A reader writes:
Hey, I was hoping you’d be able to help me out with a question I have. A
priest told me listening to bad music is objectively sinful. I was
wondering if you could give me some advice as to where to draw the line.
This can also apply to movies and tv as well.
This is a tough one. In the short space available in a blog post (or a private e-mail) there is no way to give more than a general answer to this, but the general answer is this: It is immoral, without a justifying reason, to place oneself in a situation where you will be tempted sin. If listening to the music will tempt you to sin then it is immoral for you to listen to the music without a justifying reason.
A word should be said about having a justifying reason to enter a situation in which one realizes that one will be tempted because many people neglect this aspect and speak as if it is never permissible to enter a situation in which one reasonably foresees that one will be tempted. This reflects a pious and praiseworthy sentiment, but it is patently not true if you spend a few moments thinking about it. Trying to avoid every possible temptation in life would destroy one’s ability to lead a human life and cause one to develop a morbid fear of temptation that will result in extreme scrupulosity. We simply were not designed to be in perpetual flight from temptation, and if we try to be then we will do ourselves harm. Such an attitude also fails to do justice to the empowerment that the Holy Spirit gives to us to resist and overcome our temptations.
The fact is that there are so many causes for temptation–even if you live in a monastery and never watch TV or listen to the radio or read non-sacred books–that you will be completely paralyzed if you try to run away from any possible exposure to temptation. You will simply stay in bed all day, and even that won’t work because staying in bed all day will not cure your temptations. Due to the fall, we have temptation built into us, and so temptation is something we just have to live with.
It is like risk: Just as we cannot eliminate risk from life, we cannot eliminate temptation from life. The correct strategy in both cases is to manage risk and to manage temptation.
Thus there are justifying reasons to assume a risk and there are justifying reasons to enter situations in which one reasonably foresees that one will be tempted.
F’rinstance: Suppose that your teenage daughter has (unbeknownst to you) been taken to a pornographic movie. Upon discovering this, you might conclude that the thing to do is to enter the pornographic movie theater, find her in the dark, and drag her back home. In this case, even though you might be tempted by the sights and sounds that you will experience upon entering the movie house as you try to find your daughter, you would have a justifying cause for entering the situation, even knowing that you yourself may experience some level of temptation. The good you are trying to do for her by getting her out of that situation is sufficient ot justify the risk that you are taking by allowing yourself a brief exposure to material that might tempt you.
A justifying cause need not be so extreme, however. Humans have a need for recreation that God built into us. Suppose, then, that one day you are in need of recreation and decide that the thing to do is listen to some music. You have a very nice CD on hand, whose music you know you would enjoy and that would provide you the recreation you need, but you also happen to know that a couple of the songs on the CD have bad words in them and one is a song implying conjugal relations between a couple whose marital status is Not At All Clear.
What do you do?
Well, you do your best to figure out what level of temptation listening to the album would put you in. If the temptation you reasonably foresee is too great then you don’t listen. If it isn’t too great, then you do listen. What counts as too much temptation is a tricky question, but there isn’t much of a way to simplify it. It’s comes down to a prudential choice that you have to make based on your knowledge of yourself and your knowledge of the material you will be encountering.
Now back to the reader’s question:
If there is no occasion of
sin by listening to or watching something, then I suppose the only problem
is supporting it.
This would be true, but note then that we aren’t talking about the act of listening to or watching something at this point. We are talking about the act of "supporting" it, by which I assume that you mean paying money to those who produce it.
At that point it becomes much harder to establish that sin is taking place because we’re talking about boycotting stuff because it contains objectionable content, and the Church has never said that such boycotting is morally obligatory on the faithful. In the absence of a clear moral obligation, the faithful should not act on the assumption that it would be sinful to fail to boycott it.
In general, personal boycotts conducted in silence are not productive. If you don’t buy Artist X’s latest CD because his previous one had two immoral words on it and a song implying conjugal relations between a couple whose marital status was Not At All Clear then Artist X is very unlikely to be taught any kind of a lesson by the mere fact that you don’t buy his next CD. How is he supposed to know why you didn’t by it? Maybe you didn’t like the music on the last one. Or maybe you liked somebody else’s last CD better. Or maybe you’re short on cash when it hits the stands. How is he supposed to know?
You might, if you wish, choose to write him a letter and say, "Dear Artist X: I am not going to buy your next CD because your last one had two dirty words and a song implying conjugal relations between a couple whose marital status was Not At All Clear. If you make cleaner CDs, though, I will buy them." That at least would have some chance of teaching him a lesson about what kind of CDs he should make. It could even be a good and praiseworthy thing for you to write such letters.
But here’s the deal: It’s not morally obligatory for you to write them, and in the absence of writing them, I don’t see how it is morally obligatory for you to personally boycott his next CD when he has no way of understanding the reason for (or even the existence of) the boycott.
