Is listening to rock music sinful? (Please answer, I have OCD and I'm really stressing)

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I’m Catholic, and my favorite band is Twenty One Pilots. I think their music is really thought provoking and just all around enjoyable to listen to. Some of their songs are in a style similar to rap, and some of their songs are in a style similar to rock. So I began to wonder if it was a sin to listen to rock or rap music.

I recently read that Pope Benedict XVI called rock music “anti-religion” and that he said it was sinful. Is this true?
 
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As long as rock music is not leading you to sin and is not blaspheming or trying to destroy the Church, it is not a sin to listen to it.

How old are you if I may ask?
 
I’d prefer not to give out my exact age, but I am a high school student.
 
Please provide a link to the actual document in which Pope Benedict said this and then we will talk.

Many alleged quotes of Popes are taken out of context or just made up. There is no point in even discussing an alleged Pope quote without its context and source.
 
If you use this forum’s search bar, you can find other questions like mine where the quote has been brought up.
I can’t use the links on the forum, because my computer won’t work with them.
 
Thank you, but I am not going to do research for you, find other threads, and analyze them trying to arrive at an answer to your question.

If you say Pope Benedict said something, it’s only fair to expect you to provide the reliable source showing exactly what he said, when, where and to whom. It is inappropriate for you to expect other people to find sources you claim are out there.
 
I’m sorry, but even if I did have the link, reading the source would literally give me a panic attack.

I used to read the sources when I had questions like this. Texts from the early church, etc. And I would always lapse into a panic attack and I wouldn’t recover until a day later.

Thank you for your original answer, though 😃
 
I’m not, and honestly I’m a little offended that you would think that. I know that the questions I ask seem like they have obvious answers and that I’m just an idiot. But these are legitimate things that I worry about.
 
Ambasea said:
I’m sorry, but even if I did have the link, reading the source would literally give me a panic attack.

I used to read the sources when I had questions like this. Texts from the early church, etc. And I would always lapse into a panic attack and I wouldn’t recover until a day later.

Thank you for your original answer, though 😃
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I must say, I find this an awfully convenient excuse for not trying to do your own research. If you want help, you’re going to have to do better than ‘reading Church sources gives me a panic attack’. ☹️
 
kill051 said:
I must say, I find this an awfully convenient excuse for not trying to do your own research. If you want help, you’re going to have to do better than ‘reading Church sources gives me a panic attack’. ☹️
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I’m sorry, but that’s just the truth. I don’t think you quite understand the way my brain works about stuff like this.
 
Ambasea said:
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kill051:
I must say, I find this an awfully convenient excuse for not trying to do your own research. If you want help, you’re going to have to do better than ‘reading Church sources gives me a panic attack’. ☹️
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I’m sorry, but that’s just the truth. I don’t think you quite understand the way my brain works about stuff like this.
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You’re quite right, I don’t understand. Good luck getting someone to do your work for you.
 
If your brain is in this bad of a shape, you really shouldn’t be interacting on a forum. You should instead be seeking one-on-one help from your priest and/or a therapist. Our answers could conceivably worsen your condition.
 
I know 😦

I think that, in my heart, I believe that listening to rock music is not in and of itself sinful. But because I heard that Pope Benedict XVI said that it was, I’ve been worried.
 
Listening to rock music is not inherently sinful.

The only apparent quote from Pope Benedict (then Cardinal Ratzinger) I can find appears to make presuppositions that would themselves seem to prevent his statement from being any sort of universal prohibition on listening to rock or any other genre of music. I imagine it seems much less surprising in its original context.

Talk to a priest, perhaps. I hope you’re getting help for the OCD also.
 
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This thread appears to be the one that was on this forum. Notably, it doesn’t quote Benedict directly. This site does give the context. It was from his Spirit of the Liturgy, which released before he was Pope, and was based around the merits of different music for liturgy, not a blanket statement all together. You can find it under “The Challenge of Popular Music”, which says:
…Three developments in recent music epitomize the problems that the Church has to face when she is considering liturgical music. First of all, there is the cultural universalization that the Church has to undertake if she wants to get beyond the boundaries of the European mind…Modern so-called “classical” music has maneuvered itself, with some exceptions, into an elitist ghetto, which only specialists may enter–and even they do so with what may sometimes be mixed feelings…

On the one hand, there is pop music, which is certainly no longer supported by the people in the ancient sense (populus). It is aimed at the phenomenon of the masses, is industrially produced, and ultimately has to be described as a cult of the banal. “Rock”, on the other hand, is the expression of elemental passions, and at rock festivals it assumes a cultic character, a form of worship, in fact, in opposition to Christian worship…The music of the Holy Spirit’s sober inebriation seems to have little chance when self has become a prison, the mind is a shackle, and breaking out from both appears as a true promise of redemption that can be tasted at least for a few moments.
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Based on my brief search online, most are bringing up the second paragraph without the first and treating it as a blanket forbidding of rock by a Pope (who, again, wasn’t Pope at the time). And even as a huge rock and metal fan, I would sort of agree. It’s probably not the best genre for Mass.
 
Yeah, but from the way that he words things, calling pop “a cult of the banal” and rock “a form of worship in opposition to Christian worship”, you can tell that he doesn’t approve of those things outside the church either.
 
Ambasea said:
Yeah, but from the way that he words things, calling pop “a cult of the banal” and rock “a form of worship in opposition to Christian worship”, you can tell that he doesn’t approve of those things outside the church either.
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So apparently you have found a Church source, the reading of which did not give you a panic attack! Congratulations on your speedy recovery!
 
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