I thought it was rather appropriate to post this video performance since I just wrote about William Donahue’s misguided crusade against the chocolate Jesus. And though Tom Waits has made a song about the same subject, he’s recently drawn praise from the Catholic Church.

The latest issue of Civilta Cattolica, a Jesuit journal, the contents of which are subject to Vatican approval, says that Waits represents “the marginalised and misunderstood”.

Father Antonio Spadaro, 40, who normally writes about literature but is emerging as a Roman Catholic authority on pop music, said that Waits had lived a youthful life of “drugs, alcohol and sex” as an outcast on the streets of California.

He therefore understood “the lower depths” of society, and was able to convey the desperation of those on the margins. His past also enabled him to express their “capacity for hope and instinct for happiness” in “authentic songs devoid of vanity and false illusions”, Father Spadaro said.

source

Sure, the pope isn’t exactly the King of Cool, but if Catholics weren’t so misrepresented by hatemongers like Donahue, this recent story about the Vatican giving their approval to Waits might not be so surprising to everyone.