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anon50218184
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No need for ad hominem attacks…
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DaveBj
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No we don’t. We can legislate rewards for behavior that society considers moral, and we can legislate punishments for behavior that society considers immoral, but morality itself is part of the human mind, and that is something that nobody can legislate.
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misstherese
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The Vatican issued a warning about the dangers of Halloween, since it’s a pagan holiday. Maybe (if they haven’t already) they could issue another warning against different types of music. A lot of the music on the radio today has lyrics that are extremely inappropriate and dangerous to the soul. Some heavy metal I would definitely say has a negative effect on the soul. It enacts rage within the soul; it’s an angry type of music and not conducive whatsoever.
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anon50218184
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Could you cite this Halloween warning please?
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Jamie5
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Happy the title has been changed from Should some music be banned to how to determine what to listen to, and here’s my very simple easy answer:
At least for me: It totally depends what mood I am in!
I love literally almost every type of genre of music, from Slayer to Yanni to Weird Al to Enya to Metallica to Dream Theater to Pantera to Sammy Davis Jr. (I’ve gotta be me!)
If I need to be pumped up or am angry and need to realease that I might be some serious speed or death metal. IF I want to sleep and relax some piano or classical, etc.
That’s the beauty of music, there truly is room for it all and it depends on what mood someone is in. As far as ratings, Tipper Gore years ago tried to call Cyndi Lauper’s “She bop” as obscene.
which lead to the Explicit Lyrics stickers you now see or E you see on downloadable sites.
At least for me: It totally depends what mood I am in!
I love literally almost every type of genre of music, from Slayer to Yanni to Weird Al to Enya to Metallica to Dream Theater to Pantera to Sammy Davis Jr. (I’ve gotta be me!)
If I need to be pumped up or am angry and need to realease that I might be some serious speed or death metal. IF I want to sleep and relax some piano or classical, etc.
That’s the beauty of music, there truly is room for it all and it depends on what mood someone is in. As far as ratings, Tipper Gore years ago tried to call Cyndi Lauper’s “She bop” as obscene.
which lead to the Explicit Lyrics stickers you now see or E you see on downloadable sites.
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anon50218184
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Thank you!
But I think there should be more discernment rather than simply based on mood. For instance, all the bands you mentioned are for the most part okay in my book, except Slayer. Their album art alone is blasphemous, never mind the music. I think the other bands are redeemable by virtue of the quality of music, or the subject matter, etc. But Slayer sets out from the start to be blasphemous, not just shocking…
I genuinely appreciate your (name removed by moderator)ut, but you gotta get rid of Slayer.
But I think there should be more discernment rather than simply based on mood. For instance, all the bands you mentioned are for the most part okay in my book, except Slayer. Their album art alone is blasphemous, never mind the music. I think the other bands are redeemable by virtue of the quality of music, or the subject matter, etc. But Slayer sets out from the start to be blasphemous, not just shocking…
I genuinely appreciate your (name removed by moderator)ut, but you gotta get rid of Slayer.
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Jamie5
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Believe it or not Tom Araya is a Christian and awesome guy.
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misstherese
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ChunkMonk
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@DaveBj
Indeed. And if the behavior of publicly producing and distributing some music was held to be immoral, then we could (and did in the past) legislate that very easily.
@1neophyte
It shouldn’t seem strange at all. A person should be aware of what they are defending, and also what they are advocating. The lyrics are horrible, and in a normal situation I wouldn’t post them anywhere, much less a Catholic message board. But when said Catholic message board has posters trying to white-wash all “music” as creative acts of beauty then it is fair game to expose the lie.
Of course I won’t apologize. Any person who advocates for unrestricted free-speech should be exposed to what they are advocating, and should be made aware, if they are not, of how far the lines can be drawn if you tolerate anything and everything.
Am I an unbalanced sociopath? I didn’t write those lyrics. In fact, I used them as an example of why certain “music” should be banned as public obscenity. I don’t see the why someone who loves said music enough to advocate it’s distribution to minors would mind reading it. I think you’re projecting a faux outrage here in lieu of a coherent (and more importantly Catholic) argument because there really is none against what I am saying.
Indeed. And if the behavior of publicly producing and distributing some music was held to be immoral, then we could (and did in the past) legislate that very easily.
@1neophyte
It shouldn’t seem strange at all. A person should be aware of what they are defending, and also what they are advocating. The lyrics are horrible, and in a normal situation I wouldn’t post them anywhere, much less a Catholic message board. But when said Catholic message board has posters trying to white-wash all “music” as creative acts of beauty then it is fair game to expose the lie.
