Vulgarity

One

What about vulgarity?

Most serious Christians know that taking the Lord’s name in vain is forbidden by the second commandment – and they’re usually willing to admit that blasphemy and irreverence are wrong too.

But when you get to vulgarity, they start to get more defensive,

What’s wrong, they say, with some frank, blunt speech? Sure, it’s a little coarse – but that’s what makes it real, right? And it’s not like we’re saying anything bad about God. 

Are we?

Two

Scripture on vulgarity

St. Paul seems to be pretty clear that vulgarity is something we ought to avoid. In his letter to the Ephesians, chapter 4, he says, “No foul language should come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for needed edification, that it may impart grace to those who hear.” (Eph 4:29).

But before going any further, maybe we should ask: What exactly is “foul language”? How does something count as “vulgarity”?

Maybe we could just define foul language as a word or a phrase that brings a graphic sexual or scatological image to mind – scatological meaning, something that refers to excrement.

There are, of course, legitimate terms for sexual or scatological functions, but they tend not to be graphic. They aren’t designed to throw vivid, and usually disgusting, pictures into your head.

In other words, these are words and phrases that conjure up nasty images of our basic bodily functions, the ones we share with the lower animals.

Which means that vulgar language makes you think in a way that detracts from the dignity of the human person. 

And you can see that God probably doesn’t appreciate that.

Three

Satan and vulgarity

In one of her novels, Alice McDermott repeatedly uses the line, “The devil uses dirty words to make us think we are the sum and substance of ugly things.”

In other words, Satan likes vulgarity, because it makes us think that we are ugly, ignoble, vile creatures.

And, in fact, exorcists will tell you that when demons talk through possessed people, they use a LOT of vulgarity. Because if they can fill our heads with warped, twisted images of ourselves, then we’ll be less likely to try and respect our neighbor. We’ll be less likely to strive for nobility, for virtue, for innocence, and for holiness.

So if devils are big fans of vulgarity, we should probably stay away from it. And if vulgarity diminishes our respect for our neighbor, and saps our desire for purity and nobility, let’s definitely try to keep our talk as holy and decent as we hope God will one day make our character.

Four

Vulgarity as indirect blasphemy

So many Christians are quick to make a hardline division between vulgarity and blasphemy, but they actually might be closer than you’d think. After all, it’s not only sacrilege to profane something holy – you shouldn’t even profane the image of something holy. You should respect crucifixes and icons of the Blessed Mother. You can’t defile the image of what is holy.

Now blasphemy is where we talk in a way that disrespects God directly, but vulgarity is where we talk in a way that disrespects God’s image, the human person.

We don’t want to defile God’s Image with our speech. Which means we don’t want to debase the human person in our speech. And that means we want to do what St. Paul says and avoid foul language altogether – if not out of a sense of self-respect, at least out of respect for God Himself.

Five

God loves our humanity and we should too.

The Father created us as His children. The Son assumed our nature to make us His brothers and sisters. The Holy Spirit has come to live within us so we could be His dwelling, His temple. God Loves our humanity, He’s been relentless in trying to perfect our humanity, trying to beautify it, trying to ennoble it.

Let’s not trash our humanity. Let’s not defile it. Let’s not use vulgar speech that vandalizes what God loves, and what ultimately belongs to Him. 

St. Paul says, “Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is gracious, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things” (Phil 4:8). 

That’s how we’re supposed to think. Which means that’s how we’re supposed to talk. 

So if we haven’t been talking like Christians, let’s start now.