Upon Friar Review — Looking for spiritual questions in the wilds of pop culture — GetReligion
Critics of this approach should heed the warnings woven into “Upon Friar Review” episodes — that it’s wise to err on the side of caution when consuming mass media, because “you can’t unsee things,” said Tuttle.
But blanket condemnation is not enough. This is especially true with young people.
“I’m a white-haired man and if I start talking, as a white-haired man, with a white beard, about, ‘Ah! You know, all this TV is nothing but evil, all these movies are bad,’ everybody’s just going to say, ‘Wha, wha, wha,'” he said, making the noise “Peanuts” characters hear when adults talk.
Perhaps parish leaders, said Tuttle, could focus — in retreats and education efforts — on young believers sharing their own concerns about social media, video games and mass entertainment.
“What if a young person, in a testimony of some kind, says, ‘This is what I used to watch 12 hours a day, and this is how I felt most of the time. Now, I am guarding myself. I watch these sorts of thing and I avoid these other sorts of things, and I have come alive, and I have helped other people come alive.’ Why aren’t we doing things like that?”
It would help, of course, if these issues were discussed in seminaries and by national church leaders. Tuttle said parish leaders should try pointing people to dramas, cartoons and online resources that are worthy of praise.
Truth is, mass media shape the lives of millions of ordinary people, whether mainstream religious leaders are willing to face that reality or not.
The goal, said Cole, isn’t to hang digital screens in sanctuaries and try to entertain the masses during worship. But, at some point, preachers will need to find a way — even in the pulpit — to wrestle with the world of mass media.
“Popular culture should be used, it should be discussed, because the point of the homily, really, is to connect two worlds — the world of the Gospel and the world that we live in — to make it relevant,” he said. “We need to have our finger on the pulse of the people. We need to understand what they’re going through. … We have to try.”
