Back from an exhilarating weekend in Vancouver, B.C. the activities of AWP still swirling about in my head will need several journal sessions to sort through and coalesce into focused bits I can elaborate on here. More on the surface of my thoughts recently has been the death of the Pope. Not because I much care about the Pope. I don't. Not in any deeply emotional way, anyhow. He was old. He died. And now a new pope will take his place. The news reports told of the "ritual" acts needed when choosing a new pope. It was funny - and I do mean ha-ha - to listen to the process and hear how much it sounded like the guidelines in our faculty contract for replacing vacant positions. It's not a ritual, it's and administrative process. The pope is an administrator, no different than any other hired/elected official. There's no mysticism to the process - it's political. The U.S. cardinal won't even be considered, and I'm doubtful the world is ready to embrace a black pope, so Cardinal Francis Arinze can count himself out, and for similar reasons, I think Cardinal Norberto R. Carrera of Mexico City can prepare to stand aside. It's not really about being chosen by God, now is it?
To that end, I have my own nomination: Sinead O'Connor.
Back in 1992, she shocked the nation by ripping up a picture of the Pope John Paul II during her performance on Saturday Night Live to raise awareness of child abuse in the church, among many other issues she denounces within the Catholic church. For more information on this, a great web site to visit is The File Room Chicago Cultural Arts Center - an illustrated archive on censorship which you can browse, as well as add cases to. Sinead O'Connor has her own page for this particular action.
The folks at SNL were bombarded with over 6,000 complaint calls to the network, not to mention that Tim Robbins took his own cowardly bastard stand in not thanking her at the end of the show. Then what? Suddenly the US erupts in the "scandal" of the abuses of children within the Catholic church. Priest after priest after priest is yanked out of his cassock into litigation for child abuse. Relocations, denunciations, removals all follow. Can we say Sinead was right? No. Not a single soul or souless source ever came forward to admit that. The network that shunned Sinead and refused to let the episode of SNL be repeated, those who booed her off stage in performances that followed, Tim - HELLO?! - Robbins... Not a one stepped forward to say, Gee, maybe Sinead was on to something that we were still not ready or willing to believe. Yeesh! Okay then, in this be it ever so humble blog, let me be the first: Sinead - you were right.
And before you go all holier than thou on me - I was baptized and raised Roman Catholic - went through CCD classes and was confirmed (my confirmation name is one of my deepest darkest secrets) - I've done my fair share of Stations of the Cross, when business people enjoyed a noon - 3:00 break at the bar, I was kneeling and kneeling and kneeling. And I've had my fair share of taunting over the ash mush that was to resemble a cross on my forehead those long, long Wedesdays. So, back off. Like many Catholics who openly admit: "I love the Pope. I didn't agree with everything he said, but - " Okay, wait. What's the but? In Catholicism, either you agree or you're scorned, you're bad! You'll burn in HELL! Or, at least until confession. In any case, don't play me on this one. I've got just as much say as the next claim-to-be-Catholic-when-it-suits-me.
Sinead O'Connor is not anti-God. Anything but. Repeated interviews with her reveal that she is deeply spiritual, though she then claimed to not support organized religion. In an interview with Rolling Stone, Sinead, she says: "i lived in hell for a long period of time. the only thing that saved my ass was god."
Yet, in 1998, she was informally ordained a priest by a Catholic "splinter" group. Of this act, she humbly commented: "I am now a Roman Catholic priest and I intend to fulfill that office to one hundred and million per cent the best of my ability. The Church was dying and I think I'm a very good and loving person that I've been prepared to take the crucifixions, which I will now have to put up with for doing this, so as to bring people back to the Catholic Church. I think it's very wonderful of me that I've been prepared to do this - to give publicity to the Catholic Church. I don't need any publicity myself. What I've done is resurrect the Church and saved its life - and I hope the Church will be strong enough to see that."
Good enough for me. And that she has a tremendous voice to boot only works in her favor. So, crucify me if you'd like, but I'm sticking (pun intended) to it: Sinead for Pope!
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