The Sisterhood show on Lifetime TV - true Convent life?

A recent OP-ED remarked that TLC (the "learning  channel") had long deleted "Learning" from its TV shows.

I thought that was a good comment and a nice way to begin this blog. That is, TV is primarily entertainment although some shows try to disguise themselves as learning tools.

The Sisterhood is a show offered, not on the Learning Channel but rather on Lifetime TV.  Therefore, when I first watched it, I didn't expect much (to put it mildly).  Imagine my surprise when it actually seems to be not only a decent show but not anti Catholic! Perhaps that's because they involved a real Sister Order in the making of the show and some of those seen in the show are Sisters in real life.

The scenario is 5 young ladies trying to discern whether they have a vocation or not by "sampling" life in several convents.  Since they don't appear to be praying with the Sisters, I don't think I would call them "Aspirants" which usually is what they term non Postulants, living in a convent.

Additionally, the young ladies selected, while glamorous and "cute", would, I think, not pass the first interview for convent life.  Most of the young ladies seem to have little understanding of what convent life would entail for them or the commitment involved.

A bit - shall we say - unusual, is that they are sampling not only life in the convent, but participating in the ministry of the Sister Orders they are visiting.  They all, being fundamentally nice people, enjoyed that part but of course, having been in the convent myself, I can say, convent life is a lot more complex than being a volunteer in a soup kitchen.

Despite the foregoing, I must say, I find the show, entertaining enough to hold my interest and a relief from the usual hate and discontent seen in TV shows concerning Catholicism.  Watch (as is good advice with all TV) with a grain of salt i.e. if you are interested in convent life, this show is not going to tell you much about convent life.

Convent life includes a lot of praying.  The day starts in with "morning prayers" and then, the Sisters go to daily Mass.  Sometime in the late afternoon is usually time for a Rosary with the group and then, of course, evening prayers.  That is, if you don't enjoy prayer, you might not enjoy convent life.

Then too, again where the show differs from reality, having a Vocation to the Sisterhood, is a call from God and therefore, even if a young lady loves convent life and praying a lot as I certainly did, that doesn't necessarily mean she has a Vocation.  In my case, God had other plans for me - a life partner husband, a son, four grandchildren and a great granddaughter.

I saw the great granddaughter in a dream, repeatedly over a 2 week period before I was pregnant with our son... the brief message I was given was "She needs you", which alerted me to the fact that God had a child to place in my womb.

Later on, we used Natural Family Planning which I hoped God would override (I was hesitant to get pregnant again as I had developed some serious health issues over the years) but God only had planned the one son for us.

I recently heard a wonderful homily given by a local priest which included this - "Joy is conforming with the Will of God" so regardless of what a person may think he or she has planned for his or her life, God drew up that Plan long before we were born.  "I knew you before I formed you in your mother's womb."  Jeremiah 1:5 tells us.  (the Photo is of the convent I was in, in the 1960's)

The Learning Channel - but what are they teaching?

TLC is short for "The Learning Channel" but seems the values they teach, are what Catholics feel is immoral.  Interesting enough, though, often things don't work out quite as well as the reality show protagonists envision, thus suggesting that the so called "rules" in the Bible might ultimately be a better idea, both for health and serenity.

For example a show on TLC called "Four Weddings", takes 4 brides each of whom attend each other's weddings and then, score each other for venue, food and dress as well as overall experience - the winner couple gets a fancy honeymoon in an exotic place.  The one I watched recently, was unsettling because one of the couples were lesbians.  What was strange was, instead of both the women wearing dresses, one of them wore a suit and had very short hair and looked very masculine.  I thought that was hypocritical i.e. if they are both women they should present as women - I think most lesbians will agree that their se/xual preference does not remove their feminity.  Of course, many of the weddings are less than respectful of marriage to put it mildly.  By the way, the lesbian couple did not win the exotic honeymoon. They actually tied for last place with the Catholic couple, the only one of the four who had a church wedding.

