Cultural Chastisement
By Michael J. Matt
Ihesitate to write on the question of pop music these days, even though it is a most significant cultural force about which I've given many lectures and even written a book. Pop music is a beast that never sleeps. It dominates the politics, fashions and consciousness of millions of people worldwide, and forms a propaganda machine such as the world has never seen. It directly impacts the decisions and policies of presidents and popes, the young, the old and entire generations in between.
When John Lennon noted that the Beatles were more popular than Jesus Christ he may well have been making a mere statement of the obvious, since by then the Light of Christ had already become eclipsed by the cultural signs and wonders of a Christophobic beat generation, hungry for revolution and eager to usher in the post-Christian "enlightenment".
So why not write more about it?
Because I find it difficult to believe that after all these years and with so much cultural sewage coursing through the veins of modern society, that any traditional Catholic would actually need me or anyone else to give him a heads up about the myriad problems with pop music or the industry that spawned it.
It is hardly by accident that western civilization not only finds itself barreling down the highway to hell, but now just about to arrive at its destination.
And, let’s face it, culturally speaking, the modern leg of that road trip was sponsored by the pop music industry.
The Sexual Revolution was ushered in a half century ago by Marxist minstrels who used beat and sex to pulverize the
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