Thursday, March 08, 2007

Benedict on Dylan & John Paul


Peter Popham in The Belfast Telegraph
At the time he gritted his teeth and sat it out. But now Pope Benedict XVI has admitted that he thought his predecessor's encounter with the singer Bob Dylan was a lousy idea.
In 1997, John Paul II sat on a stage along with 50 cardinals in a vast fairground outside Bologna while slightly below and in front of him, Bob Dylan, wearing a cowboy hat and rhinestone-spangled zoot suit, crunched his way through "Knockin' on Heaven's Door", "It's a Hard Rain" and "Forever Young".
After the second song Dylan ascended to the Pope's throne, doffed the hat, Nashville Skyline-style, and shook his hand.
The Pope then preached a sermon to the 300,000-strong audience. How many roads must a man walk down? "Just one," declared the Pope. What answer is blowing in the wind? "The breath and voice of the Spirit," he insisted, "a voice that calls and says, 'Come'."
At the time the event was seen as one of the more brilliant publicity stunts by the most publicity-savvy pope that ever lived. But in a book published this week, Benedict XVI, the late pope's theological adviser, reveals that he thought the whole thing a very bad idea. "The Pope arrived [at the Bologna Eucharist Congress] tired, worn out," he writes in My Beloved Predecessor. "Just at that moment Bob Dylan, the 'star' of the young, and others whose names I do not recall, turned up. They had a message completely different from that to which the Pope was committed. There was reason to be sceptical - which I was, and in a certain sense still am - to doubt whether it was really right to involve 'prophets' of this type."

4 comments:

Sam said...

Well IMO, and although infallible :-) this Pope doesn't get it, and the previous one did.

I will only mention his permanent search and questioning of the divine in all of us, al his biblical allusions, his christian period, etc

I could go on and on, but if one did not follow Dylan's career, one simply "cannot" get it...

Anonymous said...

No harm at all, but much good, was achieved by the late Holy Father's attendance at this event.

Anonymous said...

Dylan's vooice always sounds to me like a cat sranged over violin strings; give me Ben16 anytime

Thomas Coolberth said...

There's a sinister element to Dylan's lyrics in "Blowin' in the Wind."

He is troubador of a failed, myopic and self-centered generation.

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