Are Boxing And Mma (and American Football) Immoral?

[Credo in Deum]

None of the counter points have shown why boxing, MMA, or American Football are to be considered immoral.   All anyone has provided us with are examples of when an environment has made the playing of such sports immoral. 

 

 

 

 Is Boxing a Sin?

Q: I am a 16-year-old guy and generally a spiritual person. I read the Bible and try to follow what it teaches. But sometimes its teachings and some of my own philosophies seem contradictory.

I hold a black belt in karate and am passionate about studying the martial arts, which I often consider to be one of God's answers to my prayers.

The principles that I learn from martial arts are ones that I use in my everyday life. I have recently become interested in boxing and like the training it involves.

Is competing in a boxing or karate competition wrong? Am I sinning by training my body and mind to defeat my opponents? By risking injury to myself?

When I look out at the world, I don't always like what I see. That's what motivates me to become better and better. I don't want to harm the world or anyone in it. I would like to improve the world.

 

A: There is no sin in training for boxing as long as you use those skills only in supervised, amateur competitions or self-defense. Because of the number of brain injuries and deaths that have occurred in professional boxing, some moral theologians question the morality of boxing at that level.

 

Training for supervised karate competitions is also fine. The skills learned in karate and boxing can be used outside the ring in cases of genuine self-defense or defending an innocent party.

 

More important, your karate and boxing training are teaching you discipline. You will need that if you want to improve the world whose shortcomings are quite obvious to you. The discipline you learn from sports will help you order your life properly and can be very valuable if you engage in some community service, some effort to go beyond self-improvement as a way of improving our world.

http://www.americancatholic.org/Messenger/Jun2003/Wiseman.asp#top

 

The above was taken from a section titled: "Ask a Franciscan" where questions are answered by Father Pat McCloskey, O.F.M.

 

Now, I'm sorry but if a Franciscan will say boxing isn't immoral then I doubt we could claim it to be immoral.  Sounds like Fr. believes these sports are not immoral when done in the right environment and under the right conditions.  Logic would suggest that this can then be applied to other sports like MMA and American Football. 

 

 

 

 

[CatherineM]

Never said they were immoral. There are lots of things that aren't immoral that aren't really worth my time. I'm an Okie. Talking against football is a capital offense there.

[Nihil Obstat]

Never said they were immoral. There are lots of things that aren't immoral that aren't really worth my time. I'm an Okie. Talking against football is a capital offense there.

Well you called MMA "human cockfighting". If that is an accurate descriptor, I would have a hard time characterizing it as anything but immoral.

[Amppax]

Some of the most devout Catholics I know are MMA fighters. Anecdotal evidence, I know... meh. 

 

[CatherineM]

Well you called MMA "human cockfighting". If that is an accurate descriptor, I would have a hard time characterizing it as anything but immoral.

That one is definitely problematic for me. There is something about continuing to hit someone who is on the ground that freaks me out.

[CatherineM]

Well you called MMA "human cockfighting". If that is an accurate descriptor, I would have a hard time characterizing it as anything but immoral.

That one is definitely problematic for me. There is something about continuing to hit someone who is on the ground that freaks me out.

[The Hierophant]

MMA is a lot safer on the brain than professional boxing.  It's standard fare to voluntarily yield to a submission, and if you yield to them, you won't endure substantial injury; boxers don't generally take a knee, nor do they have a chance to do so in the middle of an exchange.  But I don't think MMA is moral any more than I think that professional boxing is.

 

It's true that the Church has and still does in many places support amateur boxing. It's certainly less bad than professional boxing or football.  The scoring is strictly based on how many punches land in a valid target area, whereas in pro boxing, aggression and the effectiveness of the punches in disabling the opponent are weighed.  That being said, concussions still happen not infrequently, and there is a medical debate as to the extent of damage being done.  As far as I know, the AMA has supported banning boxing, amateur and professional, since the 80s.

[Socrates]

I'd say there's some moral grey area regarding boxing, MMA and other combat sports, when done professionally as a career, but wouldn't go so far as to say they are inherently immoral.

 

Like others said, a lot of it depends on the personal reasons and motivations for participating.

 

Fighting in self-defense is perfectly morally legitimate, and employing one's fighting skills to defend others is noble.  You can't realistically be effective at this kind of defense unless you have a certain amount of actual fighting/sparring against someone else, and the ring definitely provides a safer environment than a street fight.

 

St. Paul the Apostle commonly employs athletic imagery, including from boxing, , and I'd have trouble imagining him using metaphors from something intrinsically immoral to illustrate the Christian life.

 

10 years ago I would not have said that American football would be immoral.  However, knowing now what we do about the affects of TBI (traumatic Brain Injury) I would say that it is incredibly immoral.

 

I think that something being immoral and moral doesn't simply come from if the body is injured with a high contact sport, rather, if that injury has long-term affects.  

 

Every serious sport involves some risk of injury, and I'd say it';s largely a matter of prudential judgment.  (Do benefits/rewards outweigh potential injury/damage?)  Not every ex-football player ends up a complete cripple.

 

There is nothing athletic about the way football is played today,

 

 

Really?

 

and helmets are actually adding to the problems of brain and neck injuries.

 

 

Actually, in the old days of football, before helmets or other protective equipment, deaths were fairly common, and because of this, there was actually a move to ban the sport in the early 20th century.  So it's inaccurate to say helmets have done nothing to make football safer.

[Socrates]

Boxing, at least the way I was taught was about scoring more points than your opponent. In amateur boxing it still is. For pros, who go much longer, it's about wearing your opponent down so that you can make him not be able to continue. In MMA it seems to be about getting your opponent into submission. It seems like a different mindset. Some would say it is the same thing, but I think there is a subtle difference that makes a big difference.

