portrays. If you are a Christian, have you ever tried to read the Bible out loud or even silently for several hours? Did you experience spiritual pressure or mental discomfort as you did this? I know I did. Most people cannot give that much attention to God's Word without feeling bad inside, or falling asleep quickly. But the same person will be easily able to watch TV until 2 a.m. in the morning! Why is this? Well, it may be partly because TV shows have a more interesting presentation, but I believe a big part of the reason is also that Satan and his demons will fight your efforts to study and obey God's Word, but they will encourage you in TV watching. They know that sooner or later they will have your soul if you keep it up.
What are the Spiritual Dangers in Watching TV today?
They are many and varied. Sin is presented as acceptable, it is presented as glamorous and exciting. TV glorifies all of the works of the flesh listed in Galations 5:19-21

Quote
"Now the works of the flesh are evident, which are: adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lewdness, idolatry, sorcery, hatred, contentions, jealousies, outbursts of wrath, selfish ambitions, dissensions, heresies, envy, murders, drunkenness, revelries, and the like; of which I tell you beforehand, just as I also told you in time past, that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God."
(Galatians 5:19-21)
The TV has been used for decades as Satan's major advertising medium for all of these works of the flesh. In addition to having direct access to our minds through the implantation of temptations, Satan has been able to leverage technology to sow evil thoughts in to the minds of the masses today. We need to be honest about what is being promoted by the things we are watching.
Everyone knows that the TV is full of women with beautiful faces and bodies, many of whom dress and behave in an alluring way that is calculated to stir up sɛҳuąƖ desire in male viewers. This is so "par-for-the-course" nowadays that people have become desensitized to it. This means, that things have to get sexier and sexier or morally darker and darker all the time in order for the same kind of interest value to be generated in the minds of the viewers. But it is not only adultery, fornication, uncleanness and lewdness that is promoted on TV – it is all the other sins as well. Drama shows feature hatred, unforgiveness, murder, anger, violence, deception, cheating as well as occultism, witchcraft and all kinds of ungodly behaviours. Furthermore, ungodly philosophies that deceive many people and turn them away from the knowledge of God are also promoted. One very popular TV talk host, Oprah Winfrey, frequently promotes "New Age" philosophy relating to eastern meditation, visualisation and a host of other practices that lead a person to trust in themselves or someone else other than Jesus Christ.
Whatever people sow in their minds is going to have an impact down the track, You never know when something you saw or heard years ago will come back to your remembrance and take at least a little bit of your mental focus. It might take a lot more. If this is the case, why allow filth to come into your mind? You wouldn't go running around licking everything in a garbage dump in the search for food for your body – so why go to Satan's spiritual garbage dump to feed your soul? If you answer, "Because it feels good" I have to say to you, "You are a fool." Not everything that feels good IS good. It could lead you to something worse than an early grave. It could lead you to hell itself.
It would be impossible to fully catalogue all the potential evils and dangers of TV watching. But I think it is important to state one major one. TV is often the medium by which unclean sɛҳuąƖ lust is fed and motivated. There are so many programs on TV which feature scantily clad attractive women. Looking on the images of women in order to lust for them is a form of adultery. Jesus said, "Whoever looks at a woman in order to lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart". Most men have committed this sin at one time or another. But when you watch TV or encourage someone else to do so you are risking putting a stumbling block before your eyes. This kind of sin can keep you out of heaven and send you to hell, according to Jesus, so why expose youself to it and risk it?
 
WE HAVE A TASK TO DO and Most TV Watching is a Waste of Time
As Christians, we need to be about our calling, doing it in the strength God supplies, with the power He gives. Most of us have to spend 5-10 hours of the day at least serving society or the needs of our family in some way. We need to sleep and eat as well. The time that remains is very precious, and the way we allocate it says a lot about our TRUE priorities. There are many needs out there, many suffering people, many that are on the path to a fiery hell of endless torment and despair. We have been given power from God to do something about this. So what are we going to do?
There are plenty of needs out there, and only God can show you what your specific calling is. Sometimes we WILL need to have a rest, and have a break from the intensity of it all. How will we do this? There are plenty of ways to relax which do not involve spiritually endangering ourselves. You can exercise, you can go for a walk, you can sing, you can write music or learn an instrument, or a language, or make friends, or play games if you must. You can wait in the presence of the Lord, and pray in tongues – something I think we should all be doing more. If you are going to watch videos, at least YOU should be the one choosing them. Don't passively let some TV executive choose for you what goes into your mind.
The Bible however doesn't put a lot of emphasis on us seeking out the best ways to entertain ourselves. It does say that God gives us richly all things to enjoy (1 Timothy 6:17). But that verse does not mean that all things we enjoy are given by God. It means that many things ARE given by God for us to enjoy. But God did NOT give us the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes and the pride of life to enjoy. The love of the world is not from God.
Because watching TV is so easy and comfortable, and you don't have to be good at anything to do it, many people waste a lot of time with it. We can expect this from unbelievers who may or may not see that there is any REAL PURPOSE to our lives on earth. But Christians are exhorted to "redeem the time, because the days are evil". This means, we need to work out ways to get more eternal results out of the time we have, even if it means spending money and effort to do so.

