Mother Superior, jump the gun
Humanae vitae isn’t the only thing turning 40 this fall. The Beatles’ 1968 double album (the “White Album”) is also celebrating a birthday. Historically I have tended to be more on top of Beatles lore than Vatican City trivia, but perhaps it’s a sign of maturity that I was reminded of this anniversary by L’Osservatore Romano. Or, rather, by bemused news items, like this one from the BBC, noting that the Vatican daily has published a lengthy article to mark the occasion.
I haven’t been able to find the article itself, but apparently it praises the Beatles’ creativity and dismisses Lennon’s legendary “bigger than Jesus” remark as mere boastfulness.
In a half-page illustrated article, the paper praised The Beatles for what it called their “unique and strange alchemy of sounds and words”.
The newspaper said The Beatles’s songs had shown an extraordinary capacity for survival and the White Album album remained a “magical musical anthology”.
Who says the Vatican is behind the times? I look forward to L’Osservatore Romano‘s appreciation of spiritual masterworks like Lennon’s “Instant Karma,” Harrison’s “All Things Must Pass,” and McCartney’s… er… “Live and Let Die.”
Trivia bonus: Do you know which Beatle was Catholic (by birth)? Hint: it wasn’t Lennon.
Harrison.
I’ve always thought both McCartney and Harrison were born Catholic, but I could be wrong.
And though the “White Album” has many great Beatles’ songs on it, it will unfortunately, through no fault of the Beatles, always be associated to some degree (especially the song “Helter Skelter”) with Charles Manson and his followers.
McCartney’s mother was but his father definitely was not and since his mother died when he was young, I’m thinking not much influence at all, or at least, not as much Catholic influence as Harrison had at home.
OMG, has it been 40 years?! Yes it has!
Proof: I was driving on the freeway with “Back in the USSR” turned up loud because I needed to get somewhere in a hurry and that’s the only song that makes me exceed 60 mph. My kid turned it off mid-point and said, “What’s the USSR”?
I know Kathy will puke if she reads this so apologies in advance, but I want “Blackbird” played graveside when they lower me away, a song I have always connected with the story of St. Kieran’s blackbird and the resurrection. (Thought if they can get Andrea Bocelli to sing “Nessun Dorma” that’d be OK.)
McCartney was the Catholic, I believe, “Let It Be” a kind of hymn to the BVM and his mother who died young of breast cancer. Daughter named Mary as well.
I also believe that all of them except Ringo were descended from Irish immigrants–Liverpool scouse” sticks in my head.
“McCartney was the Catholic, I believe, “Let It Be” a kind of hymn to the BVM and his mother who died young of breast cancer. Daughter named Mary as well.”
The line in “Let It Be” refers to McCartney’s actual mother Mary. His daughter, then, is named after his mother – a nice gesture.
I heard him once say in an interview, “All the Catholics think ‘Let It Be’ is about the Virgin Mary but it isn’t.” The way he intoned “Catholics” let me know he wasn’t one, at that time in his life.
Jean, play what you’d like at the gravesite. Just please please please don’t let anybody sing Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da during the funeral Mass.
Where can I find the story of St. Kieran?
On a non-Beatles note, one of the hymnals has a setting of In Paradisum to the tune of Danny Boy, which is about as Catholic as you can get.
Harrison’s mother was Catholic, but I believe McCartney was the only Beatle that was baptized Catholic. He was raised non-denominational, however. Both McCartney and Lennon lost their mothers in their teens (McCartney was 14, Lennon was 17), and both wrote songs with mother’s name in lyrics: Let It Be for McCartney and Julia for Lennon (the latter, of course, is in the White Album).
Harrison was the one I was thinking of — he’s the only one I’ve heard identify himself as “ex-Catholic.” But I haven’t heard anything about McCartney’s baptism (or Harrison’s, for that matter), so this could be a more complicated question than I realize!
It’s St. KEVIN (sorry), not Kieran (though he had a big connection with birds, so I mix them up). You can read Seamus Heaney’s wonderful poem about St. Kevin and the blackbird here:
http://www.poetryarchive.org/poetryarchive/singlePoem.do?poemId=1396
Won’t be any Mass over my miserable remains, though I presume the Catholic sensibilities of the rest of my family will prevail, and they’ll pick some lugubrious thing by Marty Haugen instead of “Blackbird,” much less “Obla-dee, Obla-dah.”
I defer to others re McCartney not intending “Let It Be” being about the BVM, but what authors say their works are about and what the work finally turns out to mean in the larger culture are sometimes two different things.
There are several stories circulating in which John Lennon claimed that “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” wasn’t about LSD, but that’s what it’s come to mean.
You know I love you, Jean but cut the gloominess. I presume you remain a Christian who must respond to Paul’s: “Rejoice always.”
When the Beatles thrust upon the scene we seminarians loudly condemned them as sinful, scandalous etc. What changed my mind was that the young women I taught in catechism were crazy about them. I figured if such good people liked them they can’t be that bad. Then I began to listen to their outstandingly beautiful music, which certainly Jesus would not object to. All celebrities have a hard time forgetting that they are not god.
