[content warning: David Haas]
Each post on Liturgy and Life is a snapshot in time; I don’t tend to edit or update posts after the fact, except to fix the odd typo. I’m making an exception for this post, because it hasn’t aged well. I am grateful to those friends who took the time to help me understand how the phrase “cancel culture” hurts more than helps; I relied too heavily on it in this piece, and I apologize. One person’s wise words sum up well the problem with the phrase, in that it “purports to describe too many things to be useful as a category for deep reflection.” Conflating too many concepts in one phrase, they went on to say, risks dismissing behaviors or actions that are unacceptable, and those who bravely call them out. Soon after I wrote the piece, I tried to correct my error by adding the footnote that follows the piece, but alas, more of a clarification was needed. This note seeks to provide such clarification.
I continue to stand by what the original piece calls into question, namely:
- wedding an artist too closely to their art (I am particularly opposed to this in most cases, as an artist and a sinner, and as someone whose artistic heroes were not always perfect)
- banning art for any reason (which also doesn’t age well)