Catholic Stand, Peter Darcy: Casual swearing. Routine profanity. Mainstreamed irreverence. These curses of our age don’t seem to shock us like they used to. Ever since Rhett Butler first uttered the “D” word in Gone with the Wind in 1939, the entertainment industry has gone from bad to worse in its moral offensiveness. Every modern venue of entertainment, from comedy to movies to late-night talk shows, has been coarsened by vulgar, profane, and obscene language and behavior that have now become the rule rather than the exception.
From a spiritual point of view, however, the sustained erosion of moral standards in word and image always builds to one terrible apex: blasphemy, that habit of reviling God that the Second Commandment warns us about: “You shall not invoke the name of the Lord your God in vain” (Exodus 20:7). More here.
