“A True Prophet”: Why Sinéad O’Connor Risked Her Career to Call Out Catholic Church Abuse

this is democracy Now democracynow.org The War and Peace report I'm Amy Goodman with Juan Gonzalez we spend the rest of the hour remembering the remarkable Life and Legacy of the groundbreaking Irish singer songwriter political activist Sinead O'Connor who's died at the age of 56. she was found unresponsive last Wednesday in her London home her friend the musician and activist Bob Geldof has said she sent him text messages quote Laden with desperation and despair in the weeks before her death as she coped with the tragic death of her son Shane O'Connor by Suicide about a year and a half ago at the age of 17. Sinead had four children this is part of a tick tock video it's the last video Sinead O'Connor shared shortly before her death you know the way your kids unfortunately passing away it isn't good for one's body or soul to be fair but anyway let's anyways hi guys here's my nice flat let me see can I flip the camera oh well anyway there's a bunch of flowers my friend gave me today there is my new Martin Johnny Cash guitar that I am going to write some tunes on Sinead O'Connor Rose to stardom in 1990 when she released her version of the Prince song nothing compares to you the song was on her second album I do not want what I haven't got which also included her own song black boys on mopeds about the 1983 death of a 21 year old black man in London named Colin roach and police custody after they accused him of stealing his own moped [Music] they hated me they will hate you mean [Music] [Applause] [Music] the police said roach had died by Suicide the inner sleeve of Sinead O'Connor's album showed a photograph of roach's parents standing next to a poster of their son in 1992 Sinead performed Bob Marley's war on Saturday Night Live then proceeded to rip up a photo of Pope John Paul II on live TV declaring quote fight the Real Enemy the move a protest against systemic child abuse in the Catholic Church of which she was a Survivor provoked widespread uproar she addressed her SNL performance days later during an interview with Entertainment Tonight Ireland has the highest instance in Europe of child abuse I experienced of myself and and I find his presence in Ireland telling the young people of Ireland that he loved them hilarious at least when I studied the history I found out that the people who were responsible for telling lies in the first place were the Vatican who through permitting the invasion of countries and the destruction and murder of entire races of people in the name of God and for money and then their subsequent overtaking of the Educational Systems of all the countries that they went into led to Distortion of historical fact a week after her Saturday Night Live appearance good fella star Joe Pesci appeared on SNL and had this response during his monologue she was very lucky it wasn't my show because if it was my show I would have gave us such a smack two weeks after sinead's SNL appearance O'Connor was booed at a Bob Dylan tribute at Madison Square Garden after being introduced by Texas country singer Chris Christopherson I'm real proud to introduce this next artist whose names become synonymous with courage and integrity ladies and gentlemen Sinead O'Connor Sinead O'Connor was set to perform Bob Dylan's I believe in you but as the crowd continued to boo she responded by singing part of War by Bob Marley the same song she sang on Saturday Night Live okay turn this up until the philosophy which holds One race [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] is war a decade later in 2002 an investigation by the Boston Globe shined a spotlight on sexual abuse and its cover-up in the Catholic Church Sinead O'Connor was an ally of the lgbtq communities March for abortion rights decades before it was legalized in Ireland she converted to Islam and started using the name Shahara sadakat in 2018 alongside the name Sinead O'Connor she spoke out for Palestinian rights respecting the Palestinian Civil Society call for BDS boycott divestment and sanctions against Israel one saying quote on a human level nobody with any sanity including myself would have anything but Sympathy for the Palestinian plate there's not a sane person on Earth who in any way sanctions with the Israeli authorities are doing Sinead said earlier this year in March Sinead O'Connor was met with a prolonged standing ovation at the RTE Choice Music Awards when she received the new award for classic Irish album for I do not want what I have not got and judges called her album quote a stunning body of work by an Irish artist scorching with originality and songs that are as resonant today as they were more than 30 years ago unquote one of the last photographs of Sinead shows her beaming as she accepted the award and dedicated it to quote all refugees in Ireland for more we're joined by two guests Jamie Manson is president for Catholics for choice and Allison McCabe is a music journalist and author of the book why Sinead O'Connor matters which was published in May her new piece for vulture is headlined Sinead O'Connor was always a protest singer Alison let's begin with you give us that history and your response to her passing last week well thanks so much for