Holy Forgiveness

A long time before I was born, the Beatlemania craze swept the world and for many, it was the end-all-be-all of musical existence. It seemed that you couldn't go anywhere without seeing, hearing or reading about the Beatles. They were literally everywhere and you could not escape them. Their popularity was so far reaching and universal that many realized that people, especially the youth of the world, knew more about the Fab Four than they did about anything else. Put in that context it's easy to understand why John Lennon said that (at that time) the Beatles were more popular than Jesus.

Now as you can probably imagine, that didn't go over too well with those more in tune with the religious persuasions. In fact the Vatican denounced the Beatles following John Lennon's comment back in 1966. It's sad to think that Lennon's comment was taken in the wrong context. Knowing what I know about the Beatles and about John Lennon, I'm sure the statement was meant to convey his feeling that due to unexpected popularity, people seemed to be more interested in hearing the Beatles than they did their preachers at church on Sundays. He probably wasn't wrong. I mean I think the trend continues today; how many times do you hear kids these days complain about having to go to church on Sunday?

Some might argue then that the responsibility of the Beatles should have then been to act as spiritual guides to get others to believe in religion more than they did rather than inadvertently encouraging them to turn away. But as is often the case with such statements, it was taken in the wrong context and for over 40 years the Vatican had continually denounced the statement as being blasphemous. But now the Vatican suddenly declared that they no longer banned the music of the Beatles and they have even spoken the praises of the groups numerous hits. I guess maybe they rediscovered the great music of the group along with so many others this year with the re-release of their entire record collection and with the release of the game "Rock Band: Beatles".