Of course I won’t apologize. Any person who advocates for unrestricted free-speech should be exposed to what they are advocating, and should be made aware, if they are not, of how far the lines can be drawn if you tolerate anything and everything.
Am I an unbalanced sociopath? I didn’t write those lyrics. In fact, I used them as an example of why certain “music” should be banned as public obscenity. I don’t see the why someone who loves said music enough to advocate it’s distribution to minors would mind reading it. I think you’re projecting a faux outrage here in lieu of a coherent (and more importantly Catholic) argument because there really is none against what I am saying.
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Xanthippe_Voorhees
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Despite your little stunt of posting some vulgar lyrics you still don’t have a concrete way of dealing with what you can “evil.” For instance, there are songs that have vulgar lyrics but are much less harmful than the theological issues with mainstream Christian songs. There are songs which are not at all shocking or wrong in their native language, but when translated cause audiences to be scandalized.
How far are you willing to go? There are many, many lyricless waltzes, sonatas and tangos meant to inflame the passions and encourage illicit activity. They were written for that very purpose. The culture was conditioned to be titillated by the interplay between the oboe and flute. Without that conditioning, we now see a piece of music near fit for a Sunday concert. Yet the composer had ill intentions. While someone who wrote a catchy “bump and grind” song just wrote a catchy ditty to be funny and perhaps ironic.
Banning also doesn’t address the core of the issue of why these songs are being produced…the anger behind it. Perhaps the most vulgar song I ever heard was one written by a 15yo Pueritican young man who, when he was 8 and his brother was 6, witness an ON DUTY drunk officer drive through his home’s fenced in front yard, killing his brother before his eyes. Not only was the officer never charged, but the family was never offered anything besides a fence repair, the officer never had any remorse, became sheriff and would even taunt this young man as a child about his little brother’s death. (one less Arian, he’d say…because he was a darker Puerterican and the little boy was fair)
To say that this young man had no right to produce an angry piece of music–and that this angry piece of music was not a representation of many of similar struggles would be denying the very experiences that they faced. Goodie-two-shoes banning would only have stopped the message of anger at the corrupt police state from (rightfully) spreading. Unfortunately, while this boy came to America, life in Puerto Rico is not much better today.
And that’s what I’m saying is the kind of censorship that you’re advocating would be a deep and huburistic judgment on something to which one would have little knowledge.
I also, in the beginning, stated that banning (especially legislated morality) is far different than prudence, which would guide us not to consume such things and to advise others not to.
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Xanthippe_Voorhees
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A Vatican warning still isn’t a ban. (and note, they didn’t even say don’t celebrate Halloween by a long shot–that was the dramatic secular reporting, they simply warned against taking Halloween too far and engaging in clearly anti-Christian activities)
What a warning from a fair and balanced source, such as the Vatican, does is allow us to take our correctly formed conscience and avoid an occasion of sin. What a secular and legal ban of something does is try to remove it from the public domain all-together, all the while subjecting it to an ever-changing and conflating group of powerful individuals who have been deemed the rightful curators of good and evil.
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misstherese
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Yeah that’s pretty much what I got from it too. I didn’t think it was a ban; I thought it was smart they gave their thoughts on it though. A lot of occult stuff goes on that day. More than the usual.
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Joe_5859
Guest
The accent is on the “Hello”
How can a band with the song Laudate Dominum be evil.
(Pay no attention to the album cover. (Please Note: This uploaded content is no longer available.))
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Joe_5859
Guest
In all seriousness, this is a question I continually circle back to and have for the past 20 years. My musical genre of choice to listen to is heavy metal.
In my 10 years on the forum, I’ve also seen many threads on the subject. There do tend to be some more and less productive turns the conversations take. People do tend to immediately jump on the banning/censorship point, which I know is not what you were ultimately aiming for. We can have that discussion, but it’s ultimately a separate conversation. I think the far more interesting and edifying conversation for us to have as Catholics is around discernment and the objective and subjective dimensions of beauty.
Ultimately, God is Beauty itself. And all our notions of the beautiful have God as their starting point.
So it is evident to me that there is an objective element to art (in general, which includes music and all the other art forms). If I show someone a stick figure drawing of myself side-by-side with the Mona Lisa and ask 100 people which one is more beautiful, all 100 people are likely going to have the same answer.
But there is a subjective element, too. The stick figure drawing of our family that my daughter drew on her Father’s Day card to me when she was 4 years old is going to be more beautiful to me than even the Mona Lisa. I more readily see the love and meaning behind the image from my daughter than that of Leonardo.