Title: Re: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: Viva Cristo Rey on February 16, 2022, 05:42:52 PM

KILL YOUR TELEVISION!
by A.C. Staff (http://www.aggressivechristianity.net/articles/bomb.gif)
(http://www.aggressivechristianity.net/articles/killtv.gif)
[size=+2]THE SECRET WEAPON
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[size=+1]The greatest threat to the existence of our society today is not air pollution, or water pollution, but MIND POLLUTION. For the first time in history, man has an instrument through which the masses can be taught and controlled effectively, immediately, and effortlessly. That instrument is TELEVISION, the most devastating brainwashing device ever unleashed upon humanity. To deny that television is a brainwashing tool, teaching and motivating people on a daily basis is to deny reality. In the hands of militant sodomites who have effectively infiltrated all major media, television has proved to be the "secret weapon" in their blatant attempts to capture the youth of the world. [/size][/font][/color]
BLUE NEWS FOR YOU
The television is the devil's instrument and is used for the destruction of the soul, for the erosion of morality and the degradation of nations. Television is bringing the world into bondage. No longer are people energetic and ambitious, but for the most part, they are dupes, robots and zombies, surrendered to the commands of the one-eyed devil. The advent of pornography and rock videos on TV has served to erode the moral fiber of youth even farther. We now have entire generations who have grown up under the commands of the beast -without any real character or moral fiber of their own. These media robots are at all times ready to receive the filth and vileness which is spewed out incessntly through the "family entertainment" of the television set. Many are literally addicted to television and are actually unable to cope without at least one running in the background. Television controls 90% of the average person's thinking and acting, as well as their consuming and spending habits. 
The devil himself knows what an important tool the TV is, for through it he can control and mastermind the deceit of hundreds of thousands of people simultaneously. He is no one's fool when it comes to ensnaring souls, and through cunning craftiness, he brings many into captivity to sin using the innocent guise of entertainment. Countless hours are spent by the average viewer in front of the mesmerizing conglomeration of garbage, and for what? To prove that without direction, people can be taken over, controlled and manipulated easily, and they have! Multitudes have lost their integrity, they have lost their honesty, purity and their willingness to work, all in the name of "entertainment". Millions have become media magnets, stuck to anything the television tells them, ready to believe all of the "nosey news" reports, the scores of "experts" who appear on the screen, and the plastic politicians who always assure everyone that things are under control. 
And of course the Christians have been snared with the rest. Through the spread of "Christian" television networks the enemy has eroded the backbone of the Christain community and has convinced "viewers" that Christianity is just one big party of talk shows, big money, beautiful clothes, singing and swaying girls, rock and roll music, and of course soap opera love affairs. It is one filthy, swirling mess, bringing corrupted values into the body of Christ, creating a fairy-tale fantasy of foolishness whereby the unsuspecting are duped out of their money whilst they are given a fool's gold imitation of Christianity. Persecution, sacrifice, and carrying our cross are never mentioned. And because the palate of the average TV Christian is so dull, they do not realize they are being fed poison, instead they think it's a treat, and they grab it up, convincing themselves how good it is to feed off of lust, greed, covetousness, and gossip... all in the name of the gospel. 
(http://www.aggressivechristianity.net/articles/killtvs2.gif)ELECTRIFIED EVIL!
Needless to say, the devil has moved in through the rock music scene on TV and now, millions are addicted to the filthy videos and live concerts that run 24 hours a day via the idiot box. These videos and concerts are nothing more than images of violence, pornography, perversion, drug abuse, and loud noise, all forms of demonic exposition. As torrents of perverted sɛҳuąƖ demons flow from the TV screen, millions of once intelligent, ambitions youth have become addicted and mindless fools, falling down before the control box daily, receiving their commands and demands, and then living them out. How Satan must delight to see the violence, filth and wickedness being manifested through people who once were strong and alert and carried a high moral standard. TV slaves are innumerable, caught in a hopeless bondage, and if ever a rare individual refuses the television, they are branded as "fanatic" or "foolish" -how could anyone not own a television and not be it's absolute slave? 
YOU'RE PLUGGED IN!!
Television light is purposeful and directed rather than ambient. It is projected into our eyes from behind the screen by cathode-ray guns which are literally aimed at us. These guns are powered by 25,000 volts. The guns shoot electron streams at phosphors on the screen. This makes the phosphors glow, and their light projects from the screen into our eyes. When you watch TV you are not just looking at light; it is more accurate to say that light is projected into you. You are receiving light through your eyes into your body, far enough in to affect your endocrine system. When you are watching TV, you are experiencing something like lines of energy passing from cathode gun to phosphor through your eyes into your body. You are as connected to the television set as your arm would be to the electrical current in the wall if you had stuck a knife in the socket. This is not conducive to your spiritual health! 
ARE YOU BEING BRAINWASHED?
Brainwashing techniques make use of artificial environments which reduce and narrow sensory experience to fit their own new confined reality. The effect and purpose of this narrowing is to increase awareness and focus upon the politics, materialism, entertainment, spectacles and other drugs that society uses to keep us within its boundaries. We can consider TV to be an advanced brainwashing technique. Sitting in darkened rooms, with the natural environment obscured, other humans dimmed out, only the eyes and ears operating, both within a very narrow range, other body function stilled, staring at light for hours and hours, the experience adds up to something nearer to brainwashing than anything that has come before it.
Television isolates people from their environment, from each other, and from their own senses. We know that it is an accepted truth about brainwashing that the subjects are unusually susceptible to suggestion. When you are watching TV you are experiencing mental images, and these mental images are not yours. Because the rest of your capacities have been subdued, and the rest of the world dimmed, these images are likely to have an extraordinary degree of influence. Am I saying that TV is a brainwashing device? YES! There is no question but that someone is speaking into your mind, influencing you to do something. First- Keep watching, Second- Believe what you are told, Third- Buy something.
COMMON REPORTS: SICK, CRAZY, MESMERIZED!!
Here are some common responses of people who watch TV. How many of these have you experienced?? 
1) "I feel hypnotized when I watch TV."
2) "I feel like it's brainwashing me."
3) "TV is an addiction and I'm and addict!"
4) "My kids look like zombies when they're watching TV."
5) "TV is destroying my mind."
6) "If a TV is on, I just can't keep my eyes off of it."
7) "I feel mesmerized by it."
PERMANENT BRAIN DAMAGE
"According to the latest Mental Health Alert poll, an amazing 9 out of 10 people say they actually believe what they see on television to be an accurate representation of reality. Experts agree that results of recent studies show people who watch more TV are prone to paranoia, emotional distress and multiple personality syndrome (MPS). Many report being unable to distinguish between television and real life. Others say they feel like they are being "manipulated", and report almost uncontrollable urges to imitate behavior they have viewed on TV."
