Catholic rock band provokes discussion
Published Tuesday July 7th, 2009
KITCHENER, Ont. - There's something about religion that turns the minds of the faithful toward sex.
In Canada, during the past few years, the debate over whether to bless the unions of same-sex couples has been the hot topic. But talk about sex of the more traditional kind - between one man and one woman joined together in marriage - seems to be on the upswing.
Late last year, a Dallas, Tex., pastor sparked headlines after challenging couples in his congregation to improve their marriages by having sex every day for a week.
The "sexperiment," as it was called, landed the pastor an appearance on the popular late-night comedy show The Colbert Report.
The pastor's challenge was fruitful.
"It got such press that others jumped on the bandwagon," said Ken Taylor, teaching elder at Creekside Church in Waterloo, Ont.
"The church world has these sorts of waves happen every once in a while," he added. For some pastors, "the dream is to get more people in the doors as well as help marriages," Taylor said.
Last month, a Roman Catholic priest in Poland released a theological and practical guide to good sex.
And closer to home, the latest theological push toward pondering sex is from rock band Critical Mass.
The band of Roman Catholic musicians from around the Kitchener, Ont., region recently released Body Language, a concept album based on Pope John Paul II's Theology of the Body.
The album riffs on the late pontiff's corpus of 129 lectures delivered during general audiences from 1979 to 1984.
In those talks, John Paul broached a wide variety of topics, including creation, lust, adultery, sanctity and respect of the human body, purity, virginity, celibacy, marriage and parenthood.
John Paul's theology describes marriage as a reflection of the love between God and humanity and between Jesus and the church.
Titles of his talks include Marital Love Reflects God's Love for His People (Aug. 2, 1982), The Heart a Battlefield Between Love and Lust (July 23, 1980) and Language of the Body Strengthens the Marriage Covenant (Jan. 31, 1983).
Theologians, educators and commentators, such as Pennsylvania-based Christopher West, have been pondering Theology of the Body for years.
In an ABC Nightline News report in May, West said sexual union between a man and woman in marriage is "a foretaste, a little glimmer into the eternal ecstasy and bliss that awaits us in heaven."
Such theological interpretations turned Dave Wang, lead singer and principal songwriter for Critical Mass, onto the late pope's work, Theology of the Body.
Wang, a married Roman Catholic with nine children, said he had never thought of sex as a metaphor for God's love for humanity or as a hint of future bliss in God's Kingdom.
"That brings a whole new value and meaning to these (sexual) acts - even for me who has been a Catholic for 20 years," Wang said.
In 1997, Wang, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Waterloo, and other local Catholic musicians formed Critical Mass.
In 2005, their album Grasping for Hope in the Darkness, another concept album with a pro-life storyline, won the best rock album category at the Canadian Gospel Music Association.
Body Language is the band's fifth album.
After reading about Theology of the Body several years ago it "just kind of continued to gnaw away at me," Wang said. So he researched the topic and, over about a year, wrote a dozen songs.
Several songs on the album are hard-hitting criticism of secular society's glorification of casual sex. For example, the song No Consequence argues, "We are more than animals in heat. We've got free will 'n' self-control."
And Roman Catholic teaching against artificial birth control is highlighted in the song Conception Interception.
"I'm not saying you have to believe what I believe," said Wang.
"I just want to provoke some thought and discussion. That's not the easiest thing to do in the format of a three-minute song."
But criticism isn't aimed only at the secular world. At times the critique of some Christians' behaviour is cutting.
The song Friend, written in the voice of a gay man dying of AIDS, calls on Christians to practise more love and less hypocrisy.
"All I ask of you, my friend, is be Jesus to my brokenness. Treat me with His mercy, show me the faith that you profess. ..." read the lyrics.
"Your other friends who live in sin, are they OK because they're straight?" the dying man pleads. "Don't want approval of my lifestyle, just wish you weren't so hostile."
Wang said he has "a big problem" with the way some Christians treat people who are homosexual.
Wang said he wanted a song to illustrate the church's teaching, "which is you have to love the sinner. The sin is something different," he said. "You can't condone it (homosexuality), but you can't mistreat the people. You have to love them."
Theology of the Body isn't just about sex, Wang added.
"It's about the value of the individual person in God's eyes as well."
So the song Walk You Home has the feel of a smitten schoolboy carrying a girl's books home after class.
"It sounds initially ... like just a love song, but really it's a (love) song from God to us," he said.
Ultimately, Wang said he wanted to create an album that was strong enough to spark some talk about sex.
"I wanted to ... open the eyes of people to the fact there's this really neat body of literature out there that we should be taking a look at and discussing," he said.
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