Rock n'roll is not the way to salvation, warns Ratzinger

By Bruce Johnston ROCK music was painted by the Pope's doctrinal chief this week as an "expression of base passions".
Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, prefect of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, also said that rock concerts had become an "anti-cult" that was being pitted against that of the Church.
The attack came in the form of an essay in a new book by Cardinal Ratzinger called Introduzione allo spirito della liturgia (Introduction to the Spirit of the Liturgy).
In a chapter on music and liturgy, the Bavarian-born cardinal claimed that the true meaning of music — that of the "singing with angels" of God's glory — risked being lost in modern times.
On the other hand, rock music wanted to "free man from himself with mass-audience events and special lighting effects".
But in so doing, Cardinal Ratzinger argued, people were being made to "fall prey to the primitive power del Tutto —
of All — via the ecstasy of the laceration of their own limitations."
As for "pop" music, which he said was "by now no longer something endured by the people", it was nevertheless a "mass phenomenon" because of the way it was being "produced on an industrial scale".
This, he said, "must now be defined as a cult of banality".
Music inspired by the Holy Spirit seemed to have "few possibilities" of existing in a rock music "where the ego has become a prison, the spirit, a chain, and the violent breaking with both seems to be the one, true promise of liberation whose taste — at least for a few fleeting moments — one believes to have savoured".
Cardinal Ratzinger, who is said to be have a great appreciation of what he considers to be "true music", used the chapter to reveal the importance of music in the Bible, and in Christian tradition.
He said there were 309 references to song in the Old Testament, and 36 in the New Testament.
The first mention was after the crossing of the Red Sea, when Israel is freed from slavery, and sings with Moses praises of the Lord. The last is of the Apocalypse, when "divine harps" will accompany the chant of the final victory of Jesus Christ. Liturgical song, the Pope's doctrinal watchdog said, "takes its place in the setting of this great historical tension", and accompanied a events of a "Church that prayed with song".
In the course of time, the Church had already wrestled situations in which music risked losing its significance as that of "singing with angels" of God's glory.
"The way things actually are now," the cardinal wrote, "undoubtedly implies a difficult challenge for the Church, culture and liturgy."
But that was no reason to be discouraged, he insisted. On the one hand, the great cultural tradition of the faith possessed an "extraordinary strength" which was still valid, while on the other, people who "looked carefully will realise that important masterpieces of art have been and are being born from an inspiration of the faith, in our own times".