Everett, Wash.
Published: Monday, December 1, 2008

IN OUR VIEW

Years later, Vatican sings different Lennon tune

 It’s not clear why the Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano decided last week to declare John Lennon a fine chap after all, never mind that little flap in 1966 when he observed that the Beatles were more popular than Jesus.
According to BBC News, the “semi-official” Vatican newspaper is under the helm of a new editor and “apart from chronicling the Pope’s daily doings and printing the texts of papal speeches” the paper now sometimes runs entertainment articles,.
To make up for decades of no entertainment reporting, the paper is attempting to catch up to some major moments in pop culture. The article’s “hook” was the 40th anniversary of The Beatles’ “White Album,” which L’Osservatore called a “magical musical anthology.” Quite. If not a magical mystery tour.
The article praises the Beatles’ music and casts Lennon, who was shot and killed on Dec. 8, 1980, in an empathetic light. The media, as it will, misrepresented the story with headlines such as, “Pope forgives Lennon for quip,” like the two just recently had tea. Actually, the pope declined comment, even on whether he has a favorite Beatle. People will have to imagine what Lennon’s reaction might have been.
“The remark by John Lennon, which triggered deep indignation mainly in the United States, after many years sounds only like a ‘boast’ by a young working-class Englishman faced with unexpected success, after growing up in the legend of Elvis and rock and roll,” the article said.
But it wasn’t enough to praise the Fab Four. The article says that the White Album demonstrated how creative the Beatles were, compared with what it called the “standardized, stereotypical” songs produced today.
It’s groovy that L’Osservatore gets to run entertainment stories these days, but acting as the arbiter of musical hipness when you’re 40 years behind the times would be difficult for anyone to fake, let alone Vatican newspaper editors, or any newspaper editors, for that matter. The least the Vatican could do is condemn some current bands to give them some “street cred.”
(Again, why now with the Beatles? Is it a lingering influence from the previous Vatican administration — the Pope John Paul II years?)
(We do hope the newspaper editors can catch up to Lennon’s solo career. He did a couple of things there, too.)
Next week in L’Osservatore Romano: “Disco era remains unforgiven.”
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