The idea of "gay marriage" is questionable on several fronts - two of the same gender cannot consummate a marriage - I get that they can be good friends and can even love each other but why if, se/xual expression is a part of this, would that be sanctioned or even made public - should not what we do in the bedroom, remain there?  If gay folks want some kind of commitment (which makes sense for folks who deeply love each other), should not that be taken care of by the state?  My take on this one - let all unions for purposes of a state license, be called "civil union".  Leave marriage where it belongs - in the church.  This would be good for gay couples as well as hetero couples who are Catholic or other religious - because it would allow all the legal advantages of marriage for everyone, would disallow, unions between humans and animals (which are happening on rare occasions) and would un-confuse many Catholics who feel a civil union is enough to call themselves "married" (Catholics are required to have a Sacramental marriage in church, in order for intimacy to not be a serious sin!)  Seems like such a no brainer solution which would benefit everyone - and I wonder why no one seems to have thought of it - perhaps there are forces "out there" which really do, as some Christians feel, wish to attack and destroy marriage?

On the same channel, TLC, there was another show called "Breaking Amish".  The scenario of this show, we were told, was 5 young individuals who newly left their Amish parents to live in New York City. When they describe their adventures in the "Big Apple", which include many things Amish feel to be immoral,  TLC films them in their Amish garb, a bit hypocritical because at the time they were filmed, none of them were still Amish. 

The show had several problems.  First of all, it was so anti-Amish that it annoyed a large group of Ex-Amish atheists who obviously weren't exactly pro-Amish themselves.  Secondly, as it turns out, the show spun huge lies.  None of the protagonists had recently left the Amish nor had any plans of going back to the church of their birth, and none of them were being shunned by their parents as often claimed on the show - they apparently, visit their parents regularly.  The ex-Amish who found the show highly offensive, know the people on the show personally, have worked with them etc.  At least two of the individuals whom TLC claimed "recently left the Amish" are divorced.  In the last show, TLC tried to clear out some of the issues but the 5 ex-Amish young folks all had an attitude of entitlement and a negative attitude toward the religion of their childhoods and in some cases, did not answer TLC's questions accurately nor respectfully.  (One of the ladies, Katie, who works as a model, expressed a possibility that she might return to her religion someday but several of the others had actually done things to make it difficult for them to return i.e. getting pierced or tattoos or being divorced etc).

What I learned from this show:  As a Catholic who loved the Latin church, like many others, I was not happy with Vatican II especially seeing as the early implementation was uh...less than great (and in a way some are still adapting).  But in watching the TLC shows on the Amish  (and researching this a bit), there is at least some evidence that there may be a rather alarming exodus of young folks from the Amish traditional practice.  Some of the Amish communities are updating a bit but the Old Order Amish cling to the old traditions which eschew any modern inventions (however they accept inventions of the 19th century which is a bit of a contradiction to me).

Bottom line, Vatican II with all its foibles and bad liturgies, likely saved the Catholic church because today, although some young folks leave, many return and there is a steady influx of new members coming into the church also (Catholic Encyclopedia stated 50,000 or more, join the Catholic church every year!).

Next, there is "Long Island Medium" on TLC.  This is a lady who claims to speak with dead people.  Worse yet, she claims to be a practicing Catholic which of course, would be a major contradiction since Catholic belief is that the soul, after death, typically, goes to purgatory where God prepares it to enter Heaven - souls in purgatory are not available to chat with folks on earth.  A few saints have had visions of these but other than delivering a message (usually pertaining to the suffering in purgatory), chatting does not happen.  The Long Island Medium seems to have abilities to pick up subtle clues in members of her audience - she's clever and perceptive and perhaps even has developed a few abilities along the lines of telepathy, but I don't feel for a single moment that what she claims to hear, are the souls of deceased loved ones.  She appears to be using some "cold reading" techniques in which she throws out a very general question and those she is reading immediately fill her in on the details.  She charges $500 per reading and is booked for 2 years in advance.  If you watch the show regularly, she tells everyone pretty much the same message - their deceased relatives/friends/spouses are with them all the time (which also, is false according to Catholic teachings), they shouldn't feel guilty about the death etc.  The people she reads (at least the ones they feature on the show), get very upset and are weeping although they claim she helped them. But if she is misleading them from the truth about their deceased loved ones, is she really helping them? In one case, she told a lady that her deceased daughter  was reincarnated as this lady's grandchild; imagine the confusion that could cause if the lady really believes that (and she appeared to believe it on the show). The Long Island Medium might mean well but is very confused and ought to consider attending a good course in catechism, but I wonder if TLC means well.  What is clear is since that her husband could sell his business and become a gentleman of leisure, the family paying their expenses from the Long Island Medium's income (including sending 2 adult kids to college), the financial benefits from her readings are obviously generous - as my husband pointed out she gets $100,000.00 bucks a year for the TV show plus the bucks for the readings... at $500 bucks each.  (Readings last less than an hour - that's better bucks than even plumbers make!) :)

