Today after Mass, I spotted a brochure on the importance of installing an internet filter on your home computer(s) to protect your family from impure images, movies, and predators.

Our family now has “Net Nanny” which allows you to block bad images, gambling sites, even Facebook and email, if you want. You can also set up different accounts so that adults can go to Facebook, but children cannot. It also interrupts chat messages that contains inappropriate words or any standard “predator phrases” like “meet me at” or “don’t tell your parents.” If similar phrases appear in an incoming chat to your home, it is blocked and an email is sent to you immediately. Pretty nifty.

Since then, I have been thinking of other ways to keep my home and family pure. A lot of these are common sense, but perhaps they will be helpful for other mother’s and father’s as they seek to make their home into a domestic church – a seedbed for future saints.

5. Make a commitment to not watch movies or television shows that take God’s name in vain (2nd Commandment), discuss immoral conduct, or show impure images (6th & 9th Commandments). If shows foster disrespect for parents and elders, turn that off too.

Why not reduce television viewing all together? Most shows and commercials on prime time television now dabble in sexual content – jokes about being “gay” are universally common. Why live in the gutter? Even the women’s channels (e.g. W or Oxygen) are filled with commercials about contraception, etc. Just turn it off.

4. If you have Netflix, you can filter which movies you get by going into your account settings. Why not restrict it so that you don’t find filth in your mailbox or through your instant view.

3. Be careful about the magazines that you have at home. Cosmopolitan and Glamour, not to mention Seventeen or even the men’s magazine Men’s Health are filled with lewd photos and “sex tips”. Burn them. Throw them out. These magazines contain what would be called “soft porn” only 40 years ago.

2. As mentioned above, get an internet filter. Net Nanny is the highest rated and pretty easy to use once you get the hang of it. I also know families that have Covenant Eyes – a software that sends a report of any sketchy surfing to an accountability partner…e.g. to your wife or to your grandma. Most dads and teens would think twice if they knew that Granny received a report of everywhere they had been on the internet!!!

1. Read the Bible, teach your children the Faith, and pray the Holy Rosary together at night. Even if you can only do one decade – pray together and the Holy Spirit will grant you purity of heart and the sustained innocence of your children.

Please feel free to add more tips. I’d love to learn what other families are doing to make their home a more wholesome and healthy place.

Please share your thoughts in the comment box below.