God I love our pope...

[archaist]

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/GE17Aa01.html

I want to be a Catholic after reading this article. Why can't I find his books anywhere? Every little citation I read of this man's writing is pure gold.

Comments

[anatomiste]

I like him too.

I like some rock music, but what he said about it made complete sense.

On Sunday I went to St. Meinrad's, an archabbey about an hour west of Louisville, and heard the monks sing Vespers. It was wonderful.

[vilious]

Ah, bah. The Church is supposed to be catholic, for everyone. Ratzinger is trying to turn it into a cult for tight-ass, dried-up intellectual precisians. I am a tight-ass, dried-up intellectual precisian, but the idea of spending eternity with people just like me does not inspire. Rock comes right directly out of gospel, a religious and musical tradition in which it is both customary and reverent to sing things like:

Can't nobody do me like Jesus,
Can't nobody do me like Jesus,
Can't nobody do me like Jesus,
He's my friend.

This is not the Christianity of the Inquisition or of Cardinal Ratzinger, but it consoles and inspires the meek and the poor, who cannot always be troubled to keep the blessings of nature sorted out from the blessings of the spirit.

[archaist]

I think he means it more in the Allan Bloom sense of rock music being primarily (not simply, remember) aimed at pleasing. Of course lyrics in and of themselves can be harmless, but I think it's silly to throw a matter of class at the question, that somehow Rock Music is the music of the Proletariat. They might like to think so, but I somehow doubt musical and intellectual interests are determined by an economic situation. Ever looked at the classical music section in a music store? It's a lot cheaper than rock music, at least where I live.

Rock Music seems to me, at least, more descended from the Ballad tradition of yore than from Christianity. Compare a Led Zeppelin song's lyrics to those in a Medieval ballad to see what I mean. The origins of a music that isn't demanding or has no need for an intellectual standard seem to me, at least, more associated with the secular poetic tradition.

[vilious]

Oh, rock is a commodity, and often an expensive one, but every commodity is shaped by its history and its means of production