Sister Wives" deals with the subject of polygamy. One man, Cody Brown with four wives.  This week's episode had some interesting conversation between the Browns and another polygamous family (man with three wives).  Although they all claim they practice this for "religious reasons", turns out that this is not at all, supported in the Bible but on the contrary, Jesus said if a man takes another wife, he commits adultery.  The Bible very much supports the one man- one woman concept of marriage and that some Mormons practiced plural marriage was based on "revelations" from their founder, Joseph Smith who, himself, wanted to not be monogamous. It's interesting to note that after Smith's assassination, Emma, his first wife, not only did not continue to practice poligamy but also joined the Baptist church.

The ladies in "Sister Wives" seem to be constantly fighting - what Bishop Sheen called - the negative presence of the Holy Spirit.  No matter how they frame it, somehow, their plural marriages don't feel right and they seem somewhat emotionally strung, and experiencing jealousy of the other wives and other negative feelings constantly.  Many of their progeny have told TLC that they have no plans of continuing their parents' practice of poligamy, suggesting that the plural marriage of their parents has not been a positive experience for them.  In "Sister Wives", each wife has her own house and the husband divides his time between the wives for private intimacy.

I am beginning to wonder if TLC which is broadcast in High Definition and with very arty cinematography actually has an agenda which is bent on insidiously destroying faith while having a veneer of presenting "family values". It seems that TLC often highlights what could be called  behavior opposed to Christian values.

This might be more acceptable if the viewer was pre-warned that the shows they were about to watch, are attacking Christian values so people could decide if they wanted to watch or at least be warned. At present, the only warnings given before a show, concern if the show presents a medical procedure.

This type of television, represents the dilemma the world often presents Christians with - seductive, interesting but toxic information about lifestyles.

Resignation of the Pope - Open season on the church?

On the occasion of the resignation of the Pope, the blog-o-sphere and the news media have been vibrating with verbiage and much of it seems to be taking the opportunity to suggest that the 85 year old, sickly Pope's resignation is somehow a criticism of the Catholic church.

I get that the media does not like us but I've seen one of Benedict's old old treatises being quoted by several Catholics and this is a bit strange IMO.  That is, instead of quoting his very eloquent Encyclicals or his homilies while in the Papacy, or his scholarly 3 volume work about the life of Jesus, they appear to prefer dredging up something he wrote in the 1960's to a church in total turmoil.  And naturally, it was a bit critical of the church because back then, many Catholics, even priests and religious folks seemed to have been extremely confused and somewhat lost with the changes in the liturgy of Vatican II.  What I don't understand is why Benedict's recent and very important works are being bypassed in favor of this 40 plus year old treatise written to a church in transition (in 1969).

What Josef Ratzinger said about the church in 1969, in the middle of the turmoil of the aftermath of Vatican II (which was extremely poorly launched) is not true now.  The so called "modernizing" of the church was being done then, and because it was so poorly explained and got a lot of complaint from the pew, he likely was trying to educate the public and clergy about the changes.

In retrospect, they should have never promulgated the changes until they had a new "code of Canon law" in place.  The changes themselves were not bad but Catholics seem to lose their minds for several years as far as liturgy and we had the "Kumbaya" every Sunday mentality. Because many Catholics had not even listened to the Mass for years (they showed up and fingered their Rosaries), they knew little about what was going on, on the altar at Mass.

I remember as a Protestant, when I inquired about the Catholic Church from my Catholic friends, I found they all seemed to only know 3 things about their doctrine:  1. If you eat meat on Fridays and don't get to confession soon, and you die, you will go to h*ll, 2. Babies have to be baptized soon after birth or they go to a place called "Limbo" (no one could tell me what exactly limbo was) and 3. If you don't go to Mass on Sunday, you are in mortal sin and could go to h*ll if you don't get to confession.

