The Church should revive the practice of setting
aside one Sunday each year
to address the issue of decency in entertainment.

Decency in entertainment:
The Church's role

By Geraldine Stafford

n In a recent article regarding the media's negative impact on today's youth, Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Ellen Goodman observed: "Mothers and fathers are expected to screen virtually every aspect of their children's lives. To check the ratings on the movies, to read labels on the CD's, to find out if there's MTV in the house next door . . . . Americans once expected parents to raise their children in accordance with the dominant cultural messages. Today they are expected to raise their children in opposition. Once the chorus of cultural values was full of ministers, teachers, neighbors, leaders. Now the messengers are Madonna, rap groups and celebrities pushing sneakers."

Today's parents are faced with the difficult challenge of raising their children to be honest, responsible and law-abiding citizens while messages conveyed by the entertainment industry often undermine the religious and moral values they are trying to instill. In their efforts to counteract the impact of morally offensive entertainment, most parents receive little or no support from traditional sources.

The stay-at-home moms who once looked after each other's children have become an endangered species as more and more mothers opt to work outside the home. Teachers used to reinforce traditional values. Now many of them promote amoral sex education and views which undermine parents' religious beliefs and values.

Politicians criticize the media for glorifying violence and illicit sex but have done little to solve the problem of media pollution. And many clergymen remain strangely silent about entertainment which promotes immorality and portrays religion in a negative and sometimes blasphemous manner.

Should parents have to fight media pollution alone? Shouldn't all Americans, and especially those in positions of moral and religious leadership, do what they can to restore decency in entertainment?

In the September 1994 issue of American Family Journal, Bishop Robert J. Carlson, at the time auxiliary bishop of St. Paul and Minneapolis, wrote: "If we had to put our finger on a single force that has caused so much change resulting in today's lack of morals and values, it is indeed television and the silence of the Church to oppose the media-many of whose producers have either fallen away from their Jewish or Christian beliefs or have chosen to ignore them in their quest for profit." He stated that "over the years the one-eyed monster-television-has been very willing to take on a silent 2,000-year-old Church and bring it to the point of crisis. We have become too complacent, too silent."

Bishop Carlson also noted that 375 of the 614 movies rated by the Motion Picture Association of America in 1991 received an R or X, or its replacement, NC-17, while only 14 were rated G. He indicated that the collapse of the Legion of Decency led to the increase in the number of morally offensive movies since "producers were left to police themselves-sort of like leaving the fox in the henhouse."

For many years the Legion of Decency served as a trustworthy guide for Catholics in their choice of movies. Every year Catholics pledged to avoid films which were morally offensive. When the Legion of Decency was phased out in the 1960s, Catholics were no longer encouraged to avoid movies and TV shows which presented immoral lifestyles as valid options. No longer were they informed of their obligation to avoid near occasions of sin.

Since the demise of the Legion of Decency, the United States Catholic Conference's Department of Communications has rated movies, but its ratings system has proved to be an emasculated replacement for the stalwart Legion of Decency. Consider the rating it gave to Priest, a movie which film critic Michael Medved said "displays the most profound hostility to the Catholic Church that I have seen in the last 15 years of reviewing movies." Priest, which featured nudity, vulgar language and gay sex, received an innocuous A-IV rating (for adults, with reservations). According to the USCC, an A-IV rating "designates certain films that while not morally offensive in themselves, require caution, and some analysis and explanation."

Not morally offensive? Cardinal O'Connor said Priest is "as viciously anti-Catholic as anything that has ever rotted on the silver screen."

The rating given to Priest reflects the spirit of permissiveness and the negative attitude toward the magisterium that have permeated the Church in the United States during the last two decades. Instead of discouraging the making of movies like Priest, the USCC's rating encourages the entertainment industry to produce more of the same kind of morally offensive films.

In order to command the attention and respect of Catholics looking for a trustworthy guide for today's movies, the USCC's rating system needs to be revamped. Stricter guidelines should be used in appraising current films. Movies which promote immoral lifestyles or seriously undermine respect for legitimate authority should not receive a rating that indicates they are suitable for Catholic Christians.

Those responsible for ratings like the one given to Priest would no doubt object to stricter guidelines. They would probably argue that mature Catholics should be able to view such movies without harm. Isn't it very likely, however, that the widespread disregard for the Church's teachings on such issues as divorce, premarital sex and abortion, and many of the recent scandals involving priests are at least in part due to indulgence in morally offensive entertainment by those who consider themselves mature adults?

