How is Boxing Moral? A Catholic Priest Steps Into the Ring

Written by Joe Hicketts

Outline  

The article "Should a boxing priest be fighting in a boxing tournament?" published in 2019 is by Nathan W. O'Halloran, a Jesuit (sub group of Catholics) priest who takes part in a historic amateur boxing tournament. The article discusses both the feelings of many Catholics who deem the sport as innately immoral and O'Halloran’s own feelings regarding the positives that boxing brings; discipline etc.   

Photo of Nathan W. O’Halloran, from American Magazine

The tournament 

Mr O'Halloran is taking part for the second time in the Bengal Bouts boxing tournament, a historic event in its 89^th year. The tournament itself started in 1920 by a Notre Dame (an area in Indiana, USA) college football coach as a way for his students to remain fit in the offseason. Still being run by the Catholic Notre Dam University the tournament acts as a way to raise funds for the university’s sponsoring religious order (small highly religious group) in Bangladesh, the event raises over $150k annually.  

Moral Questions via the Catholic Faith 

Despite Mr O'Halloran taking part in his second event his nickname being “priest mode” he discusses the moral questions that are brought forward by catholic figures regarding boxing. These include the idea that boxing is innately immoral due to the aim being to deliberately hurt your opponent rather than to score points, furthermore a Jesuit journal based in Rome published an article in October 2005 calling professional boxing a “legalized form of attempted murder, in the short or in the long run.”  

The Fighting Priest’s Opinion 

While O'Halloran acknowledges that professional boxing does have moral issues he recalls how he got into the sport in the first place. He lived with a professor of Historical Theology who encouraged him to take up the sport and he then came to agree with famous heavyweight boxer George Forman in that boxing teaches discipline, courage and intelligence rather than simply anger towards your opponent. O'Halloran also cites the presence of boxing in Catholicism, with St. Paul using boxing as a metaphor for an ascetic (simple and religious) life, also in a famous Catholic film The Bells of St. Mary’s, a nun teaches one of her students to box in self defence. This positivity towards particularly amateur boxing combined with a lack of anger while in the ring are the main contributing factors towards O'Halloran taking part in the historic event, however he does concede that there are moral questions of particularly professional boxing when looking through catholic lens.