TELEVISION -THE SURROGATE PARENT
The surrogate (substitute) parent of American children is the television. The TV has become the governing factor in American homes. The television in it's idiocy has been responsible for the formation of millions of mindless robots who do only what the TV tells them to do. If the TV tells them to eat and they aren't hungry, they eat anyway, if the TV tells them to rebel, and they nothing to rebel about, they do it anyway. The television undoubtedly controls the minds, the habits, the activities of 98% of all Americans. Television addiction is the number one killer of ambition, individuality, loyalty, energy and accomplishment. The television does all, sees all, tells all -and millions of brainwashed dupes sit waiting breathlessly for their next command from the one-eyed ruler of their destiny. 
THE GREAT EDUCATOR
The greatest educator in the world today is not the school, or the church, or even the home. It is the TELEVISION! A youngster who graduates from high school has spent approximately 50% more time in front of the television than in the classroom. The values and morals of the major media networks are diametrically opposed to those of the Christian community. Don't think the forces of evil have been slow to recognize the great opportunity presented by such influence. From its very inception, television has been destined to act as the "unifying force" in the plan to degrade, demoralize, dechristianize and DESTROY humanity. 
HUMANIST VIEW OF SEX
Television is the greatest sex educator, or sex miseducator, in the world. Nowhere is television's anti-Christian, humanist theology more evident than in the area of sex. Sex, according to the networks and Hollywood, is basically an activity one indulges in whenever and wherever one desires. Close monitoring of how sex is handled on the networks easily confirms this. Monitoring done by the Coalition For Better Television of prime-time network television over a five-year period confirms that approximately 80 percent of all allusions to sex are bewteen people not married to each other. In other words, FORNICATION and ADULTERY! 
TV ADDICTION OUT OF CONTROL
Television continues to have an amazing grip on the average person. Studies have shown that the TV is on nearly one-third of each day in the average home and that millions of people say watching the tube is their favorite pastime. In one of the latest studies on TV habits, pollsters ABC, Epcott and A.C. Nielsen revealed that TVs are on more than 7 hours a day in the average American home. Viewers during their daily TV watching are exposed to some 135 commercials. That means that during the course of one year, the average person will have chalked up 2,520 hours of TV viewing including nearly 50,000 commercials. And we wonder why the world has problems! 
NO MORE TABOOS
We must remember and reckon with the fact that TV has brought all the lust, corruption and pornography of modern entertainment right into our living rooms. And many of God's people are only handling this invasion by the enemy with kid gloves instead of an AXE! If we do not think this is a serious consideration, listen to the wise word of warning from Neil Postman of New York University. He says, "What television does is to bring the whole culture out of the closet, because programs need a constant supply of new and exciting stimulation. In its quest for new and sensational ventures to hold its audience, TV must delve into every existing taboo and destroy every moral standard in our culture: ɧoɱosɛҳųαƖity, incest, divorce, fornication, corruption, adultery, occultism, satanism, and terrible displays of violence and sadism...". 
CHRISTIANS AND TELEVISION
When Christians whet their appetites with carnal TV (most of which is geared towards illicit sɛҳuąƖ activity) they are only promoted and provoked towards more ungodliness. Ministers are especially in this hour indulging themselves in the vicarious sins of the smut ridden TV programs, and then sneaking the "sex" videos and magazines into their homes to participate in the more forbidden pleasures. Never before have God's men and women been so far from His holiness in their actions and thought lives. When a minster steeps himself in the filth of the world, how can he honestly minster the clean, pure, holy word of God? How can he reflect the standard of holiness and righteousness after having an orgy in his thought life brought on by pornographic viewing? There is an epidemic in the land among the preachers. They are consumed with pornography and perversion as much as the unsaved. Satan has unleashed hordes of perverse and sɛҳuąƖ spirits upon the land through television in this generation, but Christians, and ministers in particular, are supposed to resist sin, to war against the devil and his hordes and to keep themselves unspotted from the world. Since when does God's word condone any kind of perverse sɛҳuąƖ activity in the name of recreation or entertainment? Christians who insist upon having and viewing televisions are tempting God and allowing themselves and their children to be subject to the very hosts of Hell! 
What about Christian women partaking of an entertainment medium that regularly brings to the television screen promiscuity, adultery, incest, ɧoɱosɛҳųαƖity, endlessly serial marriages, drug abuse, violence and double-dealing of every imaginable variety? What about SOAP OPERAS? Could it be that these dramas -with their ample supply of pre-, extra-, intra- and post-marital sex- are the secret vice of the "traditional family values" gang? After all, with Dad at work and the kids at school, soap operas are the Christian housewife's daytime home companion. Like most of us, the one thing church women know is what they like, and from the shocking reports we've gathered it's surely not all art and Bible stories.
There is a clear border line between things which thrust themselves upon our vision, and things which we choose to look upon. The one is innocence; the other is SIN! So long as we are in the world we cannot escape the first. But unless we "keep doing to death" the second, we will find ourselves daily skirting the edge of the precipice of sin and final downfall.
THE GREAT SOUL EATER
Television is the Devil's tool for destruction and he has no scruples when it comes to what he will use to destroy men's souls, to tear down their moral fortitude and to devastate them through the devices of evil. Since the world has so wholeheartedly embraced television, becoming televison robots, the moral fiber has greatly deteriorated and the result is that men and women, boys and girls have become vegetables who do, act, and say everything which the television implants in their passive, putty-like minds. How unfortunate it is that people are no longer able to discern between good and evil, but only reflect what they have seen on television. We are daily amazed at how perverted people are becoming, and it is because television presents the heroes of our society in such a manner. If you are allowing the TV to eat your soul, stop today and repent. Ask the Lord to free you. Become a vision seeker from God, then you will have a real vision to tell... one which will restore men's souls and not destroy them. 
AFTERNOON AFFAIR -SICK SOAPS
In this generation, there is a plague which is taking it's toll on the moral standards of women, and that plague is the porno-tinged disease known as SOAP OPERAS Soap operas have over the years grown progressively more permissive, more oriented towards the new morality and have implanted into the minds of millions the mentality that promiscuity is okay and that everyone is doing it. The everyday episodes on the soaps convince women that they do not have to maintain fidelity to their husbands but that they should have and "afternoon affair" to add excitement and adventure to their lives. Such nonsense has permeated the average woman's views of sex, fidelity, morality, faithfulness, etc. How many Christian women spend their afternoons absorbed in the "soaps", living vicariously through someone else's sex and love life while neglecting their duties as wives and mothers, and failing to live in the fear of God? 
