The book I review is by Robert H. Bork, called Slouching Towards Gomorrah.
What a title!
Slouching Towards Gomorrah. That’s gotta be good, right?
Well, it is. And it only begins to get started with the topic I want to cover.
Bork begins by describing his time as a professor at Yale University and seeing student protestors start a pattern that they’ve never seen before. He sees “heaps of smoldering books” and worse. So, naturally, he blames it on the Sixties. And I can understand that. But I would go farther.
Yes, Bork does mention that the real problem began in the Enlightenment. But he doesn’t go into detail on that. He sticks with a 1990s nostalgia for the pre-1960 era. That’s okay for this book, but I want to go farther back.
Bork does go back to the 1930s, to discuss music. That was actually the first page I opened to — Chapter 7 — The Collapse of Popular Culture. That was appropriate! He compares the song lyrics “Just the Way You Look Tonight” to a modern rap song. Obviously there is no comparison. The modern songs are much more vulgar, much more debased, appealing only to the lower faculties.
But what about those older, 1930s - 1950s songs? Yes, they were romantic, but maybe too much so. Because for a Catholic, they make an idol out of love.
Consider these lyrics, sung from the man to the woman:
“I will die for you.”
“You're my everything.”
“Our love will be eternal.”
“I love you and nobody else…”
That sounds nice, and I’m sure the ladies appreciate it, but in reality, the only eternal love we will have is our love for God. Everything else is a love that is finite and a mere imitation of that love.
I don’t want to burst anyone’s bubble but in truth we should understand that love songs do tend to lead us astray towards idolatry.
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