having me on the program also for describing her as a political activist I think that's something that the world is just really catching up on now um of course I'm gutted and I'm shocked and really haven't had much sleep since Wednesday but I'm grateful for the opportunity to join you and to talk about her music and her life and her Legacy um like a lot of the world for a long time I knew that her hair was shaved I didn't necessarily know that that was something that she decided to do very early on in her career before the release of her first album in 87 as really an act of defiance against the recording label who wanted to Market her on her appearance rather than the strength of her music I knew that she had had a mega hit in 1990 with Prince's nothing compares to you but I didn't know that she was not one of Prince's proteges and if that was not a major hit in his repertoire before she recorded it and made it into a worldwide hit I knew that she tore up a photograph of the Pope on Saturday Night Live but I didn't necessarily know that she was trying to draw attention to the crisis in the child abuse crisis in the Catholic Church which we all now know was real so it really was catching up on all of that as an adult and as a journalist that made me go back and re-examine different things that she had said the statements that she made over the years the music that she made not just up into 92 but really to the end of her life she continued to make music and she always spoke out against Injustice and sometimes she didn't say something perfectly sometimes her message wasn't always heard but she never stopped trying and I think that's really the key takeaway is that she never ever ever stopped trying and it's not enough for us to now say that she was a brave Warrior we have to be brave warriors and we have to have those conversations that she tried to spark from the very beginning of her career yeah I'd like to ask a Jamie Manson a president of Catholics for Choice when she tore up that a photo of Pope John Paul II in 1992 you were living in Long Long Island in a traditional catholic Italian family and uh what was your response then and how do you assess her life yeah I was surrounded by men like Joe Pesci and I had a very different experience though of that uh incident than my family did I too felt called to the priesthood the way Shanae did and I think what's so important to understand about her is that what she did came out of great love of the church and she said that in the recent documentary she felt she had the right to fight this evil because of her love of the church and she felt she had a contract with the Holy Spirit to speak out and not to diminish the importance of child sex abuse but Sinead understood the pervasive harm John Paul II was doing um setting back women's rights by potentially centuries creating the theologies that that that developed so much sexual shame and she understood that this was happening happening globally what she was seeing in Ireland had Global consequences and so it's so important to understand you know she's like a true prophet she saw things no one wanted to see she said things that no one wanted to hear and she risked everything for that and she basically lost everything and a sense of in terms of assessing the current state of things it's important to remember that Pope Francis canonized John Paul II in 2014 so it shows you how far we still have to go and how prophetic she really was uh Allison McCabe we only have two minutes to go in this segment and then we're doing part two and posting it at democracynow.org but if you could then talk about the rest of her life because every aspect was a claim a praise pushing um the limits being attacked but it never stopped her it never stopped her and you know she said that what happened on SNL didn't derail her career she said it rerailed her career because it set her back on the path of what she saw as her calling you know as your other guest said she never intended to be a pop star that's something that just happened when that song blew up in 90 but if you look at the rest of her catalog before then and after then she continues to make music with meaning excellent music music that we really have a lot to catch up on in terms of the issues that she was Raising not just talking about child abuse but as you mentioned at the top you know talking about she was anti-racist you know she was speaking out against sexism she was early on talking about HIV AIDS awareness and so many other issues we could go on and on I know we don't have a lot of time but it was all in there when I saw that you know that was really what inspired me to reframe her narrative and you know now there's this outpouring of love and my only regret is I wish she were alive to experience that you know it's it's it's coming now but I wish that she'd experienced some of that during her lifetime well um in a blog post that was widely shared the musician Morrissey slammed the music industry the media celebrities and others he said we're hypocritical and cynical for paying tributes to Sinead O'Connor only after her death he wrote in part you praise her now only because it's too late you hadn't the guts to support her when she was alive and she was looking for you Allison can