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1. Some American fundamentalists were "outraged" at Lennon's pretty harmless and partly self-deprecatory if rather tasteless joke, which was a response to a stupid question from a journalist. I'm not aware of any Catholic having been outraged by it, let alone the Holy See.
   
   Far more offensive and damaging were Lennon's despicable treatment of his first and only lawful wife and son, and the lyrics of a few of his later songs where he vociferously and vitriolically attacked, mocked and fulminated against Christianity, and at times all religions, whilst posing as an advocate and example of peace and love.

   Posted By: Ronk

2. Ronk, be the example of peace and stop spewing so much hate and anger- even at a dead man, you wouldn't let it go...

   Posted By: TJ Lawson

3. Gee, the Vatican moves quickly. Just forty-two years on...

   Posted By: Steve

4. If there is anything hateful, angry or untruthful in the facts I mentioned, please point it out.

   Posted By: Ronk

5. Ronk - "despicable treatment"? I don't remember hearing of any wife-bashing, child-abuse or any other "despicable treatment" of his wife and son. Lennon was just an ordinary, tho exceptionally talented, human being, who - like of all of us - made mistakes along the way. As for his religious beliefs - he was a very spiritual man who respected the spirituality of others - in all its manifestations. His concern about religion, like many, was related only to people who abuse or exploit their religious context and use it to oppress and vilify others and promote hate towards other faiths and people. He didn't "pose" as anything, he WAS an advocate of peace and love. Your post only serves to make his point for him, even this long after his murder.

   Posted By: Jacki

6. Jacki, I think most people would consider that Lennon’s desertion of his faithful and loving wife Cynthia, leaving her alone with their small son, cutting both of them off from all contact for the rest of his life, leaving them in relative poverty whilst he frittered away millions on a life of personal indulgence, jet-setting around the world with his partner in adultery, claiming quite explicitly that the two of them were setting an example of love and peace to all the world, certainly qualifies as extremely despicable treatment of that poor woman and their innocent little boy. He then deserted his partner in adultery and took up with yet another woman.
   
   No, you probably didn't "hear about" any of that, because of the way Lennon successfully "spun" the compliant media.
   
   “a very spiritual man who respected the spirituality of others - in all its manifestations”??? “His concern about religion was related only to people who abuse or exploit their religious context and use it to oppress and vilify others and promote hate”???
   
   Nonsense. Please explain what he meant by:
   “Imagine there's no Heaven
   It's easy if you try
   No hell below us
   Above us only sky
   Imagine all the people
   Living for today
   …..And no religion too”
   
   And by:
   “God is a concept,
   By which we can measure,
   Our pain,
   I don't believe in magic,
   I don't believe in I-ching,
   I don't believe in bible,
   I don't believe in tarot,
   I don't believe in Hitler,
   I don't believe in Jesus,
   I don't believe in Kennedy,
   I don't believe in Buddha,
   I don't believe in mantra,
   I don't believe in Gita,
   I don't believe in yoga,
   I don't believe in kings,
   ……I just believe in me,
   Yoko and me,
   And that's reality.
   The dream is over,
   What can I say?
   The dream is over,
   Yesterday,
   I was dreamweaver,
   But now I'm reborn”
   
   And by:
   “You say you found Jesus Christ
   He’s the only one
   You say you found Buddha
   Sitting in the sun
   You say you found Mohammed
   Facing to the east
   You say you found Krishna
   Dancing in the seats
   Ain't nobody gonna do it for you
   Well you may believe in devils
   and you may believe in lords
   But [blasphemous expletive deleted], you're gonna have to serve yourself and that's all there is to it.
   …You got to serve yourself
   Ain't nobody gonna do it for you?
   You gotta serve yourself
   Nobody’s gonna do for you.”
   (This was a direct retort to Bob Dylan’s Christian song “You gotta serve somebody”).
   
   “He WAS an advocate of peace and love” ???
   Apart from the above, check out what he said, in speech, song and “art”, about McCartney the songwriting partner without whom he would never have found fame and fortune (and as many women as he wanted, whenever he wanted them). Positively dripping with hatred. I have never seen such hatred and anger sold as entertainment.
   (And after McCartney had been kind enough to help look after Cynthia and Julian when Lennon refused to. [McCartney wrote the song “Hey Jude”, originally “Hey Jules” to console the heartbroken young boy whose father treated him so shamefully.])
   
   So please spare me the self-righteous hagiographic hogwash. Yes I’m sorry Lennon was murdered (apparently by a fundamentalist Christian who was incensed by his anti-Christian campaigning), but that doesn’t justify you, TJ and millions of others canonising him and trying to gag any criticism of him.
   
   Lennon was pretty dumb too. He must have known that he had incensed millions of Christians. Yet, to avoid British taxes on his millions, he went through years of legal wrangling to get residency in the USA (very difficult because of his prior drug convictions) knowing that no other country on earth was so chock-full of millions of gun-toting fundamentalist Christians. It was almost suicide really.
   

