Imagine

Catholic writer Mark Shea has taken John Lennon's song "Imagine" to the woodshed:

How does it honor the dead to “Imagine there's no heaven”? How does it honor the firefighters who sacrificed their lives to mewl about “Nothing to…die for”? Indeed, it is sung by earnest churchgoers, even at Catholic Masses, who seem to perceive no particular contradiction between the liberating wonder of imagining there's no Heaven and the prayer which begins “Our Father who art in heaven.” It seems to be because the words of the song are more or less treated as sonorous replacements for singing “La La” to its pleasant tune.

Me, I pay attention to words. That is why I have always thought of it as a sort of anthem to Original Sin — fallen man's infinite capacity to believe he can create Heaven on earth if he's just permitted one more chance to get it right. Everything the song advocates and hopes for as a supreme good was the fountainhead of all the horrors of the 20th century. Imagine there's no countries? Hitler dreamt of a world without borders. Imagine there's no heaven? No religion too? Stalin and Mao sought to free us from religion and the burden of hoping for something more than this life. Imagine no possessions? Communism was all about freeing us from possessions (though multi-zillionaire Lennon seems to have honored this dream more in the breach than the observance). Imagine all the people living for today? You got it! A culture of brain-dead MTV-educated “fornicate-today-and-abort-tomorrow” zombies has accomplished the mission.

http://catholicexchange.com/2006/09/27/94446/