![]() ![]() ![]() But on the ground, it is rarely that simple. Religion is often thought about as discreet traditions: institutions that someone is either inside or outside. The exquisite freedom in her music cannot be disentangled from that something transcendent that she was always after. Throughout her life, O’Connor defied religious labels, exploring multiple faiths. These men and women are dissatisfied with the mainstream centers of religious power but nonetheless compelled by something indelibly religious that feeds the wellsprings of their artistic imagination. I am a scholar of Catholicism in the modern era and have long been interested in those figures – the poets, artists, seekers – who wander the margins of their religious tradition. Sinead O’Connor was arguably one of the most spiritually sensitive artists of our time. But leaving it just at that, we miss something profound about the complexity and depth of her religious imagination. I join the chorus of voices today who say O’Connor was decades ahead of her time. Sexual abuse, once discussed only in whispers, is now beginning to be talked about openly. ![]() In many people’s eyes, the moral credibility of the Catholic Church around the world has crumbled, and trust in faith institutions of any sort is at an all-time low. Her “Saturday Night Live” performance is now seen as “invigorating,” the New York Times’ pop critic wrote, and “a call to arms for the dispossessed.”Īttitudes toward Catholicism, sex and power are far different today than in 1992, whether in New York or O’Connor’s native Dublin. For months afterward, she was banned, booed and mocked, dismissed as a crazy rebel beyond the pale.Ĭommemorations following her death, however, cast the protest in a very different light. “Fight the real enemy,” she said – a reference to clerical sex abuse. Thirty-one years ago, after a haunting rendition of Bob Marley’s song “War,” O’Connor ripped up a photograph of Pope John Paul II on live television. When news broke July 26, 2023, that the gifted Irish singer Sinead O’Connor had died, stories of her most famous performance circulated amid the grief and shock. ![]()
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