   Posted By: Ronk

7. (Jacki)"I don't remember hearing of any wife-bashing, child-abuse or any other "despicable treatment" of his wife and son."
   Lennon repeatedly committed adultery during both marriages, probably including homosexual activity. Lennon and Yoko Ono lived together for a year while he was still married to Cynthia and Ono was still married to an American filmmaker. When Cynthia and Julian returned from a vacation in Greece, they found Ono had moved in to their own home, and John and Ono then ordered Cynthia and Julian to get out.
   Lennon's biographers speak of “the infamous Lennon temper.” He frequently flew into rages, screaming, smashing things, hitting people. He admitted, “I was a hitter. I couldn’t express myself and I hit. I fought men and I beat women” (Giuliano, Lennon in America, p. 20).
   
   Lennon confided to a friend, “I’ve always wondered what it would be like to kill a woman, many women! " (Giuliano, p. 20). When Yoko was pregnant with their son (Sean), Lennon kicked her in the stomach during an explosive confrontation; Lennon later hit the young Sean, even kicking him in a restaurant (Giuliano, pp. 111, 138). In 1979, Lennon flew into a rage and trashed his apartment while “filling the air with a stream of profane invective” (Giuliano, p. 179).
   John gathered together a collection of S&M-inspired manikins, adorned with whips and chains, their hands and feet manacled. John’s violent sexual impulses troubled Yoko” (Giuliano, Lennon in America, p. 19).
   After Lennon’s death, his son Julian perceptively asked: “How can you talk about peace and love and have a family in bits and pieces, no communication, adultery, divorce?” (Giuliano, p. 220).
   
   Btw the title of Bob Dylan's song was actually "You're gonna have to serve somebody". (Lennon also mocked Dylan with anti-semitic insults.)
   
   Need more proof of Lennon's absolute intolerance of any form of religion, especially any form of Christianity?
   
   By age 11, Lennon was permanently barred from Sunday services in his aunt’s Anglican church because he “repeatedly improvised obscene and impious lyrics to the hymns.” He did things even cruder and viler, such as urinate on members of the “clergy” from second floor windows and display homemade dummies of Christ in lewd poses. In 1966, he asserted: “Christianity will go, it will vanish and shrink. I needn’t argue about that. I’m right and will be proved right.” (Newsweek, March 21, 1966). In his 1965 book A Spaniard in the Works, Lennon portrayed Jesus Christ as Jesus El Pifico, a “garlic eating, stinking little yellow, greasy fascist bastard Catholic Spaniard.” and blasphemed the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit by calling them “Fahter, Sock, and Mickey Most.”
   
   In his 1970 song “I Found Out,” Lennon sang, “I told you before, stay away from my door. Don’t give me that brother, brother, brother, brother. . . . There ain’t no Jesus gonna come from the sky.”
   He testified that he had never met a Christian who wasn’t actually a sanctimonious hypocrite (Giuliano, p. 134). Lennon also said that he did not believe in the Judeo-Christian doctrine that God “is some other thing outside of ourselves” (Spin, February 1987, p. 46).
   Lennon himself described his song “Imagine” as “an anti-religious song”.
   

   Posted By: Ronk

8. Some corrections to the article and my comments thanks to Philip Norman's exhaustive and definitive new biography, "John Lennon: The Life", which The Australian called "a fair portrait" and "the last word in Lennonography":
   
   The boast that the Beatles were "more popular than Jesus" was not an offhand remark by "an English working class lad struggling to cope with unexpected success". It was part of a serious discussion with Maureen Cleave, an English journalist whom the Beatles gave privileged access. In fact the only Beatle with working-class origins was Ringo Starr; the other three were solidly middle-class.
   
   Norman reports Lennon "became a dedicated w...ker ... always in company with his arch-crony Pete Shotton ... The wider circle of Lennon followers would also sociably w...k all together, stimulating themselves and their neighbours". Hence the inspiration for the song "Come Together", usually portrayed by ignorant Lennon devotees as a call for peace.
   
   Norman also reports Lennon craved an incestuous relationship with his mother, and a homosexual relationship with McCartney.

   Posted By: Ronk

9. Also Lennon's murderer Chapman was not a Christian. He was a dedicated Lennon fan who modelled his own life on Lennon's. When he eventually discovered that Lennon had sold him lies posing as truth, just like Lennon he exploded in furious anger at the one he saw as destroying his life.

   Posted By: Ronk

10. Ronk
    Although some, not all of what you wrote are true(homosexual relations?) you, presumably a Christian man, sound like you don't have any Christian forgiveness in your heart. Also from what I've heard,Giuliano is not very credible.
    Yes John Lennon did leave his wife and child. His son was heartbroken. Just before John died he tried to re-connect with his son and start a relationship with him again that was cut short by his murder.
    When John Lennon was a child he was left without either of his parents and stayed with his aunt. When his mother finally came back in his life when he was in his late teens his mom tragically died. You can't tell me that this did not have a profound effect on him and his anger. John Lennon was a human being with faults but he did believe in peace. His unbelievable popularity certainly had an effect on him and he said and did some things that he maybe should not have done but overall he was a man of peace. I took his lyrics in Imagine as a way of saying that religion has caused much of the world's hate and wars (which they have) and he Imagined the world without that hate and predjudice. I'm sure he realised that many people who consider themselves religious are good people but his remarks in his songs were not aimed at them. His angry song towards McCartney was a shot back at a song that McCartney wrote about him. He later regretted the feud.
    All in all I believe that Lennon was a good man who meant well and had his faults. I also believe that people who dont forgive are not very Christianlike and that is a human fault in them....Kenny

    Posted By: Kenny

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