Where are you going to die? When the moment of your death arrives, are you going to be sitting in front of your television screen? Or are you going to be kneeling before the altar that has a cross on it? Are you going to be in church, absorbed in the worship of God in the presence of all generations of his saints? Are you going to be sedated and speechless before the shrilling puppet show of the media? Which is for you, the true liturgy of God by which all creation is remade and redeemed, or the counterfeit liturgy within which all life is faked? Which liturgy is yours? Which liturgy do you belong to?
As long as we turn on the television and watch this media output we offer our homage to the founders our media empires. As long as we sit before the screen, and let this torrent run over us, they are happy. We are sedated and rendered harmless. We inhabit the world they have constructed for us so we share in the great hallucination. We live on the reservation created by media and entertainment industries, in the cage they have erected around us, made happy by confinement within the park assigned to our age-group.
We might as well erect a little bust of these media moguls and put them in the place of honour above the television. To watch the output of the their media empire is to adore all the products of their imagination, and so to honour them as head of our household. Of course each television and each screen displays the images and idols that show us what we want to be, while the voices tell us what we want to hear. Just as the Romans kept figurines of generic ancestors in alcoves and cabinets, so we enjoy figurines that flicker and move across the screen which each of us keeps before us, or behind which each of us hides. There we are content to live an ersatz life, lived through the perpetual of human types, each Punch-and-Judy show keeping us fixated and secure. We might as well offer our media masters a pinch of incense and venerate them as our own ancestors and, as the authors of all possible outcomes conceivable for us, as the Fates. Unless you pray to the God who made you and gives you a voice, that is.