you talk about that particular photograph of John Pope of Pope John Paul II that she ripped up the physical photograph had hung on the wall of her house is that right where she would be abused by her deeply religious mother can you take it from there thank you yes to clarify uh Sinead was not a survivor of clergy abuse she was a survivor of use at the hands of her devoutly religious mother and the photograph was a souvenir from the Pope's 1979 visit to Ireland and sinead's mother died when Sinead was in her teens actually on on the way to mass she got into a fatal car accident and Sinead hung onto that photograph because for her it was a symbol as she said of Lies liars and abuse and what she meant by that as your other guest mentioned uh is to destroy it wasn't to attack the faith or to attack the pope but it was to attack really the hypocrisy of an institution that would protect predators and Silent survivors you know I think for her that was really the key and so she was really at the height of her Fame now this was all during a monoculture where you know the whole world would be watching TV at the same time looking at the same thing so she knew there'd be an opportunity here to really make that statement and actually afterwards her publicist at the time said you know I can't fix this for you and her response was good you know and I think that really tells you a lot about where her thinking was that she knew she had this moment to make this big statement and she was going to take that moment and was not at all thinking about the impact on her career and Nelson you you this uh you interviewed Sinead back up in 2021 for an NPR profile after her Memoir remembrance came out but what was it like when you met her back then why did you decide to write the book so I'd actually met her you know before the profile came out so my piece came out the day that her book came out um I had already been deep into this re-examination again of her music and her statements over the years and that happened I actually had seen a pair of videos by another artist Fiona Apple talking about Sinead O'Connor and it really got me thinking about this this rise that happened so quickly in this fall that happened so quickly and then as I started to sort of re-examine why that happened I realized that the deeper I got into learning about Sinead I was also learning about the culture so in the segment we talked about Joe Pesci appearing the following week and making that heinous statement but I also noticed that he didn't get booed he didn't get canceled what happened was the audience left and they applauded you know so for me the point wasn't just that Pesci was a misogynist the point was that the culture was a misogynist and that's why those lines landed the way that they did so the deeper I got into that I realized I wasn't just looking at schneid I was looking at the culture and looking at the culture I also had to think about my own relationship to that as a journalist so by the time I sat with Sinead for that interview I already had all that context in background I already knew there was much bigger story here than I could possibly do in a radio profile which realistically is roughly five minutes long I had been prepared to meet somebody who I wasn't even sure if she would show up you know there's been so much misreporting on Sinead O'Connor you know so much misreporting on her mental health yet has been used to discredit her that has been used to weaponize her I didn't know even if she would show up or what she would say what I encountered was a woman who was on time and on point and not evasive and very generous in in answering all the questions that I had and the biggest challenge in doing that piece was getting everything she told me into like the five minute frame that I had on the air so I knew there was a book and that's why I continued to stay with the story I wanted to bring Jamie Manson into this conversation president of Catholics for Choice Cardinal Bernard law of Boston said that her actions on SNL you know ripping up the Pope's picture were a gesture of hate and neo-anti Catholicism law would later resign for covering up abuse in the Catholic church and I wanted to read from the New York Times at the age of 14 Sinead O'Connor was sent to live at ingrianan training center in Dublin which was run by the order of Our Lady of Charity it had formerly been a Magdalene laundry a facility where a so-called Fallen woman might spend her entire life washing the dirty laundry of the surrounding Community can you tell us about this aspect of her life and who she was raised by and being in this laundry yeah I think Cardinal Law's statement is so interesting to call it an act of hate because what I think in fact it was is a a a story and an act of love and fear and I think that her love for the church was so profound that's what motivated her and I don't think you can um discount how scary it is to confront the church in a very public graphic way and what motivated that is I think exactly what she saw in those Magdalene laundries those were places of punishment for women I often like to say there were no Magdalene laundries for men they were for women and very often they were for young women who had got pregnant out of wedlock with absolutely