Matt Doyle and family have decided not to pay the TV licence and therefore not to watch TV any more. (Lacrimarum Valle: Down with Tele!) Congratulations to another family liberated from the evil black box.I posted on this a while back (Chuck the Telly!). Matt also gives a link to CUT - Catholics Unplug your Televisions.
26 comments:
I have been TV free for 12 years. I don't know how people can spend anytime with their children and watch, on average, 5-7 hours a day of TV.
Congrats to Matt and family!
I have been without the tele for a long time, and I highly recommend it. Giving up tv might take time and effort, especially adjusting to the reactions from other people (what? no tele?), but the end result(s) are truly liberating.
Great news. Among some Catholic friend families there is a same tendency here in Finland too.
We don't have a TV either, there is enough information available in the internet; on the other hand, everything worthwile is on DVD as well.
Greetings and prayers!
MT
What a sad day for them!Although i hardly watch TV & we divide our time by 12..i think it's better avoiding extremes.
I heard the TV described once as a Weapon of Mass Distraction :)
'another family liberated from the evil black box'...oh come on Fr Tim..OTT or what!
My family (of five) have nearly finished with television without making a special thing of it. But that's because of the computer, which takes the place of many of the time wasting functions the TV took before.
So I'd like to know, for everyone today who successfully gives up TV, how much computer they're using.
I think people must follow their own conscience on this one. Yes, there are many evils on the television and for many the asnwer is unplug. But for others there is the question that if it can be used for evil it can also be used for good and since it is our lack of faith that has made television and society what it is we have a duty to fight the enemy wherever he stands. My turning off the television does not help the family next door. With older children we should of course forbid pornographic films and situations but thee will always be challenges in even more moderate situation, these as we have found can give rise to teaching and discussion situation. I could not in the end turn of my television because I can have the Rosary and Devotions blaring through the house rather than the pop cult by tuning to EWTN. I also have good catholic speakers for my sons to listen to when they pass through the living room. A Modernist channel? What nonsense!
This a most interesting post.
I have a television set, but never (well, hardly ever) watch television.
I honestly couldn't care less if I never saw another television programme.
I use the television set to watch videos / DVDs of my favourite old films :
Humphrey Bogart et al. in "Casablanca"
John Wayne & Maureen O'Hara in "Rio Grande"
Bing Crosby & Bob Hope in
"The Road to Rio"
Trevor Howard & Celia Johnson in "Brief Encounter"
Orson Welles et al.
in "The Third Man
Alastair Sim
in "Scrooge"
and many, many others.
But I thought one could not own television receiving equipment without a TV licence.
I appear to be wrong.
And what about EWTN ?
I'd need a licence to receive that, surely ?
In any case, the government appears to be able to raise any revenue it wants through taxation (which we can't avoid), be it income tax, VAT., council tax, national insurance contributions, etc., etc.
We have no say about what our taxes are spent on.
There appears to be no escape.
Or am I being too defeatist ?
Dr Wright - you don't need a licence to watch EWTN.
Andrew - it is true that the computer has its own dangers. But the difference is that it is pull technology, rather than push - you choose what you see, by and large. I find it very encouraging that the MSM companies are worried by youngsters' increasing use of the internet in preference to TV. But of course parents have to be vigilant.
Jackie - I was referring to St Elizabeth Ann Seton's vision of a black box in every home in America with devils coming out of it and wires going down to hell. She did not understand the vision as the TV had not been invented (she died in 1821).
BTW - see the other post Chuck the Telly and its combox. Many similar points there.
Whilst you may be jettisoning your TV licence do you still listen to BBC Radio? If you do - and I would pay £135 a year for Radio 3 & 4 alone - then just think that if everyone followed you they would cease to exist and therefore another one of our cultural institutions would disappear.
I do agree that the majority of TV is banal but we must be prepared to take the rough with smooth.
We could adopt similar attitudes to museums and art galleries by saying that, as we don't them, then our tax shouldn't support them - and then all we'd be left with is football grounds as our cultural heritage.
One could draw parallels with those who left the Catholic Church after the Novus Ordo was introduced - thankfully some of us stayed around long enough for the Usus Antiquor to make its very necessary comeback.
Fr. Tim,
A lot of the objection to TV among British Catholics seems to be around the compulsory licence fee that subsidizes the BBC – the great organ of political correctness and anti-Catholic bias. When I was living in the UK, I was very angry about what the BBC was getting away with. But England is basically an anti-Catholic country at heart and has been for 500 years.
