Be Radical: Ditch the Telly

It's probably quite obvious by now that your two blogmeisters are a pair of weirdos. Yes, indeed. What proves it is that between us we do not own a single television. Fr Richard has traded his television in for having a whole cinema to himself. The white painted rectangle on the wall of the sitting room at Mother of Grace house is there because the room has been converted into the "Cinema of Grace", showing new culture films to all who take an interest, using DVD player plus projector. Meanwhile, at Newman House, yours truly has got rid of all the technophernalia which filled my old parish sitting room, and I now have no visual media intrusions.

I see that we're not alone. In the latest (online) version of Good News magazine - the in house journal of Charismatic Renewal in this country - the ubiquitous Kristina Cooper says she has ditched her telly too. Here in summary are her reasons (full version here):

1. TV has become the faithful friend which airbrushes God out.


2. Watching TV makes me selfish.


3. God is not very manifest in western TV culture.


4. Attachment to comfort - eg TV - gets in the way of getting closer to God.


5. Giving up TV is a personal challenge.


6. It makes space for God.

At the moment I'm spending a lot of time at home with my mother, as my sister is very ill and is a cause for concern. Being back in a house with television reminds me what I'm missing. Last night I went channel hopping, only to find 'Big Brother' was watching me. No. I had not been transported to a house full of racist loud-mouthed self-obsessives. But they - and endless commentary on them - had been transported into the living room. How could I escape it? One simple answer...the standby button. I find the fact that so many people spend so much time talking about what happens on the television to such an extent that it governs the way they think, governs the agenda for their conversations, and even takes over what they read in the newspapers, is not only nauseating, but very alarming. It's as though people's lives are so boring that they feel the need to live someone else's life - soap star, reality prog do nothing celebrity, latest X-Idol talent vacuum victim - vicariously to make their own more interesting. And if that were not enough, the media ideologues use this gogglebox to promote whatever 'values' or 'anti-values' they have in season. So, it is now impossible to have a news item on extreme weather conditions without the follow on of an indoctrinating item on climate change. Now, I accept that we our selfishness is causing the climate to change, but I find it disturbing that the 'new orthodoxy' being preached at every available opportunity disturbing. What is worse is when every scientific "advance" in, for example, embryology research is followed by heart-tugging scenes of the people with incurable illnesses who will no longer suffer once the law has been pushed even further into the culture of death. Strange that the thousands of embryonic human lives sacrificed on the altar of embryo stem cell 'harvesting' have produced no significant medical advance, except the inflation of the egos of the high priests of play God science.

Yes, it looks like I'm on a rant again...well if the cap fits... So do the decent thing. Ditch the telly. You'll find so much time for other things. Like creating your own New Evangelisation blog. I wonder how many of the saints would have achieved the establishment of new orders in the Church, the renewal of the Church in every age, and their own personal holiness if they had had television wasting their precious wakeful hours. No? Well it's hardly going to bring about your holiness either.