Media Culture & Compromise Undermining Christian Life

Quite a few blogs have picked up this story:

7 May. CNA (Catholic News Agency) quotes Archbishop of Denver, Charles J. Chaput as saying that "Catholics are losing the habits on which they have traditionally relied because of “vanity and compromise”.

The archbishop had mentioned this in a speech at the American Bible Society in New York the day before.

A few points that caught my eye:

• “The American news and entertainment media, which now so often overlap, are the largest catechetical syndicate in history,”.

• ..."the media has helped create a culture based on “immediacy, brevity, visual stimulation, celebrity and self-absorption,” he warned this has great implications for the Christian’s place in American society.

• “The more sensory, immediate and emotional our culture becomes, the farther it gets from the habits of serious thought that sustain its ideals.”

• As a remedy, he advised Catholics to give up computers, televisions, cell phones, and iPods for “just one night” a week.

• “One night a week spent reading, talking with each other, listening to each other and praying over Scripture. We can at least do that much. And if we do, we’ll discover that eventually we’re sober again and not drunk on technology and our own overheated appetites.”

Full text at CNA.

It may have been an American archbishop talking primarily about an American problem in an American city to an American crowd but, thanks to rapid globalization, this is a real concern in many places, including back home here in Malaysia.

Talking about vanity and compromise, the 1997 thriller/horror movie "The Devil's Advocate" starring Keanu Reeves and Al Pacino throws up an intriguing plot in which the Devil's character, John Milton, played by Pacino mentions: "Vanity...definitely my favorite sin".

Wikipedia defines "Vanity" as: "The excessive belief in one's own abilities or attractiveness to others. In many religions vanity is considered a form of self idolatry, in which one rejects God for the sake of one's own image, and thereby becomes divorced from the graces of God.

Whereas, in his seminal book "Jesus Today - A Spirituality of Radical Freedom", Dominican priest Fr. Albert Nolan analyzes contemporary culture and the challenges that face us in the new millennium. His unerring "reading" of the signs of our times today, leading to an in-depth exploration of Jesus' spirituality which calls for a personal transformation and culminating in being able to live radically free with God, ourselves, others and the Universe is a fitting explanation of all that's gone wrong with us and how things can be put right again.

After the first few pages, it had me hooked....all the jigsaw puzzles seem to fall into place, the questions that have been bothering me answered. You would have to read it to appreciate its sheer beauty.

Fr. Nolan's book is available at most Catholic bookstores and online, here.

Closer to home, I overheard this remark a few years ago: "At one time our Catholic homes had altars up on the walls, now they've come down to the display cabinet - in the shape of the TV and its sidekick - the satellite dish!" Couldn't be more true - just take a look around! Maybe it's time we gave Archbishop Chaput's urge to give up TV one day a week a real go.

Finally, I read this somewhere on the Internet:

A stranger knocks upon a parent's house and asks:

"Could I spend some time alone with your child?"

"No way", comes the immediate reply.

"Why not?" asks the man.

"Because I don't know you and wouldn't yet trust your intentions".

Well said.

We do that because we know what is right for the child. Yet curiously, we let another kind of stranger - the TV - with its unknown intentions, on a hundred channels, with all kinds of conflicting messages, to come into our homes everyday, every week, every year, year after year, and let it influence our childrens' lives without so much as batting an eye!

I hope Archbishop Chaput's message gets broadcast everywhere. It's a timely reminder for all of us.