Here in Canada, broadcasters are less blatantly anti-Catholic. Over 40% of Canadians are Catholics (but let’s not dwell on the percentage that actually goes to church), and the sort of flagrant anti-Catholic bias typical of the BBC would be somewhat less acceptable here (for the time being at least).
I echo the comments made about kids preferring the computer to the television. Our children definitely prefer the computer, and our challenge (apart from limiting the time they spend) is to find the right sort of educational DVDs so that they actually learn something rather than playing games. And also installing the “maximum protection” filtration software.
My wife and I have what we call a “controlled television” policy. Nearly everything we watch is on a DVD – documentaries, historical dramas, innocent children’s TV from 20 years ago, inoffensive comedy shows, cartoons, etc. We don’t allow the TV to stay on all the time. If there is a good programme that ends at 7pm, the TV gets switched off at the end. I learned this technique from some friends of ours. Before I saw it in action, I would never have believed that it was actually possible to switch a television set off before 11pm!
Our motto is “control the TV so that it doesn’t control you.”
'another family liberated from the evil black box'...oh come on Fr Tim..OTT or what!
Not OTT Jackie, plain common sense. If TV for your family is okay, then thats your perogative. If the TV is an unecessary distraction (or even an occasion of sin) to another, then they know what they must do.
I believe St. Pio once said that TVs were the "tabernacle of Satan". How right he was...
Anon - no I don't listen to BBC radio either. I do not believe that the BBC is any longer a cultural institution worthy of support as our museums are. Mind you, they are going down the pan - a visit to the great ones in South Kensington can be quite a depressing experience. The Natural History and Science museums have been dumbed down and the V&A ... (cf my video).
Francis - excellent policy. I think that if you have a television, exercising the freedom to switch it off is very important.
i just can't see why grown adults can't control what they watch..& how about teaching children to be discerning? Isn't pulling the plug a 'cop out?'
How, in this country, can you watch EWTN without a television license? Chapter and verse, please. Not long ago you were interviewed for EWTN by Joanna Bogle (another anti-television freak)in St Joseph's Hall at the London Oratory and then went on to mock a work of art neither of you understood after tea in the V & A. You will both be appearing on television (and she also appears from time to time on obscure BBC channels) yet presumably neither of you will be able to watch the programmes, although I expect you are being paid to appear on them. There is something not quite right about these public protestations and your own selective compliance with the medium. Is it humbug, I wonder? I expect you are too busy blogging to watch the Holy Father's Sunday Angelus appearance on digital television, a weekly event that delights Catholics world-wide. Even if you are busy in church, you could easily record them, as many do. Pity, that. It is revealing that you don't even listen to BBC radio. That does much to explain the insularity and isolationism of your website.
Just to clarify some earlier comments, it's perfectly OK to own a TV (and a rooftop aerial) without paying the license fee if the two aren't connected. I rang up the TV Licensing Authority last year to check this and it's fine provided it's obvious you're not using the TV to receive broadcasts. We have a TV connected to a DVD player but with no aerial lead (I disconnected the socket to make things clear in case we ever get inspected).
Incidentally, the 'TV detection van' is complete FUD - it's physically impossible to detect if someone is receiving TV broadcasts from a distance!
Anon - sorry, I can't be bothered to dig out the letters the TVLA send me from time to time. You'll find all the "chapter and verse" you need with a quick search on google. (Oh, OK this site has a good summary.)
- The work I do for EWTN is pro bono.
- I don't blog during the Angelus: I'm saying Mass at that time.
(Feel free to apologise anonymously whenever you think it right to do so.)
And what's all this about my blog being insular and isolationist? I have readers here who understand the hanging snot sculture in the V&A!
Fr. Tim,
Jackie is asking a perfectly fair question – why not keep the TV, but exercise restraint and teach children to be discriminating about what they watch?
I would say that, based on my experience when I was living in the UK, that there is something particularly bad about the worst aspects of British television. This may not be so obvious to British-born people, but it is very striking if you come from abroad and see what’s happening. So I think that, in a UK context, there may be a stronger case for dumping the TV completely as Fr. Tim is suggesting.
