Bad Religion: Sinéad O’Connor’s Incomparable Courage

After a tarring and feathering for the ages, this world owes an apology to the girl who cried wolf on the Catholic Church. Not that she needs it.

Bad Religion explores the relationship between music and spirituality, from Christianity and Islam to the paranormal and the occult.

Written by Felix Kalvesmaki

Let’s get one thing straight from the jump: Sinéad O’Connor was right. She lost her shot at a popular music career at the exact moment it should have exploded: during an October 1992 episode of "Saturday Night Live." You may know the Irish singer-songwriter from her smash hit “Nothing Compares 2 U,” a Prince song O’Connor gave her own treatment, complete with an iconic video in which she sheds a few graceful tears.

But on this particular evening, O’Connor didn’t play the song she’s most commonly associated with. Instead, she covered Bob Marley’s “War,” editing it lyrically to tackle child abuse as opposed to the racism the Rastafarian originally sang about. In particular, O'Connor took aim at the Catholic Church, ripping a photo of then-Pope John Paul II to shreds as she sung her final words. She punctuated her performance with defiance: “fight the real enemy.”

The world met O’Connor’s omen with an immediate and steadfast fury. And wouldn’t you know it? Ten years later, a report by the Boston Globe led to the arrest of five priests who had been abusing children under the protection of an “open secret” — stories often rumored, but never brought to light. There doesn’t seem to be a particular incident in the news that inspired O’Connor’s rallying cry, but one article notes that the Dutch scholar Erasmus reported way back in the 16th century that faithful Catholics “often fall into the hands of priests who, under the pretense of confession, commit acts which are not fit to be mentioned.” The notion that priests took advantage of their believers wasn’t unprecedented nor unwarranted, it was more unbelievable in the eyes of the community surrounding. So when O’Connor put this well-kept secret on blast, people weren’t kind. This, unfortunately, falls in line with the way sexual misconduct has played out historically, and why the Globe’s reporting and the recent #MeToo movement matters so damn much.

And with that, of course, comes the changing of tides. In the near two decades since, the world has come around a bit on O’Connor: Glance at the comments section in an upload of her performance, and you’ll see a number of users claiming “people owe her an apology.” But in the ‘90s, the public was fuming. O’Connor became an oft-parodied figure in popular culture. Even the likes of Madonna took the piss with her own stunt on SNL, where she destroyed a photo of Long Island body shop owner Joey Buttafuoco, who became a tabloid story after the underage girl with whom he was having an affair shot his wife in the face. Madonna quoted O’Connor’s “fight the real enemy” line after she did so.

Which is ironic, isn’t it? Madonna in the ‘90s is not a figure to revile, but this was undeniably a really shitty choice. Alongside suffering at the hands of Prince, who O’Connor later claimed berated, assaulted, and stalked her, another titan of the industry — a feminist icon at that — could not resist the chance to further humiliate another woman. And Madonna, of anyone, should understand how it feels to have one's religion turned on them. Funnily enough, the Vatican condemned her after she released her “Like A Prayer” video a few years earlier. O’Connor pointed out Madonna’s status as a role model for women, and pointed out the irony in a feminist icon of her time saying O'Connor "look(ed) like I had a run in with a lawnmower and that I was about as sexy as a Venetian blind.” It’s brutal, and O’Connor felt that sting alongside every other horrible thing America threw at her, for years. And she has a pretty good point.

What makes all of this rich is that a lot of it happened as an impulsive lunge to defend the Church from a woman raised in it. Madonna invoked her Catholic background while she attempted to make a fool of O’Connor. But “fight the real enemy” wasn’t an attack on religion itself. Decades later, O’Connor would still go on record as a Christian: she was even ordained as a priest of the Irish Orthodox Catholic and Apostolic Church, which is an offshoot not affiliated with the official Catholic Church. O’Connor said in one 2014 interview that she performed what some considered an act of sacrilege not in spite of God, but in service of God. With no regrets, she went on to say she had a “very, very strong relationship with the Holy Spirit,” which the Church bestowed upon her. But she felt that the intense sort of relationship she had with the Spirit required standing up for her beliefs regardless of material consequence.

In 2018, she reverted to Islam, and began using the name Shuhada’ Sadaqat. Reverted, as a note, refers to how O’Connor and others who practice Islam attest they’ve been Muslim their entire lives, and simply had to discover it. O’Connor said she spent time studying scripture and the holy texts of different religions in an attempt to find out who was “correct,” leaving Islam for last. Two chapters in, she felt she was home. (She still goes by Sinéad O’Connor professionally, however.) By all accounts, this is not an anti-theistic takedown of all religious belief, nor even Catholicism’s ideologies. O’Connor’s salient premonition was instead an attack on the institution that put children in harm’s way (or at least did nothing to protect them).

As for why she targeted the Pope specifically, a recent profile in the New York Times reveals that “O’Connor’s statement on SNL was more personal than most knew.” She details how her mother physically abused her throughout her childhood. The day her mother passed away, she took down the one photograph on her mom’s bedroom wall: an image of the pope. O’Connor carefully saved the photo, waiting for the right moment to destroy it.

She captured that moment on camera, in front of a planet. A planet whose people, in response, attempted to tear her apart just as she did that photo. And they owe her a goddamn apology. But these days, it doesn’t bother O’Connor much. In the same New York Times interview, O'Connor said her actions during the SNL performance felt freeing. “I’m not a pop star,” she said. “I’m just a troubled soul who needs to scream into mikes now and then.”