Hozier and the Catholic church

Reading that Irish musician Hozier performed his song, Take Me to Church at the Grammy Awards. I like him and had a post on him and this song about a year ago here. Here's a Grammy Pro interview with him in which he mentions what some of what he dislikes about the Catholic church: gender inequality, homophobia, original sin, etc. ...



And here's a bit from a more in depth interview from New York Magazine ...

"Take Me to Church" is a critique of oppressive institutions, with a woman or female pronoun used as a sort of savior.

"Take Me to Church" is essentially about sex, but it's a tongue-in-cheek attack at organizations that would … well, it's about sex and it's about humanity, and obviously sex and humanity are incredibly tied. Sexuality, and sexual orientation — regardless of orientation — is just natural. An act of sex is one of the most human things. But an organization like the church, say, through its doctrine, would undermine humanity by successfully teaching shame about sexual orientation — that it is sinful, or that it offends God. The song is about asserting yourself and reclaiming your humanity through an act of love. Turning your back on the theoretical thing, something that's not tangible, and choosing to worship or love something that is tangible and real — something that can be experienced.

But it's not an attack on faith. Coming from Ireland, obviously, there's a bit of a cultural hangover from the influence of the church. You've got a lot of people walking around with a heavy weight in their hearts and a disappointment, and that shit carries from generation to generation. So the song is just about that — it's an assertion of self, reclaiming humanity back for something that is the most natural and worthwhile. Electing, in this case a female, to choose a love who is worth loving.

The video parallels that — it's a statement against state oppression and homophobia in Russia.

Absolutely, yes. It references the very organized attacks against LGBT youths that are carried out with impunity, without action from law enforcement. There are a lot of far-right guys who film these attacks. Because the song was always about sexuality and about organizations that would undermine humanity at its most natural, we thought that — in Ireland, the church doesn't really have that kind of strength that it did, but there will always be organizations that will, and there will always be organizations that try. Hopefully there won't be one day, but there are, and this is a pure example of that.

It's people carrying out terrible acts through the justification of far-right traditionalism, and also a long campaign to make homosexuality equivalent with things like pedophilia and bestiality, which is absolutely appalling. So that's what we wanted to show. The video wasn't overexaggerating anything. We just wanted to tell it how it is.

In case you haven't seen the Take Me to Church video mentioned in the interview ...