Don’t get me wrong – I’m a great fan of BBC period dramas, “Dad’s Army” and David Attenborough. These are examples of the best TV in the world. But, during my time in the UK, I formed the view that the beneficial and benign aspects of British TV were vastly outweighed by the harmful effects it was having and, in particular, the way in which secular broadcasters are trying to impose their own social vision on the UK by using television programmes as propaganda. It’s Maoist social re-engineering in action.
The BBC news and current affairs programmes are pure secularist, relativist propaganda from start to finish. But it’s not just the news – it’s the way that whole series are conceived. It’s difficult to pinpoint examples since this spirit is so pervasive. But there is an underlying “anti-traditional Christendom” flavour to nearly everything put out by the BBC.
The other really bad thing I noticed is the symbiotic relationship which has developed between the British people and their soap operas. Life imitates art – the soaps up the ante all the time by portraying characters with ever more decadent lifestyles, and this seems to set the moral tone for the tens of millions of people in the UK who are glued to the soaps every evening.
Here in Canada, we have trashy television in spades and plenty of political correctness on the public broadcasting channels. But no single broadcaster has the intellectual stranglehold enjoyed by the BBC, and none has the BBC’s disturbing hidden agenda or influence. And 20 million Canadians are not watching a single soap opera every night which depicts the domestic norm as an orgy of screaming, shouting, swearing, fornicating, adulterating and generally acting godlessly – and then copying it the next day!
Yeah Francis..but we're not watching the soaps! Anyway i'm always on my own on this one so i'll get off my soap-box & leave you to it!
Oh & one last thing as i always say...who did the atheists & secularists attack? Methinks it was TV watching me!
Thanks for your kind support. Next on my list to give up obsessively watching is "Catholic Mom of 10" blog, which I find myself compelled to check regularly to see if I get a mention!!
"I just can't see why grown adults can't control what they watch..& how about teaching children to be discerning? Isn't pulling the plug a 'cop out?'"
Jackie, at our house the conversation would go something like this:
"Son, before we turn on the TV, isn't this a beautiful evening? You and I could go for a walk and get to know one another better. You could read to me from the McGuffey Reader or we could toss the ball around in the park.
"Instead, let's do the least demanding, the least human thing of all. Let's turn on the TV. It will do our talking and our story telling for us, our thinking and even our exercise.
"For example, here is a televised football game. These guys have worked very hard so that you can sit here eating potato chips. See that guy running down the field? Get one thing straight in your head- that is not you. He is running, you are sitting. Look son, if you like sports, then play sports. The rest is nonsense.
"Here is the news. It is astounding how few new facts you will learn from the news. Think of it as institutionalized worry. Forget it. If anything important happens, your playmates will tell you about it. Using this technique I once went through an entire recession without knowing it. Didn't hurt me a bit and I probably saved some money at the drugstore besides.
"Here is a commercial. The whole point of television is deliver as much audience to the advertiser as possible. That is why they not only aim at the lowest common denominator, but actually try to dumb down the smarter people. A few years of watching TV and you'll have the attention span of a fruit fly. This will hurt your studies and your life.
"Besides being an incredible time waster, TV is an entry level drug and entry level pornography.
"So give me a hand hauling it out to the curb, grab your mit and let's head over to the park."
"Sounds good to me, Dad."
Hi Lee..nah i think the computers worse for pornography..hey Matt i'm gonna keep mentioning your lovely name! Anyways about the name don't you think it should be changed to Dr Matthew Doyle now? i f it was less humble me i'd be including it on every post!
Scientists who study the television have discovered that there are serious underlying problems with this form of communication. For it is a little known fact (because the broadcasters control the news) that when the television has been introduced into any society there has always followed an epidemic of social problems. This was emphasised by the last country to get TV, Bhutan. Bhutan was a quite tranquil country until 1999 when they first received television broadcasts; this event was soon followed by the country’s first crime wave. With violent crimes becoming common within six months of TV’s introduction even unheard of murder and rape.
At CUT (Catholics Unplug your Televisions) we believe there should be a television boycott. Families who give up the TV are finding that without it they are happier. Their children are happy, intelligent, and well adjusted, they have more time for each other, they play more, and learn better. But don’t just take our word for it go to our web site www.cutunplugtv.co.uk where we have referenced many independent scientific studies on the nefarious effect of the TV on children and society If anyone would like a free copy (or copies to distribute) of our newsletter of please email us at mazzeo@waunllydan.fsnet.co.uk
Yours with prayers
Stefano Mazzeo
CUT (Catholics Unplug your Televisions)
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