{"id":1825,"date":"2007-09-09T22:36:00","date_gmt":"2007-09-09T22:36:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/deaconsbench\/2007\/09\/on-this-rock-from-the-beatles-to-benedict-and-beyond.html"},"modified":"2007-09-09T22:36:00","modified_gmt":"2007-09-09T22:36:00","slug":"on-this-rock-from-the-beatles-to-benedict-and-beyond","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2007\/09\/on-this-rock-from-the-beatles-to-benedict-and-beyond.html","title":{"rendered":"On this rock: from the Beatles to Benedict and beyond"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a>I can think of a few people who might disagree, but writer Mark Judge, in the Washington Post,<\/a> makes a compelling argument that rock and roll is a distinctly Catholic form of art: <\/p>\n

You don\u2019t need to work at MTV to realize that love – and it\u2019s loss – is the great theme of popular music, from Louis Armstrong right down to Justin Timberlake\u2019s new single. Indeed, Timberlake\u2019s brilliant song \u201cMy Love\u201d evokes the initial ecstasy Adam felt when he first saw \u201cflesh of my flesh and bone of my bone\u201d; the song even boasts an angelic vocal in its final few seconds. Whether it\u2019s the Supremes declaring that there ain\u2019t no mountain high enough to keep me from you, the Beatles heralding the good news that she loves you, or Van Morrison whispering to his darling about this lovely night for a moon dance, this great desire to return to our original union with God – including the conjugal union between Adam and Eve that preceded the Fall – is the urge that launched a thousand hits. It is such a ubiquitous theme that it\u2019s impossible to run through my favorite bands without coming face to face with it. The punk band the Replacements, my favorite band when I was in my twenties, have a song, \u201cI Will Dare,\u201d about working up the courage to meet a girl. The Allman Brothers sing of \u201cSweet Melissa.\u201d The entire Motown canon, from Marvin Gaye to Stevie Wonder, is a joyful soundtrack of the quest for love – more specifically, the quest for the love of that one person whom you were meant to be with, the one who is the answer to a prayer, who can make time stop.<\/p>\n

As I am writing this, I am listening to the song \u201cOriginal of the Species\u201d by U2. The play on Darwin in the title is the introduction to the song\u2019s grander point: that each human being is individual, non-repeatable, unique. This is why when real love comes into our lives it is such a staggering experience: we are meeting, in the words of the great theologian William May, \u201ca bearer of transcendent value, the subject of a dignity and a sanctity that ought to be recognized by others and protected by society.\u201d U2 singer Bono heralds the arrival of his beloved: \u201cyou are the first one of your kind.\u201d Then the heady chorus kicks in:<\/p>\n

And you feel like no one before
You steal right under my door
I kneel \u2018cause I want you some more
I want you some more
I want you some more
Oh love<\/p>\n

In his encyclical Deus Caritas Est (\u201cGod is Love), Pope Benedict refers to the love between a man and a woman as \u201cthat love which is neither planned nor willed, but somehow imposes itself upon human beings.\u201d In the U2 song, love \u201csteals right under my door,\u201d neither planned nor willed. Bono can only cry for more, delirious with the fecundity and gratuitous grace of God. It\u2019s probably no mistake that he cried for more three times, reflecting the Trinity.<\/p>\n

This all works because in the last 30 years the Catholic Church has closed the gap between eros and agape – the love of man and woman and the love between God and man. The Church has never denied this connection, but since the pontificate of John Paul the Great it has been developed in powerful ways – and ways that make rock and roll music seem a power tool of evangelization. In his massive series of lectures that are known as the Theology of the Body, John Paul II revolutionized Catholic teaching about sex – a revolution that is now just starting to unfold as people distill the dense and gargantuan work. In the Theology of the Body, John Paul talks about the Song of Songs, those wonderful, and even steamy, love poems of the Old Testament, not as a metaphor of the love of God for His people, as was traditionally done in Catholicism, but as the reflection of a very real event – the love of Adam and Eve before the Fall. In one crucial passage, John Paul II contradicts the notion that God made Eve as a \u201chelper\u201d so she could get next to Adam to push the plow in the Garden of Eden. In fact, Eve\u2019s help was spiritual help. She would do no less than make it possible for Adam to experience the Trinitarian love of God. Prior to this Adam \u201csensed that he was alone.\u201d He was different from the animals, and while in communion with God, he was not God. Eve, rather than bringing about Adam\u2019s ruin, allowed him to experience the interior life of God.<\/p>\n

Suddenly the metaphysical imagery of so much pop music – the love that brings joy, sweet delirium, a touch of the eternal – seems not childish infatuation but a prayer to something more real than the air we breathe. <\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Intrigued? I know I was. There’s a lot more there to chew on, so make sure you read the whole thing. You may never hear The Beatles the same way again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I can think of a few people who might disagree, but writer Mark Judge, in the Washington Post, makes a compelling argument that rock and roll is a distinctly Catholic form of art: You don\u2019t need to work at MTV to realize that love – and it\u2019s loss – is the great theme of popular…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":365,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1825","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nOn this rock: from the Beatles to Benedict and beyond - The Deacon's Bench<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2007\/09\/on-this-rock-from-the-beatles-to-benedict-and-beyond.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"On this rock: from the Beatles to Benedict and beyond - 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