Only today did I discover the Tattered Page blog–I haven’t had time to delve deeply into it yet, but I’m already impressed. This is someone with a very analytical mind who applies it to interesting things. His post analyzing the pope’s speech with …

Unfortunately, Pope Benedict XVI was villified long before he became Pope, so a lot of people are predisposed to dislike anything out of his mouth. He often speaks critically of particular media, but it’s always with qualification…saying it’s the perversion of something good that’s a problem, not a complete lack of value.

The Church believes there is such thing as a “just war” and has before referred to Christians as “soldiers of Christ”. It’s certainly not violence itself that the pope is condemning (though his criticism of every war of our age should demonstrate how rarely he believes fatal violence is merited).

Violence (let’s say: serious, harmful acts against another person), as the Church understands it, is a means to an end. Furthermore, the enemy’s personhood/value is never forgotten or denied.

Look at [i]Call of Duty: 3[/i] to [i]Gears of War[/i]. In both games, the primary appeal to the gamer is the sting of battle. There’s nothing wrong with that, in itself. Cross-culturally, young boys play wargames. Contrary to popular perception, the Church doesn’t teach that any instinctive desire should be squashed into oblivion. Rather, She teaches that they should be directed into healthy, moral activities. Playing football, for instance, is a healthier way of directing testosterone than picking fights with strangers.

But in [i]Gears of War[/i], I can take an enemy’s face off with a chainsaw, then listen to my character say “Nice!” as I break into a broad grin. That enjoyment’s possible through disassociation…perceiving the enemy as an object, rather than a person of value. If the game did act as a modeling influence to some degree (and not necessarily just for kids), then that would seem to be an irresponsible feature…however fun. Yes, the Locust are inhuman enemies who we are not meant to empathize with, but some of them are similar enough to humans that I think it’s instinctive for most gamers to perceive them much like human soldiers.

Anyway, I need to hop on other things, but thanks again. I’ll read the articles when I get a chance and try to get a blog up today or tomorrow on the issue.