So naturally, when Vatican II came along, the combination of the poorly planned promulgation of the changes and the ignorance of the average Catholic in the pew, caused the huge liturgical abuse and general turmoil we saw for several years after Vatican II.  We ignored centuries of wonderful liturgical music and sang trashy pop songs in church, priests ripped up Rosaries in the pulpit and told the people "we don't do this anymore", church members danced in skanky garb and called it "liturgical dance" and most folks seemed totally confused.

We all know horror stories from those days like the priest who told the people that the Precious Blood was just wine and poured the excess into a plant during his homily at Mass!

Many of us wondered if the church would ever stop the insanity and many left the church - not due to the changes but due to the chaos abounding after the changes.  I even tried to leave the church back then (I missed the Blessed Sacrament too much so I returned soon after I left) - as year after year, things seemed to be totally messed up with no signs of improvement.

And this was the state of the church that Josef Ratzinger was talking about in the quotes from 1969, in the article now being dredged up.  He was not talking about the church today which has greatly matured from the "sick sixties".

The hierarchal structure of the church, which is often criticized by outsiders and Catholics also, is part of what ensures that the church is "one".  Before being Catholic, I was a member of a congregationalist concept church (which Protestant denominations tend to be even if they have a central president) and thus, there was no uniformity in the churches, even within the same denomination.

Cardinal Ratzinger's resignation as Pope has everything to do with his health state and nothing to do with a criticism of the Catholic Church, despite what we are hearing from  the mass media and/or reading in blogs even from Catholics.... He's blind in one eye and going deaf and described as cadaverously thin - he's 85 years old and just unable to keep up with the vigorous life as the Holy Father.  When his last trip just about did him in (those trips are very tiring, and would be even for a younger person), his doctors told him he was not well enough to travel by plane anymore and so he knew he would not be able to go to the upcoming Youth Conference.  He makes his choices - remaining the Pope and dying in a couple of months at which time, we will still have to select another Pope or resigning now and maybe living on a few more years, focusing on prayer and contemplation. I think most of us would make the same choice he did.

As a former outsider, it has always seemed to me that Catholics trust their church less than Protestants trust us.  There are times the blog-o-sphere (and the media) should either get their facts straight or consider embracing the virtue of silence.  (the photo is of Pope Benedict XVI several years ago when he visited the USA)

Is Yoga satanic?

Recently, an elderly priest in the Vatican who has done 70,000 exorcisms (so saith the news), came out with a comment where he supposedly condemned yoga as of Satan.  Yoga, said 85 year old Fr Gabriel Amorth, "works with magic and leads to evil."  And of course, some Catholics who have similar beliefs have quoted this priest - so have some news media, happy at the chance to make the church look bad.


Truth being, none of us have all the knowledge and all of us can be in error about something without making us bad people or even stupid people. 

That is, Fr Amorth is likely a good priest but like the rest of us, has his biases.  Chances are he's never done yoga and/or he may have observed some folks who were possessed or obsessed who happened to do yoga and he made a connection (for example had he asked, the possessed or obsessed person might have ridden a  bicycle as a kid also, so he could have said "riding a bicycle leads to satanic influence").  

Truly those type of errors are common and even made by our scientists as shown in the epidemiological studies which "proved" that giving birth control meds to menopausal women protected them from heart attack -- until 2 clinical studies found the opposite i.e. that birth control meds greatly raise the risk of not only heart attack, stroke and thrombosis but also significantly raise the risk of breast cancer. (One magazine pointed out two studies, one in the 1930's which gave synthetic estrogen to rats and all of them, male and female came down with breast cancer and yet, large organizations, today, ignore the connection completely). 

As an aside, our wonderful news services, which are so quick to condemn the Catholic church have failed to report the dangers of even low dose birth control to the public with the result that last I checked, there were millions of women still taking birth control medication, both for family planning and for hormone replacement therapy!