I have seen this play out in music. With regards to some genres and/or artists, I know that some people make subjective connections with the music for good or for bad. For example, I knew a few people in college who used to listen to bands like AC/DC and other hard rock bands when they were in high school and living lives of sin while mixed up with the wrong crowd. After their conversion, they simply could not listen to that music anymore. In stirred in them memories of that time in their life that they were living lives opposed to God. So they purged their music collection.
For me, hard rock and heavy metal do not have those same subjective connections. My childhood was rather serene and I never got mixed up with the wrong crowd. I wouldn’t have even had the first clue how to obtain drugs or alcohol when I was in high school. But I was always drawn by the power of metal music, and indeed the beautiful aspects of it (which is why I never got into the “darker” subgenres like black metal or death metal, preferring instead the “lighter” subgenres of progressive, power, and symphonic metal). So listening to it has never stirred in me these memories or temptations to past sins.
The stuff that draws on satanic imagery (even in jest) has always made me uneasy and I don’t listen to it. So it’s not as though I listen to the genre indiscriminately. I make a choice based on what I see and hear in the music.
I know my own capacity for self-delusion and rationalization, so I never discount the possibility that I’m telling myself what I want to hear. But for now, I still listen to it, even if not nearly as often as I used to.
In my 10 years on the forum, I’ve also seen many threads on the subject. There do tend to be some more and less productive turns the conversations take. People do tend to immediately jump on the banning/censorship point, which I know is not what you were ultimately aiming for. We can have that discussion, but it’s ultimately a separate conversation. I think the far more interesting and edifying conversation for us to have as Catholics is around discernment and the objective and subjective dimensions of beauty.
Ultimately, God is Beauty itself. And all our notions of the beautiful have God as their starting point.
So it is evident to me that there is an objective element to art (in general, which includes music and all the other art forms). If I show someone a stick figure drawing of myself side-by-side with the Mona Lisa and ask 100 people which one is more beautiful, all 100 people are likely going to have the same answer.
But there is a subjective element, too. The stick figure drawing of our family that my daughter drew on her Father’s Day card to me when she was 4 years old is going to be more beautiful to me than even the Mona Lisa. I more readily see the love and meaning behind the image from my daughter than that of Leonardo.
I have seen this play out in music. With regards to some genres and/or artists, I know that some people make subjective connections with the music for good or for bad. For example, I knew a few people in college who used to listen to bands like AC/DC and other hard rock bands when they were in high school and living lives of sin while mixed up with the wrong crowd. After their conversion, they simply could not listen to that music anymore. In stirred in them memories of that time in their life that they were living lives opposed to God. So they purged their music collection.
For me, hard rock and heavy metal do not have those same subjective connections. My childhood was rather serene and I never got mixed up with the wrong crowd. I wouldn’t have even had the first clue how to obtain drugs or alcohol when I was in high school. But I was always drawn by the power of metal music, and indeed the beautiful aspects of it (which is why I never got into the “darker” subgenres like black metal or death metal, preferring instead the “lighter” subgenres of progressive, power, and symphonic metal). So listening to it has never stirred in me these memories or temptations to past sins.
The stuff that draws on satanic imagery (even in jest) has always made me uneasy and I don’t listen to it. So it’s not as though I listen to the genre indiscriminately. I make a choice based on what I see and hear in the music.
I know my own capacity for self-delusion and rationalization, so I never discount the possibility that I’m telling myself what I want to hear. But for now, I still listen to it, even if not nearly as often as I used to.
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anon50218184
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You and I may be kindred souls, this is also something I’ve thought about off and on for the past 7 years or so.
I’ll admit it, I like Helloween. I like Megadeth, most of Pantera, Metallica, AC/DC, Iron Maiden, Dream Theatre, Angra, Stratovarius, Dragonforce, etc… Metal (and many of its subgenres) isn’t the only thing I listen to, but definitely one of my favorites. The one band I won’t listen to (beth because I think it sounds awful and because I think it’s overtly satanic) is Slayer - even though Tom Araya can have a conversation with cute kids.
Nevertheless, isn’t it hard to reconcile the (at minimum) trivialization of Hell, Satan, evil with a desire for a pure delicate conscience? And I’m just talking about the music and lyrics, nevermind the artwork, questionable morals of the band members, and general culture surrounding it. If my goal is to be a saint, ie to never ever commit another deliberate venial sin, should I be surrounding myself with this kind of stuff?