We have a vibrant young pastor who has been with us for about two months now. He is exerting a lot of effort. Sadly, he converting the Feast of Christ the King into a trumpet for orthodox obedience. Instead of the piercing call to love of neighbor that it is. Which corollary is a ardent love of God. He was right in capturing Pius Xl’s meaning and how it was a salutary objection to Mussolini and Hitler. Yet triumphalism is not Jesus in any context.
Harrison was the one I was thinking of — he’s the only one I’ve heard identify himself as “ex-Catholic.” But I haven’t heard anything about McCartney’s baptism (or Harrison’s, for that matter), so this could be a more complicated question than I realize!
———–
The following article claims that McCartney was baptized Catholic. His Wikipedia entry says the same (and also cite a source, if I remember correctly).
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/5087006.stm
Religion aside, it’s noteworthy that McCartney largely stayed clear of politics, very unlike Lennon. But his post-Beatles career includes a political song: Give Ireland Back To the Irish. The song is mentioned in the bbc article.
This has nothing to do with the Beatles, but…
Kathy: You have me curious. How long ago was the version of “In Paradisum” arranged? I can’t help but wonder if it came as a result of the flap in Rhode Island seven years ago when “Danny Boy” got banned from Funeral Masses.
Now…something to do with the White Album. Did the Beatles ever go after the Flaming Lips for using the “Take this, brother. May it serve you well.” sample as can be heard at the beginning of their 1987 album “Oh My Gawd!”? Now that’s a strange little album.
All this reminds me of a favorite passage from Muriel Spark’s story “Alice Long’s Dachshunds”:
“Fr. McKenzie, darning his socks in the night when there’s noibody there.
What does he care?
All the lonely people, where do they all come from?”
…..
BTW, a letter to the editor in today’s NYT, clarifying that while the Osservatore Romano was trying to be generous, they still didn’t quite ” get” what Lennon was saying:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/25/opinion/l25lennon.html?ref=opinion
November 25, 2008
Letter
You Can Make It O.K.
To the Editor:
“Church Forgives John Lennon ‘Boast’ ” (news article, Nov. 23), on the Vatican’s “forgiveness” of John Lennon’s 1966 remark that the Beatles were “more popular than Jesus,” missed an important point. Apparently so did the Vatican.
John’s remark was not a boast or a blasphemy. He was pointing out the absurdity of the Beatles’ fame, which at that point was at its madding zenith. For anyone who knew John Lennon, the observation was typical: indelicate, but spot on. He neither sought nor required forgiveness, only understanding.
Peter Brown
New York, Nov. 24, 2008
The writer, the Beatles’ personal assistant and manager, was best man at John Lennon’s and Yoko Ono’s wedding in 1969.
Bob N., Father McKenzie, I always assumed, was an Anglo-Catholic. They’re more likely to be celibate and darning their own socks in the night when there’s nobody there.
I remember when Lennon made his comment about being more famous than Jesus that a little old lady made a quilt showing Jesus Christ crushing cockroach-like insects that were meant to be beetles/Beatles, and there was a picture of it in the Detroit Free Press.
Apropos of nothing, really, except that it’s amazing what comes out of the memory circuits unbidden. I remember who Peter Brown is, but I have problems remembering Gordon Brown.
I don’t know that Brown’s letter really clarifies anything, in spite of his privileged knowledge of the man. It’s true that one indelible sentence was “pointing out the absurdity of the Beatles’ fame,” but this is one case where reading the full context actually makes it worse. The full quotation is pretty explicitly anti-Christianity (although the journalist who recorded it was hardly impressed with Lennon’s intellectual rigor):
At the moment I can only back this up with websites whose authority I can’t vet. But there’s a recap of the controversy here that squares with what I’ve heard. And here is the article the quotation comes from, posted by some helpful person. My attention was caught by this description of the decorative items in Lennon’s house:
Incidentally, Peter Brown is an interesting person to be speaking about Lennon and his tendency toward blasphemy (or is it simply indelicacy?). I know his name because it’s immortalized in the lyrics of “The Ballad of John and Yoko,” the song about the trials of fame whose chorus goes, “Christ, you know it ain’t easy, / You know how hard it can be. / The way things are going / They’re gonna crucify me.”
As a Beatles fan since that first appearance on Ed Sullivan, my understanding is that Harrison was the only one with a strict Catholic upbringing and that both of his parents were Catholic.
Interestingly three of the Beatles, George, John & Paul all have Irish Catholic roots. (Harrison on his mother’s side, John on his father’s side & Paul on both sides, although his dad was raised Protestant.) John, raised by his beloved aunt Mimi from his mom’s side, was Protestant.
His dad, however, was Catholic and he even had an uncle who was a priest but was defrocked for some reason or another. Paul & his brother, Irish on both sides, were baptized Catholic but I’m not sure if they were raised as such. His mom was a very devout Catholic. His dad’s side of the family were originally Catholic in Ireland but after his grandfather settled in Scotland, Paul’s dad was raised Protestant. Ringo is the only one with no apparent Catholic background.
His step-dad was Jewish.