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As much as religion brings people together, history continues to reflect its power to divide, even in the tertiary realm of entertainment. And so radical pop songbird Sinead O'Connor learned following her Oct. 3, 1992, Saturday Night Live performance, when she tremulously ripped up a photo of Pope John Paul II, challenging viewers to ''fight the real enemy!''
Still riding the success of ''Nothing Compares 2 U,'' the Irish singer, then 25, should have foreseen the cooling effects of such an incendiary act. John Lennon's comment that the Beatles were ''more popular than Jesus'' enraged many in 1966, and Madonna caught hell for sporting stigmata in the 1989 video for ''Like a Prayer.''
The Catholic-raised O'Connor had a reputation for being provocative by the time her second album, 1990's I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got, made her a star. Within the next year, she boycotted the Grammys and had even refused to let ''The Star-Spangled Banner'' play before a New Jersey concert.
Even so, SNL producers had no idea what she'd do with their pulpit. In rehearsal, she held up a child's photo after singing Bob Marley's ''War,'' but on the live show she tore up the Pope -- and viewers tore into NBC with a record 5,459 letters and calls (731 of them pro-O'Connor).
She quickly addressed her actions in the press, saying ''priests have been beating the s -- - out of children for years and sexually abusing them.'' The Vatican had no response (and her charges no longer seem so shocking in light of the recent sex scandals). However, music lovers spoke loud and clear: A confrontational audience at a Bob Dylan tribute concert two weeks later all but booed her off the stage.
SNL has since replaced her papal protest with her taped rehearsal for reruns. ''The incident still ranks high on the list of the cast and crews' least favorite subjects,'' attests Tom Shales, coauthor of Live From New York: An Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live. O'Connor, now a priest in the Latin Tridentine Church, unrecognized by the Vatican, has apologized for her method but stood by her message. Less steadfast have been fans. O'Connor (who will release a new album, Sean-Nos Nua, on Oct. 8) has never regained her pre-SNL success. ''Sinead's always embodied spiritual conflict,'' notes Ann Powers, former New York Times pop critic and senior curator at Seattle's Experience Music Project. ''But America's puritanical feelings about rock 'n' roll -- that it's also the place where sex lives -- mean when musicians get into spiritual stuff, it's just hard for Americans to deal with.''
