[The "Musical Talmud" is our ongoing series that finds the true meaning behind pop music lyrics.]

Christmas Talmud? Oy vey. That’s our awkward way of wishing you a Happy Overthinking It Holiday Season. Let’s take a deeper look at John Lennon’s protest/ Christmas song, “Happy Xmas (War Is Over).” Since the meaning behind this song is already well known–it’s a protest against the Vietnam War–I’m going to use this as an opportunity to examine this song as an example of “earony.”

It took the Vatican 522 years to admit “mea culpa” on the Spanish Inquisition, and 359 years to come around to admitting Galileo was right about the whole Sun and Earth thing. However, it looks like the Church has tightened up its “oops, we’re an ancient bureaucracy and take forever to admit we were wrong” process by forgiving John Lennon only 42 years after his “more popular than Jesus” comment sparked outrage among Christians.

Lennon’s absolution should give hope to other pop culture icons that have been on the receiving end of the Church’s wrath in recent years, including Sinead O’Connor (tore up picture of the Pope on SNL) and Dan Brown (author of The Da Vinci Code).

But let’s stop and Overthink ™ this for a second. Why does the Catholic Church repeatedly get itself into trouble by issuing official condemnations on pop culture? Is the Church just digging itself deeper and deeper into a hole of cultural irrelevance?

Make the sign of the cross and genuflect before reading on.