In their recently published book, Handbook of Christian Apologetics, authors Peter Kreeft and Ronald Tacelli, philosophy professors at Boston University, observe that "Many adults in our culture are psychologically still adolescents, for we live in a youth culture, not one that respects old age, tradition or wisdom."

It also can be argued that even those adults who wouldn't be affected by morally offensive films should still refrain from seeing them since their patronage of such films will encourage the making of more such trash.

Along with a return to stricter guidelines for films, the Church should also revive the practice of setting aside one Sunday each year to address the issue of decency in entertainment. The feast of Christ the King would be an excellent time to confront what is arguably the most morally destructive influence in our culture-indecent entertainment. By challenging the glorification of violence and illicit sex in movies, television shows and hard rock music, the Church can provide the leadership that is needed to further Christ's kingdom on earth.

Catholic Christians need to stand up and be counted as true followers of Christ. By supporting wholesome entertainment and by avoiding entertainment that promotes actions contrary to Christ's teachings, they will show an increasingly cynical world that they are not just Christians in name only. By taking a stand for decency they will be helping fulfill the words they say in the Our Father: "Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven."

When leaders of the entertainment industry see that the Catholic community is united in its opposition to media pollution, they will begin to "clean up their act" if they want to continue making profits. And if Catholics unite their efforts with those of other faiths, the restoration of decency in entertainment will quickly be realized.

Here are some other steps that should be taken to promote decency in entertainment and combat media pollution:

1. Education in media literacy. Dr. Bobbie Kamil, executive director of Cable in the Classroom, says that "children and their parents should be acutely aware of what role TV plays in their lives, how the 'magic' is made, who controls and pays for what appears on the screen."

Parishes should include instruction in media literacy in their religious education programs. Catholic youth (and adults) need to learn how to be discriminating in their entertainment choices, using Christian morality as the bottom line in deciding what to watch on TV or purchase in video and music stores.

2. Parental supervision. Perhaps the most potent weapon against media pollution is parental supervision. If the majority of Christian parents would monitor their children's TV viewing and refuse to let them watch morally offensive shows and movies, the entertainment industry would respond by producing wholesome, quality programs and films. But many Catholic parents seem unconcerned about the harmful effects of media pollution.

In a recent address, Pope John Paul II cited this warning on parental responsibility from the Pontifical Council for Social Communications' document on Pornography and Violence in the Communications Media: "Parents on their part should remember that it is their duty to see that entertainments and publications which might endanger faith and morals do not enter their houses and that their children are not exposed to them elsewhere" (Intermirifica, n.10).

Bishops and priests can help parents realize the importance of their responsibility regarding morally offensive entertainment by issuing letters and giving homilies on this important matter. And parishes can help parents provide wholesome entertainment for their children by starting parish video libraries which would offer family and religious videos. Parishioners could be asked to donate videos or money to build up the parish's video collection.

3. Community Involvement. In her book, Raising PG Kids in an X-Rated Society, Tipper Gore, wife of Vice-President Al Gore, offered several suggestions for ridding communities of offensive TV shows; she encouraged parents to monitor local shows and programming, complain to station managers, owners and sponsors about offensive shows, and advised: "If all else fails, you might consider organizing a consumer boycott. It is a legal and frequently effective technique for applying community pressure. Constitutional lawyers agree that there is no First Amendment problem with a properly handled, non-government-related boycott. But it should be used carefully and only as a last resort."

Parish and diocesan committees can be formed to monitor local radio and TV broadcasts. If station managers and advertisers don't respond to complaints, a consumer boycott, as Tipper Gore pointed out, is a legal and effective way to get results.

A consensus seems to be growing in America that steps need to be taken to combat media pollution. Along with former Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole and conservative William Bennett, former Secretary of Education, many liberals are also calling for action to rid communities of morally offensive entertainment. The Buffalo News, known for its liberal position on many issues, recently told its readers that, while government censorship is not the way to rid television of "cultural rot," critics are free to organize "legal pressure campaigns to persuade TV talk show hosts to clean up their acts."

And liberal columnist Richard Reeves went so far as to say that "if we cannot organize to put pressure on networks, advertisers and producers, then we have to turn to government to do what it is supposed to do. That is, as Abraham Lincoln said, to do for us what we cannot do for ourselves."

Most Americans seem to agree that government censorship is not the best way to combat media pollution, but they lack the leadership and organization needed to restore decency in entertainment. It is up to the churches, then, to provide this leadership and organization so that parents can once again raise their children in accordance with dominant cultural messages rather than in opposition to them. n