IS BOB DYLAN A CATHOLIC?

The clear Catholic overtones in Bob Dylan’s most recent work suggest he may have joined the Church

Ever since his debut as a young musician, Bob Dylan has been appropriated by various movements. His dislike for being pigeonholed is evident. When, for example, he was asked what he thought about guns in America, he defiantly said “I don’t think there are enough guns”. Does he believe that? Who knows. Probably not, but Dylan can’t be limited or defined. Yet, the impulse to put a label on him has been his cross. 

On Saturday 5th November I travelled to Bournemouth to see the acclaimed artist live. This was the first time I had ever seen him and could very well have been the last since he is now 81 years old. But his music and oeuvre has accompanied me throughout my life. As a child, we sang his songs in the assembly at my international school in Stockholm, Sweden. While living in Toronto as a student in seminary, Spotify notified me that I had listened to over 150 hours of his music on their platform. That’s not even counting every Sunday afternoon when I would listen to old vinyl records in a common room for at least an hour.

The concert was magical. Reviews have lauded the “Never Ending Tour” on which he has embarked and which brought him to these isles for the past month. He sold out every concert from what I can gather, and he has been accompanied by a superb band allowing him to stretch his newfound sound to its limits. Despite this, people have been critical on social media, echoing the harsh words directed at him when he visited the UK in 1966 and was met with cries of “Judas”. It seems that people still expect something from Dylan, namely to conform to their idea of Dylan. But even his name is an act, having taken it on instead of his birth name Robert Zimmerman. 

Combined with lights, acoustic and electric tunes, old and new music, fast and slow, the show showcased the consummate artist that Dylan truly is. He refuses to settle for one genre, one tone of voice. He has been shapeshifting since he began, and every show is a perfect work of art in and of itself. That is why he forbids cameras and phones at his shows, a concept which is lost on the modern audience who are more concerned with a photo proving their dwarfish presence in the face of a titan of history. 

Dylan cannot be appropriated, and yet what I am about to write might seem exactly like an appropriation. The concert indicated to me that Bob Dylan may now be a Roman Catholic. He has certainly thought about the Church. Speaking to The Rolling Stone Magazine in 2012 about his career and near-fatal motorcycle accident, Dylan said “Transfiguration: You can go and learn about it from the Catholic Church, you can learn about it in some old mystical books, but it’s a real concept.” 

In Bournemouth, almost every song on the setlist contained some reference to Catholicism: Rome, Jerome, St Peter, Holy Grail, Catholic Church, the Apocalypse, St John, and the Lord Himself. He speaks about the saints and the Church in a way that only someone who is intimately acquainted with the Church could. In this case, it might not be a case of appropriating Dylan for a cause, but Bob Dylan appropriating a tradition to which he has become evermore intimate in his lyrics.

No doubt Dylan would deny this if pressed on the matter. And no doubt people would be incensed by the suggestion. Pope Benedict XVI was outraged by Dylan’s presence and concert in front of the then Pope John Paul II, saying Dylan was a “false prophet”. People have indeed given the artist that title, but it is one he has always shunned. Comically – and perhaps pointedly, knowing his work – Dylan’s latest album includes a song called “False Prophet” where he states that he is no such thing and claims to “search the world over / For the Holy Grail.” 

At the concert last week, Dylan’s rasping voice proclaimed “I Contain Multitudes”, a song from his latest album with a title that quotes the American poet Walt Whitman. Given his characteristic ambiguity, he may never reveal if Catholicism is a part of his inner life. But I have a prediction: in 2004 Dylan published his autobiography Chronicles: Volume One. Volume Two is yet to appear. I think it’ll come out posthumously, and in it, we will find these, or similar, words: “I became a Roman Catholic”.