Shouldn’t I be more careful about what i put into my head?
I’ll be the first to speak of the redeeming qualities of metal. The technical expertise required, the complex composition, etc… but is it pleasing to Our Lady? Does She appreciate “Helloween” or “Highway to Hell”? It’s pretty hard, if not impossible, to reconcile the delicate innocence and humility of Our Lady with the anger and self imposition of Walk by Pantera…
What about my other guilty pleasure? Rap and Hip Hop, the lyrics in those case may not be directly satanic, but they are probably even more offensive to Our Lady’s purity.
No?
There are certain bands, like Dreamtheatre or Angra, that demonstrate the virtuosity of the genre without delving into the dark tones and topics that Megaderth, Pantera, or Slayer go into. Maybe we (or I) should limit myself to those bands and bands like it?
With regards to rap, there are even fewer artists to chose from…
I’ll admit it, I like Helloween. I like Megadeth, most of Pantera, Metallica, AC/DC, Iron Maiden, Dream Theatre, Angra, Stratovarius, Dragonforce, etc… Metal (and many of its subgenres) isn’t the only thing I listen to, but definitely one of my favorites. The one band I won’t listen to (beth because I think it sounds awful and because I think it’s overtly satanic) is Slayer - even though Tom Araya can have a conversation with cute kids.
Nevertheless, isn’t it hard to reconcile the (at minimum) trivialization of Hell, Satan, evil with a desire for a pure delicate conscience? And I’m just talking about the music and lyrics, nevermind the artwork, questionable morals of the band members, and general culture surrounding it. If my goal is to be a saint, ie to never ever commit another deliberate venial sin, should I be surrounding myself with this kind of stuff?
Shouldn’t I be more careful about what i put into my head?
I’ll be the first to speak of the redeeming qualities of metal. The technical expertise required, the complex composition, etc… but is it pleasing to Our Lady? Does She appreciate “Helloween” or “Highway to Hell”? It’s pretty hard, if not impossible, to reconcile the delicate innocence and humility of Our Lady with the anger and self imposition of Walk by Pantera…
What about my other guilty pleasure? Rap and Hip Hop, the lyrics in those case may not be directly satanic, but they are probably even more offensive to Our Lady’s purity.
No?
There are certain bands, like Dreamtheatre or Angra, that demonstrate the virtuosity of the genre without delving into the dark tones and topics that Megaderth, Pantera, or Slayer go into. Maybe we (or I) should limit myself to those bands and bands like it?
With regards to rap, there are even fewer artists to chose from…
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Joe_5859
Guest
Good thoughts. I never was much for some of those bands. My older brother bought me an AC/DC CD way back when which I listened to exactly once. Every single song was full of sexual innuendo. Honestly, that bothers me more than “Highway to Hell” which I have always viewed more in figurative terms utilizing the common expression rather than anything authentically satanic.
I do like some of Megadeth’s middle albums (“Symphony of Destruction” is very catchy). Most of their lyrics always struck me as political. Maybe it’s different with their earlier stuff which I never really got in to.
Gotta love Dream Theater. If I was stranded on a desert island with just one song to listen to, it would be “A Change of Seasons”.
There are some bands it is hard for me to enjoy as much now and I tend not to listen to them. Those that are really occultish or atheistic with their lyrical themes especially. But I like bands like Ayreon (all their lyrics are sci fi) or Van Canto (mostly “we are the champions” type of anthems) or Sonata Arctica (can’t tell what their lyrics even mean most of the time
).
I try to avoid scrupulosity, but then we do need to make sure we are putting our spiritual life first. What has me listening to music less now than I used to is more the need for more silence in my life. Prayer is hard with so much noise.
I do like some of Megadeth’s middle albums (“Symphony of Destruction” is very catchy). Most of their lyrics always struck me as political. Maybe it’s different with their earlier stuff which I never really got in to.
Gotta love Dream Theater. If I was stranded on a desert island with just one song to listen to, it would be “A Change of Seasons”.
There are some bands it is hard for me to enjoy as much now and I tend not to listen to them. Those that are really occultish or atheistic with their lyrical themes especially. But I like bands like Ayreon (all their lyrics are sci fi) or Van Canto (mostly “we are the champions” type of anthems) or Sonata Arctica (can’t tell what their lyrics even mean most of the time
).I try to avoid scrupulosity, but then we do need to make sure we are putting our spiritual life first. What has me listening to music less now than I used to is more the need for more silence in my life. Prayer is hard with so much noise.
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