Many women have been known to quit jobs because those jobs interferred with their soap opera ADDICTION! The devil of course is behind the advent of the soap opera craze, for he knows that as he degrades the morals of women, that they in turn will raise up children who will not know true morality but will have confused values in reference to sɛҳuąƖ immorality because of their own mother's indulgences in "love in the afternoon". But, what is even more amazing is that thousands of Christian women are just as addicted to these filth strips as are the unsaved women. What is it about women which cause them to sacrifice everything to live in front of the soaps? Is it because we have turned into a nation of blinded sex worshippers who will stoop to any level to bow down to our "sex-god idol"? Or, is it because the fiber of our nation has become so corrupted and rotted to the core, that virtuous women are non-existant and a myth of by-gone times? What happened to the women who spent their days in prayer and fastings... are they all dead, only to be replaced by sex-greedy lust queens whose only desire is to live off someone else's sins? Dear Christian women, don't be a soap opera addict and then claim that you love God. If you have the habit, turn from your wickedness and spend your time with the Lord. HE IS WORTHY TO FILL UP OUR DAYS, AND WE NEED TO SEEK HIM. WE WONDER WHY OUR CHILDREN ARE TURNING INTO REBELLIOUS, UNCONTROLLABLE DEMONS BEFORE OUR VERY EYES. IT IS BECAUSE WE ARE REFUSING TO HOLD A PLACE IN THE SPIRIT AND TO FIGHT OFF THE OVERWHELMING FLOODS OF EVIL THAT HAVE BESET US. 
PEEP SHOWS COME HOME
The place of women has traditionally been "keepers at home", unfortunately if any women are left at home these days they have become "peepers at home", constantly feeding off of a diet of vicarious enjoyment through other people's sex lives, personal problems and emotional distress in the form of "Talk Shows". The talk show viewing crowd actually comes from every spectrum of life as viewers are captivated daily by the lust, deceit, outrageous conversations and wicked deeds of the talk show hosts and guests. So enthralled are viewers with the sordid love tales, kinky sex habits and personal vendettas of others that they actually become addicted to this constant diet of mind numbing filth. The last several years have seen an explosion of talk shows, whose hosts become virtual cult leaders as millions worship them daily. As they compete to see who can come up with the newest perversion to shock their audiences, these shows leave no stone unturned. Every sick, kinky, unclean lifestyle becomes a valid topic of conversation, from lesbian love triangles, transvestites modeling underwear and animal sex, to vampires who are addicted to drinking human blood, nothing is too rude, vulgar or dimented for the modern "talk show". Women who do hold jobs even figure out schemes to find out what is happening on their favorite show while they are at work. Some employers have succuмbed to placing televisions in the break rooms in order to satisfy the lust hungry women who are addicted to these enticing tales of sɛҳuąƖ fantasy. 
As more and more men relinquish their places to the liberated ladies, they have submerged and supressed their male nature, with its only outlet being to feed vicariously on the overwhelming amount of violence and tough-guy heros portrayed on TV. Fantasies of murder, robbery, rape, adultery, and destruction of every type find their outlet through TV. The number of shows that promote violence committed against women and the ɧoɱosɛҳųαƖ lifestyle are the devil's panaceas for the frustrated male ego. The men, who have long ago given up any idea of true godly manhood, sit in front of the television, receiving their daily dose of perverted and sadistic cheap thrills. And the devil smirks in glee, for he knows that he has them hopelessly clutched in his claws of destruction. And as the children imitate their parents examples, little do these men realize that their sons won't just watch what they see on TV, but they will do what they see... and the old man will wonder why his son is going to prison, never stopping to consider that the son learned his lessons on his father's knee in front of the television!
THE HOME INVADERS
The Christian community in America and the world faces the greatest threat to its existence in decades. I fully realize how extreme that statement sounds. There is an intentional conspiracy among the handful of people who control the world's media. Their goals are to reshape societies, to control your thoughts and dictate to you what is right and wrong, to replace the Christain view of man as our foundation with the humanist view of man, and to transform everyone into an "economic animal" which they can manipulate and exploit for their financial gain. Television leads the way in this assault because it is by far the most powerful educator in modern society. 
What are the television networks "selling" nowadays? Casual sex, adultery, ɧoɱosɛҳųαƖity, violence, abortion, perversion of every sort, evolution, drugs and alcohol. An antichrist, humanistic philosophy pervades the media -a philosophy that presents Christainity and Christians as stupid relics of the past which should be done away with. Why should we allow the TV to rule in our homes when it delivers nothing but a steady stream of blatantly non-Christian values? When are Christians going to wake up and take action? 
WICKED THINGS BEFORE OUR EYES
God does not want His people to love the things of the world, nor to have the evil before their eyes continually, yet we are living in a generation when people who are professing to be Christians are literally television addicts and they will fight loudly and with great zeal to defend their idol, the TV. We are amazed as we go forward in the Lord at the endless complaints that have come against us as a ministry for our stand against television, movies and worldly music, all of which are forms of worldliness and take the Christian away from the Lord and His holiness. How stupid is the average Christian to subject themselves to endless hours of "bloob-tube" watching -taking in all the filth, the vileness, the corruptedness of Sodom. Then the same Christian(?) will mumble a half-hearted prayer to God and wonders if He will hear. Of course He won't hear, for God's word tells us that the Lord hears the prayers of the consistently righteous, not the corrupted and purposely vile unrighteous, who are claiming the Lord's name but at the same time living in filthy degredation in front of the ungodly television. Millions of people slurp down the television garbage like a bunch of hogs feeding in a trough and then go drunkenly on their way, believing that the television could never lie. Oh, how stupid, dull and fat of heart we have become, when men who call themselves ministers spend their time in front of the pornographic beast and take that to be truth instead of spending their time before the Living God and letting Him pinpoint the sins in their own lives that they could walk uprightly before God and lead others in the way. Everyone these days is more concerned with having a good television and satellite dish than with having a conscience which is right before God. 
The word of God tells us that whoremongers, adulterers, thieves, fearful, and drunkards (to name only a few) will not enter into the Kingdom of God. If professing Christians are constantly in front of the TV, watching and enjoying these sins, as committed by the actors, then they, the viewers, are becoming a part of the defiled filth, they are partaking of other mens' sins and they will become the filth. It is only too obvious that those who are glued to the tube are NOT GOING TO ENTER INTO THE KINGDOM OF GOD. The Bible says that the righteous shall scarcely be saved, that means those who are in right standing with God. So one can obviously conclude that those who are spending hours before the television idol will not enter into the Kingdom of God. They have made their choice by inviting the hosts of Hell into their homes through the television set. Christians, stop being dupes! Don't you realize that the television is one of Satan's most expert weapons to bring first of all your mind, then your heart, and finally your body into captivity to sin? 

"Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world." I John 2:15-16
WILLINGLY DECEIVED!
We deceive ourselves willingly when we want to partake of sins that God has taught us we must renounce. Take for example the abomination called TELEVISION which is found in 99% of all so-called "Christian" homes. We become deceived when we convince ourselves that we can control our viewing habits and watch only the "good shows" when PURE EVIL is only a channel away. THERE ARE NO GOOD SHOWS ON TELEVISION! If you claim to be a child of God, and you indulge in television, be it known unto you that you are partaking of an ABOMINATION, and God will judge you accordingly. You can't commit "just a little sin". Either you sin or you don't sin, it is a black and white issue, there are no grey areas, there is no middle ground. Destroy that satanic brainwashing device called TV before you reach the point of no return. Don't become just another TV SLAVE! Get radical, get revolutionary, GET RID OF YOUR TV TODAY!
A VERY REAL THREAT
Television is a very real threat to our spiritual life because our eyes are gateways to our spirit. It opens our spirits to the many voices of the world which can crowd out the Lord's voice. Why are so many people blinded and bound by television? It is the same spirit that Eve surrendered to in the garden. Genesis 3:6, "When the woman saw that the tree...was pleasant to the eyes..." The LUST OF THE EYES is a powerfully curious and destructive enemy of righteousness. TV openly and completely contradicts Philippians 4:7-8, "And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds, through Christ Jesus." TV subtly establishes a carnal and worldly standard of values in the mind of every viewer. 
BUT WHAT ABOUT THE KIDS?
I know that television can be a baby sitter that will free the parent from close supervision. I know that it is easier to turn children over to the clutches of the television than it is to create a wholesome activity for them. I know that it is easier to yield to the pressures of: 1) the neighbors all have one, so why not me? and 2) my children will grow up to be backward and slow in their studies, and 3) they will resent me in the future for not providing them with a television. But I have found that none of these arguments stand up to the TRUTH. 1) There are many things the neighbors do that I don't wany my children to do. 2) I have found that a lack of television is no impediment to children's scholastic achievement or sociological development. 3) Children usually do not resent parents not having a television if they feel that they are sincere. I cannot shirk my responsibility as a parent. I can't afford to have a TV. 
DO YOU WANT TO EAT POISON?
Through modern media millions of "Christians" are eating garbage. They're eating poison and it's killing them. They're eating darkness, they're eating death, they're eating destruction. They're eating violence, filth and perversion in great quantities, and then they wonder why they don't feel good, they wonder why they don't feel God. What do you expect when you eat poison? Are you going to feel good? Take a spoonful of poison in the morning and see how you feel for the rest of the day. Yet invariably, "Christians" expect to feel just fine after slurping down huge amounts of electric poison that pours in through their TV sets. 
How many "Christians" turn on the TV in the morning, watch the early morning news, get sick, watch the early morning talk show, get sicker, go to work and listen to a constant stream of witchcraft, lust and vileness called "music", come home and plop down in front of the TV again and eat garbage until it's time to go to bed? And if the women don't work, they stay home and watch all the talk shows, soap operas, and game shows during the day, partaking of all the filth and vileness you could ever ask for. Then on church night they go to church and for some reason they just don't feel quite so lively. Oh-oh they don't feel so good. Oh-oh, what do you want when you eat poison? What do you expect?
Now, if instead of vegetating in front of the television, those Christians would spend the same amount of time in prayer and fasting, in seeking God, obeying God, in doing something for others, denying themselves, in fighting against sin, writing something spiritual, in doing something, anything, that pertains to the Kingdom of God, they would have some life, and they would be a light to those around them, and they would feel a whole lot better. They would have some radiant glory coming from them because they had been with God, and people would look upon them and see that they were a Christian and not a stinking phony. 
TV -ONE OF LIFE'S BASIC NECESSITIES?
Television is an accepted part of the modern world. The poorest pauper often owns a TV. His dwelling may be a tent, a tar-paper shack, or a vermin infested tenement house, but there is usually a television. The family may not own a car or have a bathtub, but they must have a television. The children may not have clothes, the baby may not have milk, the husband may not have a job, the mother may not have medical attention --but they have a television. 
In a society where a television has become a basic necessity instead of a personal luxury, a person who says he does not have a television is regarded incredulously and sometimes with suspicion. What kind of a person would not have a television? He is considered some sort of maladjusted freak who would admit such a nonconformity to the ideals of society. He is accused of being woefully ignorant of world events, culturally deprived, and guilty of "child abuse" because he is causing his children to miss one of life's "choicest blessings". 
TELEVISION VIOLATES THREE IMPORTANT PRINCIPLES
1. PRINCIPLE OF VISION
"I will set no wicked thing before mine eyes: I hate the work of them that turn aside; it shall not cleave to me." Psalm 101:3
"Then said I unto them, Cast ye away every man the abominations of his eyes,and defile not yourselves with the idols of Egypt: I am the Lord your God" Ezekiel 20:7 
2. PRINCIPLE OF AFFECTION AND VALUES
"If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God. Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth." Colossians 3:1,2 
3. PRINCIPLE OF LIGHT AND DARKNESS
"Be ye not uneqully yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? And what communion hath light with darkness? And what concord hath Christ with Belial? Or what part hath he that believeth with an infidel?" 2 Corinthians 6:14,15 
" And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them." Ephesians 5:11 
ARE YOU A MEDIA GUINEA PIG??
"A recent study has shown that a regular diet of TV viewing can have extremely adverse effects on laboratory animals. In one experiment where groups of mice and rats were subjected to continual viewing of typical day time talk shows, the animals quickly developed signs of insanity and began exhibiting bizarre and abnormal breeding habits. Another group of monkeys which were subjected to major network Sitcoms became extremely depressed and refused to eat. An interesting phenomena was noted in the test group that was subjected to nothing but commercials. These mice began consuming anything and everything in their cages until they could no longer move. All groups tested exhibited detrimental physical effects such as vomiting, diareah, blurred vision and hair loss. The most devastating results were seen in the test using a mix of country western and rock music videos at high volume. The animals in this group became severly debilitated, comatose, and several deaths were reported. Numerous instances of cannibalism and clearly suicidal behavior were also observed in this group." 

