(Editor's Note: See here Parts 1, 2 and 3 of Mr. Culbreath's feature: “Moral Content of Television and Film,” “Information Content of Television,” and “The Neurological Effects of Television“.)
I once asked a visiting seminarian, whom everyone suspected of a secret piety, about the prospects for restoration in the Church. He replied that the answer may be deceptively simple: it may be as easy as Catholics turning off their televisions. John Senior expresses the same opinion in his book “The Restoration of Christian Culture”. He writes:
“First, negatively, smash the television set. The Catholic Church is not opposed to violence, only to unjust violence, so smash the television set. And, positively, put the time and money you now spend on entertainment into a piano so that music is restored to your home: common, ordinary Christian music, much of which is very simple to play … And then families will be together at home of an evening and love will grow again without thinking about it, because they are moving in harmony together … But first, you cannot be serious about the restoration of the Church and the nation if you haven’t the common sense to smash the television set … It is not a matter of selecting the best programs, influencing producers and advertisers or starting your own network. Its two principal defects are its radical passivity, physical and imaginative, and its distortion of reality. Watching it, we fail to exercise the eye, selecting and focusing detail — what poets call noticing things; neither do we exercise imagination as you must in reading metaphor where you actively leap to the ‘third thing’ in juxtaposed images, picking out similarities and differences, skills which Aristotle says is a chief sign of intelligence.”
Television is detrimental to the spiritual life because it trains the mind and the will in a negative way. Meditation, for instance, comes only with difficulty to souls that have been formed by thousands of hours of television viewing. Recall that television viewing plunges the viewer into a hypnotic-like trance. Television, like hypnosis, does not demand that viewers supply anything from within themselves. By contrast, the practice of meditation requires that images and suggestions be generated internally. Professional hypnotists have observed that people good at meditation are the most difficult to hypnotize because they so easily generate their own material.
It is a common practice for many families to leave the television going even when no one is watching. As a result, television has become one of the many devices that people use to avoid silence. This fear of silence — this addiction to noise — is one of the more bizarre characteristics of modern man. Artificial noise permeates the outside world. Rare is the business lobby that does not have a television blaring. Rare is the jogger without headphones. Music is even piped into public restrooms! Some commentators have said that our addiction to noise is a flight from conscience, and I think this is true. In silence, we are left alone with ourselves and there is a danger that our consciences may speak to us. That is why silence is enforced in monasteries: the saints all repent in silence.
The Catholic home should be a refuge from this madness. Many times my family has entertained guests who have told us, “Your home is so peaceful!” That seemed a very odd compliment. I mean, our kids were running around and bouncing off the walls and making all kinds of racket. My wife was making all kinds of noise in the kitchen. Then it occurred to me: our guests were not used to being in a home without the background noise of television or radio. That is what gave them a sense of peace!
The average American watches four hours of television per day: that’s four hours in which the average American could be praying, reading good books, reading out loud to his children, talking with his wife, listening to classical music, or just smoking his pipe in silence. One John Senior reminds us of the Catholic obligation to prayer:
“There are three degrees of prayer. The first, of the consecrated religious, is total. They pray always, according to the counsel of Our Lord. Their whole life is the Divine Office, Mass, spiritual reading, mental prayer, devotions and the minimum work necessary to maintain physical health. They pray eight hours, sleep eight hours and divide the other eight between physical work and recreation. The second degree is the mixed life in the active orders and the secular priesthood, which is still primarily devoted to prayer. These pray four hours, sleep eight, work eight — preaching, teaching, caring for the sick and poor — and have four hours for recreation. The third degree is for those in the married state (or single life) who offer a tithe of their time for prayer — about two and one-half hours per day — with eight hours for work, eight for sleep and the remaining five and a half for recreation with the family.
“Everyone will say at once it can’t be done. That is what I meant when I said that the first thing said about prayer is that we don’t have time for it. But the reason why we don’t is that priests don’t lead the way by praying four hours every day, and monks and nuns don’t lead them by keeping the vigils of the night. We are suffering from the domino effect. Every layman owes his tithe of prayer — two and one-half hours per day!”
How did the Catholics of days gone by accomplish this? I don’t know. Even without television I have found many other ways to avoid my tithe of prayer. But the man without television has one less excuse. He is more likely to get to a weekday mass. He is more likely, at the very least, to pray his beads every day. He is more likely to pick up some spiritual reading. He is more likely, in the silence, to hear the stirrings of his conscience, and to give his silence to God.
Jeff Culbreath resides in Sacramento, California, with his wife and three children. The Culbreaths attend St. Stephen's Catholic Church, and are expecting their fourth child in February.
