Waiting for Godot to Leave

Here's a link to an article my friend Kevin Fraser sent me. I have been on the road and have just gotten around to reading it. It's about the media and the Catholic Ghetto. It's quite good. Some highlights ... *** The results of such efforts are, in Nicolosi’s words, “predictably amateur,” lacking either professional polish or, as in case of There Be Dragons , the basics of good storytelling. Much the same thing can be [said] of television, where there is little to no Catholic presence in prime time, and where cable television networks, such as EWTN, enjoy minimal viewership among both young Catholics and non-Catholics . *** "They want every film to be The Passion [of the Christ] and expect people to walk out of the theater converted,” Iocco told OSV. “But we’ve already had The Passion and the whole world hasn’t converted. Nor are they going to because of a film. That’s not what films do. A film is successful if it gets people to ask a question they might not have as...

Since the phrase Catholic Ghetto has been around for a while, lots of people use it to mean lots of things, and not everybody knows what I mean when I use it. To clarify what I mean by Catholic Ghetto   ... There are some Catholic children's television programs that are literally un-watchable.  But Catholic moms force their homeschooled Catholic kids to watch them and be satisfied with them because they're orthodox and there's no Catholic alternative. There are Catholic audio CDs of orthodox Catholic talks where the quality of the recording is so bad it's sometimes impossible to make out what's being said.  Many of these talks will simply end in mid-sentence, leaving the listener hanging.  But they're distributed free, so who can complain? Every college on the Cardinal Newman Society Best Catholic Colleges in North America  list is apparently theologically orthodox, but some of these colleges are so obscure, remote and understaffed that ...

Rod Dreher at the American Conservative writes a powerful piece about NCR's firing of the reporter who interviewed Fr. Groeschel. Rod points out ... People who run churches and church organizations often don’t understand what communications (journalism, filmmaking, etc.) is. They think it’s all supposed to be publicity, and so they guarantee mediocrity, and ultimately the discouragement of talented people — artists and journalists — who have good and useful talents to give to the whole church. Exactly.  This attitude propogates what I call The Catholic Ghetto .  Or, as a friend of mine recently said, "Christian movies are like porn.  The lighting's bad, the acting's bad, and you know how it's gonna end." Rod's article is worth a read.