When I was a kid, our family used to watch Bishop Fulton Sheen on television. His short sermons were captivating, even for a little kid like myself. He was often funny, self-deprecating, and full of common sense. So our quote today is one from Bishop Sheen about Lent:
"We can think of Lent as a time to eradicate evil or cultivate virtue, a time to pull up weeds or to plant good seeds. Which is better is clear, for the Christian ideal is always positive rather than negative. A person is great not by the ferocity of his hatred of evil, but by the intensity of his love for God. Asceticism and mortification are not the ends of a Christian life; they are only the means. The end is charity. Penance merely makes an opening in our ego in which the Light of God can pour. As we deflate ourselves, God fills us. And it is GOD’s arrival that is the important event." -Fulton J. Sheen
Today while I was biding my time waiting to pick up my granddaughter from school, I turned on the TV. There was a show being aired featuring a man and woman who together had twin boys. The premise of the show is that the participants take lie detector tests to see if what they are saying to one another is true. Both of them apparently lied. And as they exited the studio and the penetrating cameras, they ended on a sour note, one full of lies and misrepresentation. The reason the woman wanted to remain with the man whom she said beat her up and called her children "bastards," was because she didn't want to be a single mother, and she claimed to love the man. The man wanted to remain with her because he said he loved her and as he was the product of a household with no dad, he didn't want his kids growing up that way (the kids he wasn't sure were his).
What a mess it was. What an awful display of dysfunction and misery. And guaranteed, going on television to get the answers wasn't going to produce any.
Another daytime television show used DNA testing. Pretty soon the language was so bad that all I hear was birds singing, and it reminded you of the Jerry Springer Show which I can't stand. And bouncers have to keep the various parties separated from one another.
It isn't funny. It's sickening. And it is probably only a tiny smidgeon of what the children hear at home. What will become of them? Who will step forward and grow up? Who will live up to the ideal of the word "parent"?
We said it years ago when experts referred to the "me" generation -- that when people start caring only about themselves to the exclusion of all else, bad things happen. When people spend their time "finding themselves" instead of meeting their responsibilities, bad things happen. When people ignore the vows they've made, bad things happen.
Instead of watching the idyllic home movies with kids playing outside and kids blowing out birthday candles and opening presents, these poor kids get to watch DVR'd images of their parents making asses out of themselves. Wow. What an example!
Count me out of this brand of reality TV. I'd rather watch old black and white reruns of Fulton Sheen.
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