I recently had the unfortunate experience of spending almost seven hours in a hospital emergency room where the television was playing back-to-back episodes of Friends. It had been years since I had seen an episode (let alone 14!), and I was genuinely shocked at the content. Of course, I see television shows from a different perspective than I did almost 30 years ago when this show premiered. My “mom” radar is constantly on alert for content that, as I tell the kids, “is not appropriate.”
It’s no secret that Friends was a show that celebrated modern sexual “freedom,” a fact that too many of us sadly overlooked for the sake of well-timed jokes and witty banter. But interestingly, I didn’t even find the innocuous humour funny anymore, and I wasn’t the only one. After one man joined the waiting and saw a couple of episodes, he said to the rest of us in the room, “Is this supposed to be funny?” I was wondering the same thing.
I started to think about what a huge cultural phenomenon this show was and still is and how, in my opinion, it deeply impacted a couple of generations (maybe more) of young people. I’m not blaming today’s lack of morality on one wildly successful sitcom, but I think we all have a part to play in what we allow to influence our lives. The fact is that Friends and the lifestyles portrayed on the show became the ideal for many people.
When I graduated high school in 1994, the year that Friends began, it was still considered rather scandalous for a couple to live together before they were married. I’m pretty sure Friends helped take care of that taboo. Living together, pre-marital relations, sexual experimentation, and homosexual relationships have become completely normalized for the Western world. Again, it’s not that these things didn’t exist before, but modern media, through this and other popular shows, shoulders a great responsibility for convincing the world that this way of living – without any value system – is perfectly acceptable and even preferred to any traditional, morality-based lifestyle. Now, after 30 years of many people living like they’re part of an episode of Friends, the world is more confused and hurting than ever.
I was thinking about this cultural shift in light of the recent document Fiducia Supplicans put out in mid-December by the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith. The document introduces the idea of giving non-sacramental blessings to those who are in “irregular” relationships, including pre-marital cohabitation or those of the same sex. The document states that the Church maintains that the sacrament of marriage can only be between one man and one woman, and that in no way can non-sacramental unions be blessed. Rather, the Dicastery notes that, for those who seek them, blessings can be given to aid individuals who are trying to come to a better understanding of God’s will in their life.
The document has caused a wide variety of reactions, from condemnation to praise. Many have commented on the Dicastery’s repeated use of the word “couple,” which seems to give validity to those relationships that the Church teaches are not valid, i.e., any sexual relationship outside of marriage.
Again, I think back to Friends and recall how “couples” were widely defined and changed regularly. That is the moral compass by which the majority of people, including many Catholics, live. Now, almost 30 years after Friends began, “couple” is a pretty loose term, though I would venture that most of us still associate the term with a romantic relationship. Despite the use of the word “couple,” Fiducia Supplicans says the Church upholds all teaching regarding sexual morality. Perhaps the Church is attempting to respond to the Friends culture, to a world that is deeply confused about what true love really looks like. Is this another attempt by Pope Francis to “reach out” to the lost sheep, or will people be even more confused by the combination of misunderstood Church teaching and an increasingly messy popular culture?
Catholics can (and do) argue at length about how we got here and why the Vatican would even issue a document like Fiducia Supplicans. We can turn on the television or go online and know with certainty that we no longer live in a morals-based Judeo-Christian society. We can sit in a hospital waiting room and be bombarded with seven screen hours of depravity and know that however we got here, we are here, and the Church does need to shepherd her people through these murky waters. Time will tell if Fiducia Supplicans will help or hinder those efforts.
Lazzuri writes from her home in Nova Scotia, where she lives with her husband, six children, and her mom. She can be reached at [email protected]