no accountability of course for the boy who got them pregnant and so she saw the crushing misogyny uh of the church and and the sexual shame it created and and she understood as a prophet does you know they see what's happening in the present and they read those signs of the present and they understand that they're a profound future ramifications for this and it's so important to understand that the we don't even we don't even begin to know the extent of clergy sex abuse in the world and she could see that then and she knew that John John Paul II was the person who created those theologies who who developed those theologies uh that that created the the idea that abortion is murder and that women are can never be equal to men uh and the idea that children are are there for the sexual gratification of men you know the Catholic church is a profound radical patriarchy she understood that and she spoke about it at a time when no one was ready to hear it and and she risked everything to speak that truth and she could not not speak that truth no matter what what risk it took yet uh despite that uh that highly patriarchal institution uh sheep continued to maintain her Catholicism and her lifelong spiritual Quest how do you how do you reconcile that and also then her decision to convert to Islam I think she was on a profound spiritual journey I really relate to her as a girl I also felt deeply in love with the church and felt God was calling me to the priesthood and she in 1999 was ordained a Catholic priest uh by you know a a right of the Catholic church that had broken away and so for her it was all a journey she was in love with God and she thought that religion was the greatest enemy of God and I think that that was her vocation was trying to understand what God was calling her to in any given moment and that led her to all sorts of religious expression but it's this is at her core a love story I think with God and with the Holy Spirit and with Justice her sense of justice was profoundly formed by her faith and um I I hope that is an enduring part of her Legacy I wanted to go to uh more deeply into that conversion Allison McCabe um you have Sinead O'Connor an ally with the lgbtq communities uh you have her Marching for abortion rights long before abortion was legalized in Ireland um and then you have her converting to Islam and starting to use the name shahada sadaqat in 2018 alongside her name Sinead O'Connor she spoke out for Palestinian rights respecting the Palestinian Civil Society call for BDS boycott divestment and sanctions against Israel once saying on a human level nobody with any sanity including myself would have anything but Sympathy for the Palestinian plight there's not a sane person on Earth who in any way sanctions with the Israeli authorities are doing she said can you talk about that transition point in her life well we didn't discuss a reversion at length um but I would say this what I try to do was consider it in the context of you know many male musicians many of our counterparts including Bob Dylan you know the Beatles and others you know had also experienced uh religious uh Traditions other than the ones they were born into you know they also took spiritual Journeys that led them to different places and really uh it wasn't seen as as controversial as those that Sinead took so I just found that kind of interesting that once again we saw a sort of double standard there just as we saw a double standard where when she after the period of the 90s made music in all different kinds of genres right when male musicians do that genius you know when she does it it's considered like she can't decide she's veering unpredictably from genre to genre uh Allison I'd like to ask you when you were writing the book why Sinead O'Connor matters what most surprised you in terms of her life story that uh that you think of readers should know about I think that the early on the most surprising thing was that she continued long after she stopped making chart hits to make music and then the second thing that surprised me is how much that music was really part of this lifelong fight against Injustice that it was something that she never abandoned you know throughout all the various changes in her life you know who she married who she unmarried you know what religious tradition she was following all of these things people got kind of fixated on these non-stop sort of tabloid headlines that were just noise and I don't think that was accidental I think that noise was there because that that's what kind of like people that's sort of how the media sort of often responds to things is like let's go for the shocking thing let's go for the you know we call it clickbait now but even before that had a name and I think that was because what she was doing was really powerful and I think in some ways it was suppressed so I think for me what was surprising was the degree to which that happened not just accidentally but kind of understanding and looking at the ways that people covered her and her story after SNL you know and then what she was actually winding that up with what she was actually trying to do with her music during these various points and so for me you know I think that I've often heard her described as fearless and I wouldn't