I’m a musician myself and so studying music is very
important to me. Listening and learning from various artists is how I get
better and to cut out music that may have any sinful message in it would
require not listening to quite a bit of secular music.
Okay, now you just introduce a whole new class of justifying reasons: the professional reason. People can have a professional reason for exposing themselves to situations that might possibly result in temptation for them:
- Doctors frequently need to look at people who aren’t fully clothed.
- Christian movie critics need to watch movies that have problematic content so they can warn others what that content is.
- Apologists need to read arguments supporting false belief systems.
- Etc., etc., etc.
Musicians also need to listen to music to master their craft even though the music may not be wholesome through and through.
So you just strengthened the justifying reasons that may exist for you to listen to certain kinds of music.
Note that I didn’t say "This means you can listen to any and all music." If a particular piece or kind of music is going to create too great a temptation for you then you can’t listen to it, but that gets us back to the prudential judgment that you have to make based on your knowledge of yourself and the material.
The priest said if I
wouldn’t listen to it with Jesus, Mary, my guardian angel or whoever else I
want to imagine was there, I probably shouldn’t listen to it. This is a
good point . . .
Okay, let me interrupt you for a moment. I don’t think that this is a good point. This kind of "Would you do it with Jesus in the room?" calculus is almost guaranteed to lead you to err in one of two directions: Either it will degrade your perception of what it is okay to do in general or it will degrade your perception of what it is okay to do in Jesus’ presence. In other words, it will either make you scrupulous or it will make you irreverent. Lemme ‘splain:
If Jesus really walked into the room, which of the following would strike you as a good thing to do?
- Ask him if he would like to go see a movie?
- Tell him a joke?
- Offer him a beer?
- Say he can help himself to the snacks in the fridge?
- Quake in abject terror at his feet while imploring his mercy?
If you have a lively awareness of the fact that Jesus is God Himself and you contemplate God Himself walking into the room then alternative 5 is going to suggest itself rather more strongly to you than the others. The other four options would (for a person with a normal conscience) kind of fade into the background at such a moment.
Now, there may be other options besides 5 that could be appropriate (e.g., worship him in awe), but my point is: Having Jesus in the room skews the normal human calculus of what is the right thing to do at the moment.
That’s why some things are not appropriate to do during Eucharistic exposition even though the same thing is perfectly appropriate when one is not at Eucharistic exposition (e.g., eating a meal, bathing, deliberately going to sleep).
If you try to imagine Jesus in the room as a test for whether it’s okay to do something then one of two things will happen:
- You will become scrupulous because you will conclude that an awful lot of things are not okay which in fact are okay (e.g., "I wouldn’t snarf down a Big Mac while bopping to secular music on my iPod during Eucharistic exposition, therefore I should never do those things").
- You will become irreverent by concluding that things that are okay to do in general must therefore be okay to do when in the immediate presence of Infinite Holiness Incarnate (e.g., "It’s okay for me to snarf down a Big Mac while bouncing my head back and forth as I listen to secular music on my iPod in general, therefore that’s perfectly okay for me to do that during Eucharistic exposition").
The "Would you do it with Jesus in the room?" test thus strikes me as a bad tool to use for making such decisions. It either will force us to scrupulosity or irreverence–or both.
Same goes in varying degrees for imagining Mary, your guardian angel, your mom, or any such person.
Interruption over.
. . . except the lyrcis tend to not be what I pay attention to. If I
could get an edited version without profanity in it, would it be more
acceptable, or would supporting a sinful artist with sinful lyrcis still be
considered wrong?
I appreciate what you’re saying about not listening to the lyrics. Indeed, in many songs the lyrics aren’t even intelligible these days. If you could achieve the same goals with an edited version of the song and had ready access to one then it would be a good thing to use one, but I wouldn’t knock myself out toward procuring one really is not being significantly tempted and if the time and money spent on procuring one could be more profitably spent on something else.
As to the issue of boycotting the artist, I’ve already outlined my thoughts on that.
I will carry whatever cross God gives me, but I tend to
be a little scrupulous and this can cause me a lot of trouble knowing
whether something is truly wrong or whether I’m just trying to make
something out of nothing.
Without knowing what music specifically is involved, I don’t know that I can form a judgment here. You could be listening to Gilbert & Sullivan and worrying about a peccadillo in Gilbert’s lyrics or you could be listening to Marilyn Manson and thinking that a song about devil worship is no big deal. Individuals’ perceptions of the moral character of the music they are listening to can vary greatly over the course of a lifetime, and I can’t advise you too well without specifics.
I would suggest that you talk it over with Christians who are mature in their faith, neither lax nor scrupulous, and be openminded to what they say as you form your own impressions and remain open to God’s leading.
Hope this helps!
