As a Catholic priest, there are a few principles that dominate my life. The first is that God is the author of human life who decides life and death. An offshoot of this principle is that life needs to be treated with respect. We need to give respect to people because they are created in the image and likeness of God. Using people as objects denigrates the respect that we need to have for them. That’s why the Catholic Church opposes Pornography: because it transforms someone from a person with dignity into an object whose only dignity is my sexual gratification.
Nonetheless, we can’t look at this principle too restrictively. It seems to me that, while pornography is one thing, MTV’s “Boiling Points” objectifies people in the same way using a different principle. If you’ve never seen “Boiling Points” before, the basic premise is that one person develops a scheme to aggravate another person. Maybe a customer pays for something and doesn’t get the right product. When the person complains or asks for his or her money back, the person behind the counter who is trying to aggravate the person, refuses to do so. The person who is being aggravated has a certain time limit until the scam is revealed. If they don’t get angry and walk away, they win $100. The problem I have with this whole premise is that, despite the mistaken belief that MTV is really trying to get people to be more patient, they are really using money to justify using people as objects of pleasure. We laugh as they get mad when, in truth, the audience knows that it’s all a sham. How would we feel if we were the person who asked for a muffin and got a half eaten one instead? We need, as a society, to ensure that we don’t support these shows that exploit other people.
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