KILL YOUR TELEVISION!
TV has contributed more than any other single thing to the rapid demoralization and degradation of the world. It is a powerful demonic force designed to damn your soul. TV is not acceptable entertainment for Christians, infact it delivers a non-stop flow of sin, sickness and death directly into your home. The entire television industry is controlled by sodomites, drug addicts and antichrist people. They may dress nicely, smile, speak intelligently and convine you that they really care, but be not decieved they are nothing more than robots who work for the media beast! Behind the scenes they partake of every imaginable evil that is MODERN MEDIA, and when you watch TV you are condoning their sick perverted lifestyles. There is only one way to stop its influence and renounce its control over your life. GET RID of every televison you own today. Don't wait, KILL YOUR TELEVISION before it kills you! 

HOW TO STOP THE PLAGUE!
THE ONLY WAY TO STOP THE PLAGUE IS TO REFUSE THE BAIT... SMASH THE TEMPTATION... THROW YOUR TELEVISION OUT THE DOOR, KICK IT DOWN THE STAIRS, THEN ASK GOD TO CLEANSE YOUR HEART AND YOUR MIND OF IT'S FILTH BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE. DO IT TODAY! DON'T SIT BEFORE THE TV AND PRAY, BUT GET RID OF THE CURSED OBJECT, THEN GOD WILL HEAR YOU WHEN YOU PRAY AND HE WILL DIRECT YOUR LIFE!