really say that I would say that she was afraid but what bravery is is about being afraid and doing it anyhow and doing it anyhow because it's worth it because we need to create a space where people can talk and people can listen and I think if we're able to talk and listen to each other that's how change gets done and if I could I just I'm thinking back now to one of her songs from 1994 which is a song called famine and in famine she talks about her experience connecting it to the experience of the Irish people and she says if there's ever going to be healing there has to be remembering then grieving so then there can be forgiving there has to be knowledge and understanding to me it's just such a profound reflection of what she was really all about I'm wondering Allison McCabe if you can talk about her solidarity way before to say the least the killing of George Floyd um with the black community around issues of police violence most famously her song black boys on mopeds about the 1983 death of the 21 year old black man Colin roach in police custody in London [Music] I was childish and you'll say it loud and told you they hated me they will hate you [Music] it's not the mythical roses [Music] home up police who killed black boys and I love my boy that's why I'm only such thing and you know even what she had in her shaved head the solidarity with Public Enemy and understanding who gets marginalized and who doesn't yeah her anti-racism was there from the start even before you're talking about the 89 Grammys but you know on her first tour in America which you know had was coinciding with the release of The Lion and the Cobra her first album in 87. you know she's seeking out and and putting spotlighting local rap and hip-hop artists on every date on those Tour on the tour so um one was I grew up in Philadelphia one was nearby and Trenton at a place called City Gardens her opening act was uh MC light it was roughly 16 years old at that time so that was something that she was committed to early on the 89 Grammys was her first Prime Time television appearance that you actually been on David Letterman but this was prime time again at a time when everybody was watching the Grammys and she was up for a best female rock vocalist female that category has sort of shifted a little bit but that would that was what it was called at that time and she was going to come on and perform her single mandinka but that year was the first year that the recording Academy was going to present an award for rap but they weren't going to televise that presentation citing limited air time she called BS on that okay because at that point where rap was record Executives you know and people who are sort of The Gatekeepers in the industry really saw rap as either dangerously subversive or a passing fad but it was something that was popular so popular they couldn't really ignore it you know at all and so they decided to again give the word but not televise the award in response some of the nominees boycott the ceremony she showed up to do the performance for you know again she's up for best female rock vocalists um and and decides that look I shaved my head because I didn't want you to pay attention to my appearance but you are paying attention to my appearance so let me then convey a message and she wore Public Enemies logo which Chucky has described as it's a black man in the crosshairs of a gun as the black man in America she wore that in the side of her hair she also wore her infant son's sleep suit tied around her waist because the record Executives told her not to care she became pregnant during the uh sort of the time that she was making that album with she was in a relationship with the uh or the drummer in her band and they pressured her to not have the child she decided to have the child and uh wore his sleep suit around her waist you know that was another middle finger in a way to the the recording industry you know and the pressures that they placed on women so it was like there were a lot of symbols going on that was also true during the SNL performance but for now let's go to this thing about what was happening at the Grammys you know she repeatedly called out MTV for censoring black artists by not playing music videos that black artists made and it wasn't just it wasn't just rapid hip-hop you know for a long time MTV wouldn't get behind for example Whitney Houston who was not a rap or hip-hop artist it wasn't until her music was at the top of the radio charts that they couldn't really ignore it anymore and they got behind Whitney Houston so Sinead was always calling this out when she accepted Awards when she sat with press she wasn't talking about promoting her album she was talking about these issues I think I want to put this in context to say she was an anti-racist but it isn't to say isn't it wonderful that this white woman was doing all this stuff it's to say how not wonderful it is that there weren't many other people also talking about this stuff at the same time okay because racism like homophobia and sexism and all kinds of Injustice there all everybody's problem and if we're not all talking about it that's a problem too a tweet from Chuck D last week rest in beats and power Sinead O'Connor who always brought the noise he