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<\/a><\/p>\nHi visitors from Conversion Diary<\/a>, and welcome. \u00a0This week I\u2019ve been focusing on a defence of covenant marriage<\/a>\u00a0from a non-religious perspective, which is still in progress (the next post in the series<\/a> will go up this afternoon).<\/p>\n For regular readers of this blog, I\u2019m going to respond to some of the questions raised by yesterday\u2019s post<\/a> this weekend, but, in the meantime, I thought I\u2019d share this very apropos cartoon from Dinosaur Comics<\/a>:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Chris Stefanick wrote a great take-down<\/a> of pop songs\u2019 unhealthy ideas about love in a column for the\u00a0Archdiocese\u00a0of Denver. Here\u2019s an except, but click though for the whole thing:<\/p>\n In the song \u201cAnimal\u201d by Neon Trees, vocalist Tyler Glenn sings: \u201cWe\u2019re sick like animals \u2026 I won\u2019t be denied by \u2026 the animal inside of you. \u2026 Take a bite of my heart tonight.\u201d Tyler, you and anyone who looks like you won\u2019t be dating my daughter. The lesson of this song is echoed in countless others: If it isn\u2019t promiscuous it isn\u2019t passion.<\/p>\n And Miranda Cosgrove, a Nickelodeon (i.e., children\u2019s TV channel) actress, in \u201cKissing You\u201d sings to her boyfriend before an audience of millions of pre-teen girls, \u201cWhen I\u2019m kissing you it all starts making sense!\u201d And answers to questions like, \u201cAre you the one I should trust?\u201d become \u201ccrystal clear\u2026 when I\u2019m kissin\u2019 you.\u201d<\/p>\n The lesson of this song is that physical intimacy is the way to discern if a given relationship is the right one\u2026<\/p>\n Thanks in large part to misguided love songs, teens tend to mistake things like codependence, enmeshment and promiscuity for love. It\u2019s funny how the things they come to look for in dating relationships are precisely the things that set them up for failed marriages.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n By the way, I\u2019ve only heard of one of the several pop songs he listed. \u00a0Looks like my membership in the Society of Stodgy Old Codgers Who Would Like You to Please Get Off My Lawn is unendangered.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n <\/p>\n In related news, Yale\u2019s production of Stephen Sondheim\u2019s Assassins<\/a> <\/i>is going up this weekend, and I got to see it tonight. \u00a0The show was excellent, unfortunately for any classmates reading this, immediately sold out all four shows and then was forced to add a fifth performance, which immediately sold out. \u00a0The musical chronicles the actions and motivations of everyone who attempted to kill a president.<\/p>\n The video below is \u201cUnworthy of Your Love\u201d which, in the show, is a duet between Squeaky Fromme<\/a> and John Hinkley<\/a>\u00a0(the video linked is from a Sondheim concert, not a performance of the show). \u00a0Both assassins are passionately, psychotically devoted to Charles Manson and Jodie Foster respectively. \u00a0Their duet, set to music that is a send-up of 1970s standards has frightening, self-abasing lyrics, but those lyrics could fit comfortably into the pop songs that Stefanick skewers above. <\/p>\n Frightening and familiar, huh?<\/p>\n <\/p><\/div>\n [I]t bothers me that so many of the movies promoted this way are not really \u201cspiritual,\u201d much less Christian; they\u2019re simply bland and inoffensive.<\/p>\n The Catholic faith is neither. In fact, like really authentic Mexican food (think habeneros and fried crickets), it is at once both pungent and offensive. It offends me all the time, with the outrageous demands it makes of my fallen nature and the sheer weirdness of its claims. It asserts that, behind the veil of day-to-day schlepping, of work and laundry and television and microwaved burritos, we live on the front lines of a savage spiritual war waged by invisible entities (deathless malevolent demons and benevolent dead saints) whose winners will enjoy eternal happiness with a resurrected rabbi, and whose losers will writhe forever in unquenchable fire. Sometimes I step back and find myself saying in Jerry Seinfeld\u2019s voice: What\u2019s with all the craziness? Why can\u2019t I just enjoy my soup?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n <\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n I\u2019ve previously written about my opposition to football<\/a>\u00a0due to the risk of concussion and dementia and the NFL\u2019s see-no-evil approach to these risks. \u00a0Ta Nehisi-Coates wrote an excellent piece<\/a> on this topic for The Atlantic<\/i>. \u00a0I\u2019ve excerpted it below, but it really deserves to be read in its entirety<\/a>. <\/p>\n In some measure, pro football is quite beautiful because it gives us human beings willingly giving up themselves for something they love. I don\u2019t have any real way to relate to that. The closest I can come (and this is not very close) is to imagine a world where I knew writing would likely knock a few decades off my life. I think I\u2019m a little different from my peers, in that I\u2019ve never felt fit for much else. Perhaps in that world I\u2019d be prompted to discover I was wrong. But as I am, I think I\u2019d lose the years.<\/p>\n This is a separate question from the responsibility of the viewer. There\u2019s no real reason why I have to sit and watch Hines Ward destroy his body. He may be welcome to the right, but I don\u2019t have to subsidize that right. In all honesty, I think I do because there\u2019s something of my own aspirations in the thing. To commit yourself so completely, to stand for a militant vivacity, instead of a bland longevity is attractive and inspiring. I think of Emmitt Smith and his separated shoulder at the most awkward, and seemingly, inappropriate times. I think of Muhammad Ali giving his body to George Foreman, and then refusing to punch as he falls, as a kind of masterwork.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Ta Nehisi-Coates\u2019s take can be applied to far more sports than football. \u00a0Gymnastics in particular has always struck me as a sport centered on a peculiar mortification\/reshaping of the body. \u00a0What seems unique about football is that this particular harm is not a risk players knowingly undertook, particularly considering the deliberate deception<\/a> practiced by the NFL.<\/p>\n Not to mention, quasi-dualist that I am, I have a particular horror of brain injury.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n![](\"https:\/\/4.bp.blogspot.com\/_b7Eh98KJ_qI\/TUJWK5FhuiI\/AAAAAAAABPk\/jAcxWvZs0Ag\/s640\/dc+friendship.png\")
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