Vatican Forgives John Lennon For Famous Jesus Remark

Maybe John Lennon isn’t going to hell after all.

More than forty years after the ex-Beatle made his famous remark about the Beatles being more popular than Jesus, the Catholic Church has issued an absolution of sorts. From the Vatican to the Beatle, “all is forgiven.”

The news comes courtesy of the official Vatican newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, the same publication which led the world in condemning Lennon for his remarks, which were given in an interview published in a London newspaper in 1966. In the interview with journalist and Beatles confidant Maureen Cleave, Lennon shocked the world by stating the following:

"Christianity will come and go. It will vanish and shrink. I needn’t argue about that. I know I’m right and I will be proved right. We’re more popular than Jesus right now. I don’t know which will go first – rock and roll or Christianity.”

The interview produced a firestorm of controversy at the time – especially in America – producing death threats and record burnings in America’s Bible Belt of the deep south, and threatening the Beatles’ impending 1966 American tour. Lennon later recanted the remarks in a press conference by stating that the remark had more or less been taken out of context, and that he was merely stating a rather unfortunate fact that could just as easily been made about television or other prevailing forms of culture at the time.

Even so, today the controversy continues to reverberate in some circles – such as in a recently published book which puts forth the proposition that Lennon sold his soul to the devil for fame, and eventually paid the price for it when he was assassinated in 1980.

In an article praising the Beatles music on the 40th anniversary of the release of their White Album, L'Osservatore Romano forgives Lennon, calling the remark the product of "showing off, bragging by a young English working-class musician who had grown up in the age of Elvis Presley and rock and roll and had enjoyed unexpected success". The article goes on to praise the Beatles for the way their music has lived on, and singles out the White Album as a “magical musical anthology.”

Perhaps the Dixie Chicks can look forward to similar vindication from Republicans in another forty years.