A Catholic Musician Language Spat

There's a particular contemporary Catholic musician whose music I enjoy. I own seveal of this musician's albums, have promoted the musician to others, and was even following this musician on Twitter.

But following the most recent shootings in California, this musician posted the following:

"This should never, ever ever ever have happened. It is so f***g wrong. So many things are so wrong with this." (I altered the offending word)

I responded:

"Such language from a Catholic musician?? I can understand the feeling, but to post it publicly?"

Someone else responded to my comment:

"13 people are dead, but yes...let's discuss XXXX''s use of the word 'f***'"

Fair enough. Meanwhile, the musician responded to the other person's comment with:

":) my thoughts precisely, XXX. Also, I say this word alllll the time in real life and I’ve decided to be myself on here or else I can’t stand it."

I piped in with two responses:

"Yes, let's. What happened in California was horrible. It is a manifestation of the violence in our culture. We reveal and nurture that violence through our own words and actions."

And ...

"I don't use such language in real life. As a Catholic musician myself and a Secular Franciscan, I'm a professed and public representative of my faith. I try to model appropriate behavior. "No foul language should come out of your mouths, but only such as is good ... Eph 4:29"

(The full Ephesians quotation is: No foul language should come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for needed edification, that it may impart grace to those who hear. - Ephesians 4: 29)

I also posted a link to my blog post on Tolkien and degraded language.

Someone else commented after seeing the exchange: "I have to agree. As much as I enjoy the music I now must bow out." 

Sadly, I have no desire to listen to that musician's music for the moment. The thought of the exchange would shadow the enjoyment. Perhaps that will fade.

The problem for me in this exchange is that I could understand the anger and frustration that led to the use of the offending word. But as someone who has been involved in public jobs and ministries and so has had to recognize that I am as a result am a public representative of those jobs and ministries, and as a professed Catholic and a Franciscan called to witness to the world, the musician's response troubled me. Basically it's "that's the way I talk in private and that's the way I'm going to talk publicly."

Maybe the musician does not share my sense of vocation and public witness. Maybe the musician is a product of the times in which such language is "acceptable" and "common" among many secular people of the musician's generation. But this musician is as a self-proclaimed Catholic/Christian musician and recording artist called to something more than what is deemed "acceptable" and "common" by the secular culture. Indeed, conforming to the culture (even in what seems a small way) and then proclaiming the faith has about it a scent of hypocrisy.

Moreover, as I also noted on Twitter, "One of the things that reveals and encourages the violence in the culture is our language."

How we act, what we say, is a witness to our faith.

 How we act and what we say can help to heal the culture, or it can help to make it even more violent and degraded.

As for the musician, I will likely eventually listen to the music again, as it is good and inspiring. But I don't know if I will buy any more of this person's albums.

For now, however, I will pray for this musician, for this language reason, and for other reasons hinted at in other Tweets by this person. 

Pax et bonum