Is it sinful to enjoy violent sports?

[BobP123]

This place is most depressing.

Now I can’t even watch football and recieve Holy Communion.
No golf; it’s played by sinners on Sunday.
No baseball; their pants are too tight and they adjust themselves.
No hockey; there’s the blood factor.
No NASCAR of Formula One, they’re suicidal.

I’m gonna go crawl off in a cave.

How about a friendly game of chess?

 

[Tommy_Joe]

I can’t,…I’d LOVE to, but there’d be that lack of humility, (a BIG sin), on both our parts because the object is to beat each other.
Meet me at the cave,…we’ll do lunch.

 

[Bobby_Jim]

I dunno, I would have to say in football and hockey and lacrosse (and increasingly basketball), the “violence”, a.k.a. hard physical contact, is ancillary to the objective of scoring a touchdown, or a goal, or a basket, or what have you. It’s not the main point.

Wrestling (of the “real” variety), also the objective is not really to hurt your opponent so much as to pin him.

Now boxing and ultimate fighting I’m not so sure about. Maybe I’m willing to allow boxing and disallow ultimate fighting based on historical reasons. But for martial arts in general I tend to think that, as forms of self defense, they are fine, and sparring and such is required as part of training, but your intent should not be to hurt your sparring partner. So where the competition involves trying to inflict injury on your opponent, I think it’s immoral. But that’s just my opinion.

 

[Newbie2]

I dunno, I would have to say in football and hockey and lacrosse (and increasingly basketball), the “violence”, a.k.a. hard physical contact, is ancillary to the objective of scoring a touchdown, or a goal, or a basket, or what have you. It’s not the main point.

Wrestling (of the “real” variety), also the objective is not really to hurt your opponent so much as to pin him.

Now boxing and ultimate fighting I’m not so sure about. Maybe I’m willing to allow boxing and disallow ultimate fighting based on historical reasons. But for martial arts in general I tend to think that, as forms of self defense, they are fine, and sparring and such is required as part of training, but your intent should not be to hurt your sparring partner. So where the competition involves trying to inflict injury on your opponent, I think it’s immoral. But that’s just my opinion.

I’d agree. There’s definitely a difference between, say, Olympic boxing and Ultimate fighting; just take a look at the protective gear that they wear. The goal in Ultimate fighting is to render your opponent unconcious, not to score points. Yes, Olympic boxing has knockouts, but they’re much more rare. But you get my point.

When I played high-school football, one of my coaches told us that when you make a hit, you want to hurt the guy across from you, not injure him, but really make him sting with a good pop. He was very good at making the distinction.

To delight when a guy on your favorite team lays out another with a good block or tackle, for example, and the guy on the receiving end isn’t injured, that would seem to be morally acceptable.

But…when some poor sap gets bloodied, his nose broken and rendered unconcious in an Ultimate match, even though he’s entered the ring voluntarily, and one delights in that, methinks that crosses the line.