 

MMA combines western and Thai kick-boxing with wrestling/grappling (Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, or BJJ).

 

In BJJ, the goal is to force your opponent into submission, so that he taps out.  This is done by applying pressure, so that he is forced to submit.  It's really not as brutal as it seems - usually you tap out before you are actually injured, and the victor must let go after the loser taps out.  In MMA, more serious injury tends to be from striking (punches/kicks), same as in boxing.

[Norseman82]

An article in Crisis magazine written by a priest who took up boxing and thinks seminarians should be required to take up boxing: 

 

http://www.crisismagazine.com/2013/the-christian-boxer#.UWLc1dp70oM.gmail

 

And what about the Benedictine abbey/seminary in Oregon that has boxing matches for the seminarians: 

 

http://masjournalism.blogspot.com/2011/05/mas-boxing.html

[Norseman82]

Of course, this is the perfrct thread to use this emoticon: 

 

:fight:

[Catherine Therese]

Of course, this is the perfrct thread to use this emoticon: 

 

:fight:

 

the silly thing let down its guard. 

 

[Credo in Deum]

http://youtu.be/0AspXDFcGlw

[The Hierophant]

An article in Crisis magazine written by a priest who took up boxing and thinks seminarians should be required to take up boxing: 

 

http://www.crisismagazine.com/2013/the-christian-boxer#.UWLc1dp70oM.gmail

 

And what about the Benedictine abbey/seminary in Oregon that has boxing matches for the seminarians: 

 

http://masjournalism.blogspot.com/2011/05/mas-boxing.html

 

Notre Dame also has the annual Bengal Bouts competition.  I'm not doubting that boxing has a lot of support in Catholic culture:  Knights of Columbus halls used to host boxing competitions all the time.  That is no guarantee that it's right, however, unless you want to say that the extermination of the Albigensians was just - or, for that matter, the sheltering of pedophiles from prying eyes, albeit that was specific to the clergy.

 

As far as the first link, I think it's a bit disingenuous to point out the low injury rate for amateur boxing. Cumulative brain damage is not something that would be picked up on in a list of injuries. Anyone who is taking blows to the head and believes it doesn't affect his brain is fooling himself:  I've been that person, and trust me, it's obvious later.  At a certain level, you're going to get your bell rung, you're going to get headaches, you're going to feel sensitive to light and sound.  It will probably not be recognized as a concussion, because your memory will be fine, you won't be confused, and you won't be nauseous.  Might not happen after every spar, but it will happen after some fights.  That's not a good sign.  Can you really see Jesus boxing as a pastime?

 

As far as self-defense:  unless you're training for the police or military, you're better off learning to run and carrying a deterrent spray or firearm.  Boxing is better than nothing, but it's pretty rare for a thug to come at you both (1) alone and (2) unarmed, which is what you'd need to win that kind of engagement.  Going to the ground is no better:  if he has a partner, he can kick your head in.  As for St. Paul, I'm not sure whether St. Paul would use language built around something he considered intrinsically evil or not, but even if not, we know a lot more about the brain these days than St. Paul did.  How to interpret St. Paul is a tricky question.  No Catholic I know, for instance, think it's against nature for a woman to have short hair or that women shouldn't speak in church.  Not saying that he wasn't inspired, but I think he was something of a man of his times, and we already reflect that in practice.

[Socrates]

Can you really see Jesus boxing as a pastime?

 

I honestly don't know what Jesus did for recreation, though his physically driving the money-changers out of the temple suggests He wasn't a complete passive weakling.

 

As far as self-defense:  unless you're training for the police or military, you're better off learning to run and carrying a deterrent spray or firearm.  Boxing is better than nothing, but it's pretty rare for a thug to come at you both (1) alone and (2) unarmed, which is what you'd need to win that kind of engagement.  Going to the ground is no better:  if he has a partner, he can kick your head in.  As for St. Paul, I'm not sure whether St. Paul would use language built around something he considered intrinsically evil or not, but even if not, we know a lot more about the brain these days than St. Paul did.  How to interpret St. Paul is a tricky question.  No Catholic I know, for instance, think it's against nature for a woman to have short hair or that women shouldn't speak in church.  Not saying that he wasn't inspired, but I think he was something of a man of his times, and we already reflect that in practice.

 

 

So is proficiency in hand-to-hand combat to be limited only to cops and soldiers?  (It reminds me somewhat of the arguments by liberals in "gun-control" debates, that only cops and soldiers should be able to carry guns.)

 

Generally, a gun or spray would be more effective in most circumstances with serious thugs (and of course, it's usually smartest to avoid a fight period), but there are still plenty of unarmed brawls, and I don't think it's wrong to be trained to handle yourself (or defend others) in such circumstances should they arise.  

 

Also, guns can easily take a life, which is has more moral weight than brain damage.  (I'm a big supporter of the right to bear arms, but I don't think you can consistently argue that using a gun in self-defense is moral while hand-to-hand fighting is not.)

 

In general (not just talking about the boxing issue), I think people nowadays are far too quick to dismiss St. Paul, as his teachings are un-pc.  I agree with him on the church issues.  (However, my point about him in my earlier post was more a tangential thought, rather than intending to prove anything definitively).  It's ironic that you call him a "man of his times," while you quote another ancient saint from the days of gladiatorial armed fights to the death to back up your point. 

 

Still, you raise some legitimate issues.

 

Incidentally, most sports in the Catholic middle ages were a lot more brutal and dangerous than today's, though that doesn't necessarily prove them right.