Title: Re: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: Emile on February 16, 2022, 05:50:17 PM
Your postings, Viva, reminded me of the work of Fr. Poncelet:

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1949849.Air_waves_from_hell

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1949848.Television

There used to be a newsletter and website, Our Lady's apostolate for no tv, but sadly it seems to no longer exist.

Title: Re: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: Viva Cristo Rey on February 16, 2022, 06:02:40 PM
Thanks, Emile.  


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« on: April 01, 2011, 08:22:18 AM »


This thread is to begin a series of excerpts and comments on the spiritual benefits on giving up television, and how there can be and normally are moral requirements that this be done.

I'll be drawing from basic Catholic moral teaching, the work of Fr. Frank Poncelet, who founded Our Lady's Apostolate of No TV, and many other sources, including some recent saints as well as past.

If one expects the saints of all ages to have little to say about this matter, one would be wrong. The fundamental morality and spiritual law they express deals with it directly, and so too there is their spiritual condemnation even after their departure from this earth.. But too.. there what might not be expected, prophecies, and further..

For example, I read that Padre Pio would forbid people to have television sets. 

And I have heard it said, though I have little information about this, that St. Elizabeth Ann Seton had a vision in which she saw a black box in every American home, through which the devil entered. 

I think some of the people here who love these saints might appreciate knowing this.

And we'll be avoiding dealing with specific secular material on TV, for a variety of reasons, including the general immorality, but also because this is a discussion forum for spiritual topics not secular. For the holy, not the profane. So we won't be dealing with specific television shows normally, we won't be discussing them. We won't be trying to discern about this particular show or that particular show.

Letting that which is impure and immodest not so much as even be named among Christians. (cf. Ephesians 5:3)

For spiritual health, for all Catholics without regard, it's generally best to give up movies and television entirely.

To quote a priest..

"A priest's primary duty is to save souls; he is responsible for prevailing moral atttitudes in his parish and specifically for the salvation of his parishioners' souls. . . The priest, then must come to an honest recognition of the primary avenue to the destruction of souls in his Catholic homes, as that window to the world of immorality -- the television set. And he must continually point out to his parishioners that acceptance of TV entertainment is simply not compatible with the Christian life of spirituality."

"The disintegration of real Catholic culture has been a slow process begun two generations back. It happens to be co-incident with the degradation of TV fare, which began its downward slide with the inception of the medium, and accelerated that trend at a precipitous rate from the 1960s onward."

"Thanks to the constant depiction -- in an entertainment mode -- of immoral acts. . . presentations once considered scandalous, perverse, and unfit for consideration by self-respecting people, now pass for commonplace, acceptable fare even among those claiming religious convictions."

"Such programming is often criticized mildly as being crude, in bad taste, or even as awful -- but hardly ever is it called sinful."

"James Drummey, in a recent question/answer column in The Wanderer wrote "Even the best intentioned Catholics can become desensitized. . . if they watch these portrayed on televisions in a favorable light, night after night in their own homes."

"We cannot hide from basic Catholic moral laws forever. And the sins that are most easily committed, and which involve most "grievous matter" are also the sins most exploited on television -- those against chastity and purity."

Fr. Frank Poncelet

People who give up television and movies, normally see a gigantic leap forwards in their spiritual lives. People caught in ruts, spinning their wheels, making slow to no progress -- give up the television.. And grace returns.

Spiritual progress becomes possible again. And there's a reason for this.

Give it up.. replace it with something, anything good.. And you'll see results.

Our entertainment media, in all forms, is full of troubles.. We have to limit it severely, even what little of it is truly innocent. Again, Fr. Poncelet:


"The Lord's day -- not only is Mass attendance required, but other forms of religious activity must be planned. And, we might say, spiritual "togetherness" in the family is expected."

"Relaxing in the evening, hours spent in front of the "tube" are just not compatible with Our Lord's expectations from a Catholic family or an individual's home."

"For all of us, even morally permissible entertainment is expected to be limited. Leisure does not mean being constantly entertained."

"Planning is necessary in order to live each day with its spiritual relationship to God, because such promises were made at our Baptism and renewed in Confirmation."

Fr. Frank Poncelet

Title: Re: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: Viva Cristo Rey on February 16, 2022, 06:27:37 PM
Maybe some one can start a new traditional Catholic ministry.  
Title: Re: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: Viva Cristo Rey on February 19, 2022, 03:06:20 PM
Note to me:  no more tv including Grit. 
Title: Re: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: Alan on April 16, 2022, 01:31:13 AM
Hello Matthew, 

Excellent article??
Where is the article? :confused: 
I couldn't find any article in your post. 
Or is it just my mistake?

Alan
Title: Re: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: Viva Cristo Rey on April 18, 2022, 03:18:38 PM
https://youtu.be/zGFl3KspaA0
Title: Re: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: Polymath on July 31, 2022, 10:47:08 AM
Hello Matthew,

Excellent article??
Where is the article? :confused:
I couldn't find any article in your post.
Or is it just my mistake?

