God has entrusted parents with the grave responsibility of helping their children "to seek the truth from their earliest years and to live in conformity with the truth, to seek the good and promote it" (Message for the 1991 World Day of Peace, No. 3) It is therefore their duty to lead their children to appreciate "whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is gracious" (Phil 4:8). Thus, besides being discriminating television viewers themselves, parents should actively help to form in their children viewing habits conducive to sound development, human, moral and religious. Parents should inform themselves in advance about program content and make a conscious choice on that basis for the good of the family—to watch or not to watch. Reviews and evaluations provided by religious agencies and other responsible groups—together with sound media education programs—can be helpful in this regard. Parents should also discuss television with their children, guiding them to regulate the amount and quality of their viewing, and to perceive and judge the ethical values underlying particular programs, because the family is "the privileged means for transmitting the religious and cultural values which help the person to acquire his or her own identity" (Message for the 1994 World Day of Peace, No. 2).
Pope St. John Paul II, Message for World Communications Day (15 May 1999)
