Ch. LXVII. The Enemy in the Theater

1. THE theater, the stage, is not merely nothing indifferent as regards religion and morality, but rather something either highly advantageous or extremely injurious. Undoubtedly the theater wields a powerful influence for good or evil. Good plays of a religious tendency raise the tone of morals. The histrionic art resembles the other arts — poetry, painting, rhetoric, sculpture, and music — in the elevating powers they exercise. For this reason the Catholic Church has taken the fine arts one by one into her service, and thereby aided them to attain their highest perfection. The mystery plays of the Middle Ages were employed by her as a means of religious teaching. For the same reason, Catholic educational institutions in our own day, convent schools, and colleges conducted by Religious, annually have theatrical entertainments. It is the same with Catholic guilds or societies for young men and young women, under the superintendence of priests. It is an innocent and harmless pleasure to attend such plays as these.

2. Dramas, on the contrary, which are performed by professional actors in the theaters of large cities, are frequently fraught with danger for young people. There the spirit of evil, evening after evening, dwells upon its old theme: the concupiscence of the eyes, the concupiscence of the flesh, and the pride of life. Immorality is not seldom, at least indirectly, inculcated. Everything combines to half intoxicate youthful spectators, to lull to sleep their understanding and their will, and, on the other hand, to excite their imagination to its highest pitch, and to arouse sensuality.

The "American Magazine" for May, 1909, published an article on "The Indecent Stage," in which Samuel Hopkins Adams says:

"At one period of the present theatrical season, one fifth of all the dramatic present-ments in New York were of dubious character.

"Half a dozen of them were sheer physical brutishness — the appeal to the Yahoo that lurks within all of us, to the beast that we held in leash, out of respect to ourselves and our fellows. Sensuality, it is called, in men." He goes on to say that it would be a positive affront "to embalm, in cold print, the rancid innuendoes or the intimate indecencies" of a certain play — one of the most popular of the modern dramas of license.

3. A certain French writer of plays has himself given an indubitable proof of the immoral tendency of many plays. Why did he forbid his children to witness the performances of the dramas which he had written? For no other reason, than because he believed that their attendance at the theater on those occasions would be injurious to their morals. What a testimony does this afford to the deleterious character of too many plays!

Never go to a play that is performed at a theater of doubtful reputation.

4. Be on your guard lest your love for the theater develop into a passion. Seek rather to take delight in simple pleasures, which are within the reach of every one. Take delight in beholding the beauteous sights which God offers to our view in the works of creation. Strive by the practice of virtue to be yourself a spectacle to angels and to men. Thus will you, when the toil and suffering of life shall have come to an end, attain to that infinitely glorious sight, the vision of God.

Why should we fear youth's draught of joy, If pure, would sparkle less?

Why should the cup the sooner cloy, Which Christ hath deigned to bless?—KEBLE