Alan

I can’t find it, either.  Can someone upload it or post a link?
Title: Re: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: Nadir on July 31, 2022, 11:37:15 PM
I can’t find it, either.  Can someone upload it or post a link?
Quite a few newbies have asked the same question, Polymath. I believe it is lost forever. This is a very old thread and things get taken down(disappear into the black hole) from time time time.
Title: Re: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: trad123 on August 01, 2022, 12:08:23 AM
I can’t find it, either.  Can someone upload it or post a link?


https://rense.com/general63/traid.htm



How Television Controls
And Programs Minds
Turn Off Your Television

By L. Wolfe
3-14-5

Title: Re: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: trad123 on August 01, 2022, 05:49:55 PM
Besides the article that Matthew provided, I remember reading this one years ago:


The Stranger

https://cmri.org/articles-on-the-traditional-catholic-faith/the-stranger/


Title: Re: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: Viva Cristo Rey on August 08, 2022, 02:53:27 PM
Satan's Family Altar called TV


Anton LaVey was the founder of the Church of Satan.  He died on October 30th, 1997, and unfortunately, because God's church is the sleeping giant, LaVey's followers and his agenda to desensitize Christians through the media, lives on.
Here are some astonishing quotes of his;
 
"The Tv set (is the) Satanic family altar."

"Television is the major mainstream infiltration for the new satanic religion."

"It should be brought out that we not only condone, but encourage all types of what would be called sɛҳuąƖ perversity and deviations because we feel that in a few short years it will be established that everyone is a sɛҳuąƖ deviant and pervert.

In the Satanic Bible, "LaVey  explained that he was moved to establish the Church of Satan when he saw the need for a church that would "recapture man's body and carnal desires as objects of celebration." 

"The Church of Satan preaches a religious system that endeavors to overcome the repressions and inhibitions of human instinctual behavior it believes has been fostered by the ʝʊdɛօ-Christian tradition."

The Church of Satan directly attacks all the Christian principles which this country was founded upon.

Through television, Internet, and various forms of media, the Church of Satan is winning the war, but only if we let it.

 
Daniel J DeNoon WebMD from the article 
Media Exposure Linked to Child, Teen Health, Behavior Problems says,
"When the researchers looked at kids who said their parents strongly disapproved of them having sex, those who watched more than two hours of television a day were 70 percent more likely to have sex. And if sex-disapproving parents didn't monitor their teens' TV viewing, more than two hours a day of TV upped a teen's odds of sɛҳuąƖ initiation by 250 percent."
The study by The Parents Television Council, titled "Happily Never After" finds that television broadcast networks depict sex within marriage as "either non-existent or burdensome while showing positive depictions of extra-marital or adulterous sɛҳuąƖ relationships with alarming frequency." 

"These study results suggest that many in Hollywood are actively seeking to undermine marriage by consistently showing it in a negative manner," said Tim Winter, president of the PTC, in a release. 

He goes on to say that in addition to its mostly negative portrayal of marriage, television has also become a stage for sɛҳuąƖ expression that would have been unacceptable less than a generation ago. 

Those include, according to the survey, threesomes, partner swapping, pedophilia, necrophilia, bestiality and sex with prostitutes. 

Add to that depictions of strippers, references to masturbation and sex toys, and television has created the perfect storm to blast away the last remnants of family values in Hollywood, the report suggests. 

Winter said the phenomenon will undoubtedly influence the values of future generations." You can read the full article at;
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20080806/TV_sex_AM_080806?s_name=&no_ads (http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20080806/TV_sex_AM_080806?s_name=&no_ads)
Satan is very clear about his agenda, but Christians are swimming in a pot of poisonous complacency that is slowly but surely taking over the hearts and minds of God's army , rendering them powerless.. 

There is not a chance of winning this war when the army of God keeps giving Satan a foothold into their hearts and minds.  It is time for a Holy Revolution!

Title: Re: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: Viva Cristo Rey on August 08, 2022, 03:01:10 PM
https://www.monitor.co.ug/uganda/magazines/life/roving-eye-often-times-the-tv-becomes-a-little-god-on-an-altar--1480750
Title: Re: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: Polymath on August 08, 2022, 04:57:56 PM
You might like a poem I wrote called “TV Bubble” — a true story!

I passed three houses in a row,
The men like snakes charmed by the game.
The windows I jogged past would show
The footage on each screen the same.
One picture hung in many a mind,
And here I’ve just one trouble:
Since I don’t watch, I’ve been maligned
As “living in a bubble!”
Title: Re: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: Viva Cristo Rey on August 08, 2022, 09:08:16 PM
Cool poem.  

Go to a nursing home years ago,  EWTN would be on most channels.  





Title: Re: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: Polymath on October 26, 2022, 02:04:13 PM
One more thought I had: this thread was starred 15 years ago, but since then, things have changed.  It seems that these days, television isn’t the main problem anymore.  Now it’s smartphones.
Title: Re: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: HolyAngels on October 26, 2022, 03:57:00 PM
Morals in the US begin deteriorating greatly in the 50s. In the early forties only 1% of households had a television. By 1955 75% did. 

Go figure.

Title: Re: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: HolyAngels on October 26, 2022, 09:38:34 PM
One more thought I had: this thread was starred 15 years ago, but since then, things have changed.  It seems that these days, television isn’t the main problem anymore.  Now it’s smartphones.
Good point. Android zombies abound.
Title: Re: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: AnthonyGiarrusso on March 07, 2023, 08:40:24 PM
I haven't watched TV since I was in middle school. I stopped watching in the 2006-2008 Era.
Title: Re: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: Viva Cristo Rey on March 11, 2023, 07:17:43 PM
https://tinyurl.com/32rwwn7x
Title: Re: Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read!
Post by: Viva Cristo Rey on March 27, 2023, 01:46:00 PM
"On August 29th, 1968, all the televisions in America were shut down. There was a murmuring on the TV that some believe was the devil's voice. The televisions were off for about 25 seconds. No one knows what the issue was and no one knows what the sound was from the TVs."