Their songs included powerful and touching hymns to Mary and to creation
By William Oddie
19 July 2010
I find myself in an unusual and slightly strange situation: I am in
disagreement with Cardinal George Pell. This has never happened to me
before, and I'm not sure that I like it. In a sermon last week, the
cardinal had a go at the Beatles, and in particular John Lennon, whom
he described as "the best known of the Beatles, who once claimed they
were better known than Jesus Christ".
Well, so he did: but John Lennon wasn't the same phenomenon at all as
the Beatles. Cardinal Pell attacked in particular Imagine, in which,
as the cardinal reminds us, "Lennon urged his listeners to dream of a
world where there was no heaven, no hell… Lennon was working for a
peace resulting from the disappearance of religion… We are gathering
some of the fruits of his mistaken teaching today…" All true: but
Imagine had nothing to do with the Beatles, it was a much later solo
production.
Imagine is undoubtedly a hateful piece, with all that ludicrous
blether about "the brotherhood of man", which reminded me at the time
of something Harold Macmillan, that great friend of Mgr Ronnie Knox,
once said: "How can you have the brotherhood of man, if you don't
accept the Fatherhood of God?"
But I repeat: John Lennon wasn't the Beatles. And as Cardinal Pell
also said: "The Beatles had more than a touch of genius." As the
Osservatore Romano put it: "It's true… swept up by their success,
they lived dissolute and uninhibited lives, but, listening to their
songs, all of this seems distant and meaningless. Their beautiful
melodies… live on like precious jewels."
One could go on and on, not simply about the melodies, but the words:
the pathos and deep understanding of loneliness of Eleanor Rigby; the
almost Chestertonian gratitude for the beauty of creation that comes
over in songs like Here Comes the Sun, and:
Blackbird singing in the dead of night
Take these broken wings and learn to fly
All your life
You were only waiting for this moment to arise
John Lennon, in particular, seems to have totally shaken off the
Catholicism of his childhood: but did he really? And what about the
rest of them? They were brought up, don't forget, in the Liverpool
Catholicism of pre-Worlock days, when children learned all the basic
Catholic prayers by heart: that tends to stick, even if at an
unconscious level. And on at least one occasion, it emerges fully in
what is for me the most beautiful (in both words and melody) of all
their songs, Let It Be: a title and refrain which surely in context
can only be a reference to the Angelus response "let it be to me
according to your word", which they must all have repeated hundreds
of times. And if this song isn't a most touching and powerful Marian
hymn, I don't know what else it could possibly be. It's surely quite explicit:
When I find myself in times of trouble
Mother Mary comes to me
Speaking words of wisdom, let it be
And in my hour of darkness
She is standing right in front of me
Speaking words of wisdom, let it be
Let it be, let it be
Let it be, let it be
Whisper words of wisdom
Let it be….
And when the night is cloudy
There is still a light that shines on me
Shine on until tomorrow, let it be
I wake up to the sound of music
Mother Mary comes to me
Speaking words of wisdom, let it be…
Listen to it again, all the way through; I cannot even read its
lyrics out loud without tears. I rest my case.
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