EWTN

https://www.youtube.com/@EWTNcatholictv

I live alone and I've worked from home since Covid (2020), so, just for company, I like to have the TV on down low in the background during the day.

Also because I live alone, I often like to have the TV down low in the background while I go to sleep.

While going to sleep, I often went to BBC on cable, because they're usually low-key and don't have that many ads. But then they often go off on left-wing climate-change/pro-immigration tangents, which annoys me so much that I wake up just to change the channel. Tried TCM, but then there are some films that just BLARE out at you! (Reminds me of trying to go to sleep back in the '80s to classical music radio stations---they don't always play calming things!)

One thing I just discovered in the last month or so is the Catholic cable TV station---EWTN (Eternal Word Television Network). Unlike fundamentalist religious programs hosted by simpleton white or black sweaty and stupid preachers, the shows on EWTN are actually intelligent! This morning, woke up to a book discussion on Oscar Wilde vs Hilaire Belloc----I know a bit about Wilde, but the discussion made me want to learn more about Belloc. Other EWTN shows focus on the 2000-year history of the church. And then there are purely religious shows with nuns chanting the rosary, or various rituals for the new pope. It's all very interesting to me. There's so much bullshit in the world today, it's extremely refreshing (purifying?) to actually view and listen to some actual purity of thought based on thousands of years of worship.

One minor "revelation" I had while watching EWTN: I'd never thought about Jesus much before. I was raised Lutheran, and I did go to church for a few years while a kid. But I never really thought about Jesus... What happened to him---the political persecution, the crucifixion---was God's experiment! "Let me see what will happen if I send a representative to the earth...." That didn't quite work out so well, did it? I got the same impression when I read George Bernard Shaw's "St. Joan" years ago: The scuzzy temporal politics destroyed her.

So I take it that we're not yet ready for anything based on truth and honesty.

In the meantime, I wish I could just sit secretly in the back of a Catholic church and listen in.