Monday, June 16, 2008

We Are What We Listen To

Just a random thought I've had stuck in my head for awhile now: We become what we listen to. Every piece of music has a philosophy attached to it. If you listen to rap and listen to country music, the philosophy of life and of humanity couldn't be more different. Similarly, traditional Irish music or Gregorian chant creates a different type of spirit than heavy metal. I bet changing the music kids listen to would affect school performance (anyone know of any studies about this?). With that said, it's kindof scary how much power music executives have in shaping our culture.

I think as Catholics, if we want to win the culture wars we need to seize control of the media in a way that we are currently not doing. While it is good that Catholic radio has great apologetics explaining the faith, what we need is to feature music and create a music industry that reflects beauty and stirs the soul. Unfortunately, I don't think that is happening. Through music, we need to make the fullness of truth beautiful so that a secular person may stumble across it on the radio dial and feel their soul uplifted and drawn in to a deeper reality. That should be the vision for Catholic radio.

Saturday, June 14, 2008

State of Marriage

Perhaps one of the scariest things for me in the culture wars is the redefinition of the word "marriage" by the State, and the enforcement of anti-discrimination laws by the Police to punish all those who disagree with this redefinition. Even the conservatives in government seem embarrassed and shamed to fight for an ontologically accurate definition of marriage. Part of it I feel is a lack of understanding of philosophy and the history of ideas. They just don't have the language to confront the misuse of words like "rights", "choice", and "freedom." So tolerance becomes the new intolerance and religious liberty is thrown out the window.

This article is a pretty good commentary on the use of language in this political battle, and the call for Christians to go to work like we did in the days of the old pagan Roman empire.
http://www.catholic.org/politics/story.php?id=28225&page=1

Monday, June 2, 2008