Bishop Prompts All Orthodox to Stop Watching TV!

[Nektarios14]

I agree with Anastasios that the TV can have some good points. About the only channel I watch is the history channel. Most of the prime time entertainment stuff is just horrible though. I know there is an Orthodox Radio station in Greece, is there also a TV station....if so maybe it'd be possible to get it in America?

[Joe Zollars]

History Channel ain't all that much better. Remember back around Gregorian Calander Christmas time they were pushing the idea that the BVM was raped by a Roman Soldier and that is how Christ came about? And that is only the tip of the iceburg of their blasphemies.

Joe Zollars

[Justin Kissel]

Anastasios

I wonder if Saint John Chrysostom would agree with you. Based on what I've read of him (particularly the first two dozen or so Homilies on Matthew), he seems to be against certain "forms of entertainment" altogether. The theatre, for example. For him, it's not an issue of being selective about which shows you attend, it's an issue of supporting the whole business, or standing against it. John Chrysostom the rigorist: imagine that! Also, I think the Church's historic/ascetic notions about fantasy and imagination are often ignored today. Well maybe not ignored, but just for the most part wholly unknown. The idea that someone would pretend to be someone else--whether they are pretending to be good or bad--is, in itself, a questionable thing to do. The idea that you would create a whole other world or reality, whether for mocking or for escapism, or just "for fun entertainment" is also a questionable thing to do.

OOD,

I don't know if you were kidding about the shower part? Believe it or not, one way that I knew for sure that I wasn't ready to be a monastic was that I wasn't ready to give up showers. It's a matter of comfort and self-will, and one's perceptions of life and how it ought to be lived. How the life of a saint (which we hopefully aim for) ought to be lived. I sometimes wonder what people do when they think that "not taking showers" and "sleeping on the ground" (and other such ascetic practices) were merely "for those back then in that different age, and not for us now". How is their Christian zeal--which is naturally, divinely, zealous--manifested?

[Justin Kissel]

Two notes of clarification. First, it's unfortunate, but it's also true that the better one is at acting (or at least, the more they "throw themselves into it"), the worse off their soul is. At least, according to what I've read in the Holy Fathers (particularly in books by men like Met. Hierotheos. Looking at the culture of entertainment in our own country, I can fully understand that. Second, the fathers see literature as different than acting and other such arts that involve a personal, actual disguising or pretending. I'm sorry if this seems like an abitrary distinction, but it's one that the Fathers seem to make, so I certainly wouldn't stand against it.

[Anastasios]

Justin,

I am not clear on the history of this, but wasn't the theater in St. John Chrysostom's time full of prostitutes?

anastasios

[Justin Kissel]

I don't know. I do know that it was frequented by many Christians. And Saint John's objections (at least from what I've read) was never about who else might be there (e.g., prostitutes), but about the acting and fiction that took place there. I'll dig up some quotes and post them

[尼古拉前执事]

Of course the canons also state that Orthodox Christians are not to be actors, so it probably has something to do with that as well. As I understood it theatre was not allowed because you did not know what the soul was going to be exposed to.