Skepticism is bad, said the late Holy Father. Skepticism is an ill wind that blows things away. Of course I won't have the opportunity to ask Joe Ratzinger whether it was an ill wind of skepticism that blew him away from the Hitler Jugend and into the Church, but I'm sure that Benedictus isn't a man who would submit to rules of logic or consistency of argument when it might damage the structured surrender of cognition he calls the Church. He's an admitted skeptic anyway, when it comes to allowing the flock to listen to Dylan. “There was reason to be skeptical, and I was,” Pope Benedict writes in his upcoming book about his association with John Paul: “Indeed, in a certain sense I still am today.”
But the Pope wasn't referring to Hitler, he was talking about Bob Dylan. Writing in his memoir; John Paul II, My Beloved Predecessor to be published next week, Pope Benedict XVI relates his reluctance to allow Dylan to sing before a 1997 youth event. He opposed letting this "false prophet" sing and although that song was not part of the program, John Paul II cited Blowin' in the Wind and assured the audience of 300,000 that the real answer ( don't be a skeptic, he's always right ) is in "the wind of the Spirit" that leads one to reject honest thought in favor of belief in what the Pope says that God says.
The song of course has a message about the insensitivity of man toward his fellows and the suffering caused by war. You'd hardly expect The Bavarian Pope to allow such heresy - not that the message is in any way unchristian - it's just that it didn't come from an approved vendor and it isn't being used to sell submission or a strawman Jesus who promotes war, persecution tyranny of thought and military aggression. Besides, Pope Benedict says that Rock music is the work of Satan and apparently even if it has a message of compassion, peace and love. No word on his opinion of Wagner and no hint that he is aware that Blowin' in the Wind isn't Rock music.
But I know there is some kind of wind blowing - I can smell it.
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Ratzinger gives the adage, "truth is stranger than fiction" new meaning. How about a new construct, just for the Pope: "Fiction as truth, and that's strange." Sheesh.
If people could tell truth from fiction, where would he be?
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