Sticking with the Bible and the words of Jesus, is a good idea in the case of Yoga  !  I am a devout Catholic who DOES yoga several times a week. I am also 67 years old and fit and yoga is part of my program.  Yoga is a wonderful inheritance from the East and can be a healthy practice. We do not have to embrace other religious beliefs to learn their good health practices. And bottom line - the words of Jesus "other sheep have I who are not members of this flock" and "Nothing that enters one from outside can defile that person; but the things that come out from within are what defile." Mark 7:15


Postscript: Fr Amorth also said that the Harry Potter books can lead to evil.  I tend to feel that, at best, those books are a horrible waste of time for kids who should be reading real literature like Tom Sawyer and Booth Tarkington.  I read a couple of Harry Potter books and while having a total absence of God, they encourage magic, some of it, black magic which could only have originated in Satan and which really can likely not lead to anything positive.  Luckily, most kids find these books boring - at least that was true of my grandkids.  Perhaps the answer to Harry Potter is for parents and teachers to gently crowd them out by suggesting worthwhile literature for children.  My emotional reaction to reading Harry Potter books was that they gave me a kind of creepy feeling.

Priest Scandal - what is the truth here?

There are two sides of the story of the so priest scandal but we only hear one side. The media emphasizes the cases (most of which happened years ago) of priests, statistically less than 1 percent of Catholic priests have been accused of this) ignoring that as high as 50% of abortionists may have also abused those who trusted them as well as the 20% of public school teachers and countless coaches also accused. Govt statistics tell us that most se/xual abuse happens in the home (75% percent of it) by step fathers and uncles etc.

Se/xual molestation is a definite problem in our society and will continue to be a problem if we only address the 1% of those priests thusly accused, closing our eyes to the overwhelming majority of abuse which has nothing to do with priests. (I also was se/xually molested, 4 times. By my violin teacher when I was 12 years old, by a guy my mother matched me up with when I was 19 who only didn't ra/pe me by the Grace of God and my own quick thinking, by a sports coach when I was in my 30's and by a doctor I had met socially who examined my sore leg in the swimming pool and proceeded to "cop a feel"!)

That being said, when this all came up, being a Roman Catholic myself, I was curious to do some investigating to see how bad things were or were not.

I first started with the town I live in, one of the 10 largest cities in the USA.

In my area, there are 5 priests accused over the past 30 years (this was before another one recently got accused - he quit the priesthood and the Catholic church, and started his own congregation before they could prosecute him). Ok, 2 of them were defrocked, 1 of them had fled to Ireland, 1 of them was dead and 1 was currently in prison. The Bishop had acted quickly on all the cases.

Conclusion, it was not true in my diocese that anything had been "covered up". On the contrary.

But what about the priest in Boston who started the firestorm? Curious about this, I researched him on the S.N.A.P. website. They have all the PDFs of the case there and SNAP is a group of victims who are very antiCatholic. I thought it was a good place to start the research - certainly no one can accuse them of covering anything up or being biased in favor of the Catholic church.

Where I expected to find something awful, I was actually quite surprised at what I uncovered on the SNAP site!

The priest in Boston had had complaints against him for a handful of boys but when the Cardinal went to investigate, he found that the priest was well liked in his parish and that even the parents of the kids who had complained, did not uphold the testimonies of their own kids! The cardinal's hands were tied. The priest, of course, lied through his teeth but the sad thing was, the people of his parish UPHELD HIM.

Ironically, the way the cardinal ended up discovering the truth, was that he was doing a "one on one" with all priests and when he got to this priest and had lunch with him, he realized immediately, that the priest was likely guilty! The Cardinal went home from that luncheon and started proceedings to defrock the priest! It should be noted that when he fired that priest from his parish, the people of the parish staged a major demonstration against the Cardinal! None of this made the news of course. :(

Quite different from the way the media or movies like "Our Fathers" portray it, isn't it?

Bottom line, He who started our church, Jesus, was crucified as a common criminal and He was perfect. Certainly our priests and cardinals and even strong Christians cannot expect otherwise.

That is, if Jesus rode to Heaven on a cross, should we expect to ride there in a plush lined Cadillac? Can we expect to be "popular" in a society which was capable of crucifying God incarnate?

And - please understand - the media does (as Stephen King put it) go for the "gross-out" even if it means um...bending the truth. Media information should not what anyone should be making decisions based on - it should carry a disclaimer of "for entertainment only - any resemblance to the truth is purely coincidental!"