Catholics on TV Then and Now – UPDATE

Without intending to, Deacon Greg has brought into rather sharp focus -and for better or worse- how Catholics “work” on television these days, and what the past was like.

First he gives us this rather charming video from the old television show, “What’s My Line.” As a tail-end boomer, I remember this only vaguely.

What a little timecapsule; what a foreign, quaint and different era! Hosted by the efficient and often droll John Charles Daly, What’s My Line? boasted a panel including publishers, writers, distinguished actors, journalists, and politicians, and they played a game similar to “20 questions.” It was innocent, unironic and excessively polite. The content was not geared to children, but children could watch the show and comprehend it as well as their parents, all the while gaining helpful social cues about how grown-up people interact with each other, in a grown-up world. The panel of sophisticates seen there may or may not have agreed much with Bishop Fulton Sheen -or other guests- but being grown-ups, they understood that decent people could hold opposing viewpoints and still be decent people. If Kitty Carlisle discovered she was questioning a ditch digger, she would regard him as respectfully, and charmingly, as she would a president.

Some might call that phoniness. Others might say that the epitome of class is treating people well in every circumstance:

Class knows that good manners are nothing more than a series of small, inconsequential sacrifices. . . . Class can “walk with kings and keep it’s virtue and talk with crowds and keep the common touch.” Everyone is comfortable with the person who has class because that person is comfortable with himself.

I wonder what the What’s My Line panel would think of the shrillness of The View, or the smarminess of most current talk shows. I’d guess they would be appalled by the vulgarity and discourtesy they found there.

It goes without saying that the inclusion of a Catholic bishop on to almost any game show would not happen, today, for many reasons. And the bishop would be unlikely to find such a gleeful reception, too, for many other reasons -some of their own making. That the bishop would be subjected to gratuitous derision, or made cheap sport of by at least one “brilliant” perpetual adolescent, there is no doubt.

But I was touched and a little amused to watch Sheen, in his perfect Catholic-school penmanship begin his signature with JMJ. That’s one of those odd things Catholics used to do – put a cross, or the initials of Jesus, Mary and Joseph at the top of anything they were about to write. It was a small act, but one packed with meaning. It said, in essence, “Let my communication be worthy of Your Holy Names.”

On retreat about ten years ago, an aged nun gave me a schedule for our meetings. At the top of the page: JMJ. At the bottom, below her signature, a cross. The whole note was wrapped in prayerful intention. I still have it. Sometimes I remember to put a cross at the top of my page, but I just sent out 50 Christmas cards, and didn’t remember to do it, even once. It is a habit I would like to cultivate.

My son Buster watches old movies, and sometimes he’ll send me a clip like the one above, and he’ll write something like this -which is from an old email- “I was born in the wrong era. I want to have lived back then, when there were manners, and men and women had expectations from each other, and people dressed up a little to travel, or to conduct business, and no adult would dream of wearing the same clothes as his 8 year old son.”

Buster wants the era of It Happened One Night and The Philadelphia Story. That sounds romantic on its surface -and like him I do tire of seeing men in their 40’s dressed like perpetual boys, down to the jeans and baseball caps- but there is no going back. There is never a going back. Not in travel, not in politics, not in life. Do-overs only exist on video tape.

It is a shame, though, that our more “open” world is in some ways so very closed-minded. The tide of secularism has made it unthinkable that a Catholic bishop -or for that matter, any religious figure- would be invited to participate in such a show as What’s My Line?; outside of news programs, you won’t see a Catholic bishop on television, except on “Catholic” TV.

Which brings us to Catholics and television in the 21st Century. Deacon Greg, some may know, is the News Director for the Diocese of Brooklyn’s really excellent NET-TV (New Evangelization Television), and we see him here in this terrific video, along with others (including a nun who used to work the cameras in her habit) as they look back, and look ahead, on their first year anniversary.

Congrats to Deacon Greg, Chris Quinn and all the gang at NET-TV! I had fun doing In the Arena last spring, and it is heartening to see Catholic television that manages dogma with dynamism, energy, professionalism and humor. May other Diocesan broadcasts catch your wave!

UPDATE: Someday I hope to meet Bishop Sheen’s 21st Century version