said and then reading from one of the remembrances of her as her store Rose even higher so did the scrutiny when O'Connor withdrew from a 1990 appearance on Saturday Night Live after learning that the comedian Andrew Dice Clay was scheduled to host the Dice Man known for his misogynistic and homophobic routines performed a skit poking fun at the Bold check after O'Connor declined to have the national anthem played before a show at New Jersey's Garden State Arts Center Frank Sinatra said she must be one stupid broad and threatened to kick her ass the piece went on to say politicians organized protests against O'Connor DJs refused to play her records O'Connor was widely accused of censorship when it was she who was being censored she was also criticized for being anti-American and gray grateful for the success she had achieved still that fall she swept the MTV Video Music Awards with wins for best female music video and best post-modern music video and even bested Madonna for video of the year I was just reading from your article Allison McCabe that incredible history yeah I mean I was shocked myself you know so when I first read about all this this is why I came to the conclusion that this was you know a much bigger story than something I could tell in five minutes you know I'm not even sure that in my book I was able to tell it all but I tried you know I tried to do that to really honor honor what she was about you know at her core um and again it wasn't about the Tabloid stuff that's just that is noise you know it's really about this and remember that the the part you're talking about now happens before 1992 before SNL so she already has this resistance that's building I think she's aware of that resistance and I think that that also explains why after she had this huge album with I do not want what I haven't got in 1990 she followed in 92 with an album of show tunes and standards you know that's not really the move that one would make if they're thinking I want to you know maintain that commercial success at the top of the charts Jamie Manson it was not only around the issue of sexual abuse in the Catholic church but Sinead uh was out there decades before Ireland legalized abortion for abortion rights and Ally of the lgbtq community talk about how she was received among Catholics I think that she was received the way a prophet is always received they're not understood in their time and I'm just so interested to see all the people that are suddenly coming out and praising her because they're people that probably would not support her in the present moment and I think it's it's easy to praise her posthumously you know but at that time what she did was profoundly lonely and I have some personal experience at Catholics for choice we did a um an action at the Basilica in which we were projecting facts about abortion and the fact that so many Catholic women one in four abortion patients in the U.S has has an abortion and we have a church that refuses to acknowledge that um and and and and and continues to call abortion murder while women who are having abortions are sitting in their very pews and so what Sinead shows us is that she's a woman of profound hope she keeps speaking and keeps speaking and you know and and having conversations that are not welcome within the walls of the church but you have to keep speaking out whether it's about lgbtq rights whether it's about women's women's equality abortion rights these are all issues where the church has pervasive power globally and is causing profound harm and that harm continues to this moment and so it continues to be lonely to speak out about that and so I hope that she will energize her memory will energize people to to keep speaking out and to keep making these changes because the church again has the power that she understood that they have and finally Allison McCabe if you can talk about the death by Suicide of her son Shane and the effect it had on her clearly to the end of her life dealing with desperation and horror at what had taken her son I would just say that anybody who is a parent myself included I just can't imagine a a bigger loss than losing one's child under any circumstances you know I just feel that um I know they were very close um you know people have put up a lot of photographs Beyond just the physical resemblance they were very close and I think that I'd come to see her as such a survivor that even though she was dealing with this profound loss there was a part of me that you know really thought maybe she would I'm not going to say be okay but I'm going to say pull through the way she'd pulled through so many other hardships in her life and I I knew that she you know she had the music from The Outlander theme that had come out and she was making new music on an album and she had recently returned to the platform formerly known as Twitter and you know I I just thought maybe she was re-emerging into public life and I just you know that I think that was one of the reasons that I was so caught off guard you know to learn of her death but I just you know I don't really know what to say aside from you know I hope that she has found Shane and I hope that she has found peace

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Published: Tue Aug 01 2023