Not so sure about this Pope Benedict XVI dude. With him all the way on his "pop music is banal" pronouncement, which is loosely translated from his Liturgie und Kirchenmusik article from 1986. But then he goes and gives it the whole "rock music is the devil's work" thing.

For Benedict XVI, rock music (which I'm sure the man knows nothing about, but why let get that in the way of some sanctimonious finger-wagging when you're climbing the Vatican career ladder) is, and I quote, "the secularised variation" of an age- old type of religion in which man (not woman, evidently), uses music and drugs and alcohol to lower "the barrier of individuality and personality to liberate himself from the burden of consciousness . . . Music becomes ecstasy and amalgamation with the universe."

I presume the Pope is talking about dropping a tab of acid and listening to Jimi Hendrix, because it's only under these conditions that I've ever heard anybody talk about an "amalgamation with the universe".

Benedict XVI got quite specific in the Kirchenmusik article. Rock music was the "vehicle of anti- religion," he wrote, because of its rhythmic make-up. "Music which serves the adoration 'in spirit and truth' cannot be rhythmic ecstasy, sensual suggestion or stupefaction, subjective emotional bliss or superficial entertainment." Translation: No getting out of your head and swaying to the beat.

Oddly enough, Ratzinger's take on rock music is not radically different to how the Nazis viewed other forms of cultural expression as "degenerate art". He has a fellow ideological traveller in E Michael Jones, who wrote a most amazing book about rock music called Dionysos Rising: The Birth of Cultural Revolution Out of the Spirit of Music. Amazing, that is, if you like books by demented fundamentalist freaks.

Jones's central thesis is that the origins of rock music lie in dissonant 12-tone classical music and the "destructive philosophies" that encouraged the growth of that type of music. For Jones, the roots of cultural upheaval that culminated in the 1960s can be traced back to Wagner's revolt against classic rational ideas in musical composition. With a storyline that veers wildly from Schönberg to Mick Jagger, music and the manner in which it is composed and performed has profound sociocultural effects.

A disordered music thus leads to a disordered society. With their insidious syncopated rhythms, rock and jazz have replaced harmony and order with chaos and discord. For Jones, rock and jazz are responsible for the evils of free love and the civil rights movement: "The civil rights movement was nothing more than the culmination of an attempt to transform the Negro into a paradigm of sexual liberation that had been the pet project of the cultural revolutionaries since the 20s."

You were sort of waiting for

the bit where he got to "Them" - those responsible for the dissolution of the civil and moral order. Here, it's the "cultural revolutionaries", a handy catch-all phrase which obviates the need to finger any particular grouping.

To put some form of respectable historical veneer on this bollocks, you get quotes from Plato: "When modes of music change, the fundamental laws of the state change with them." Which is all very well, but to the best of my knowledge, there weren't any Slipknots or Marilyn Mansons in Plato's day.

This is great. When classical music was the vibe of the day, there was peace, order and harmony. But when rock and jazz and their subversive syncopated rhythms came along, we got women's lib and civil rights. Not so sure where that groovy folk mass fits in here: don't remember the banging of a tambourine being a big feature of classical music.

For Jones, like Benedict XVI, there is something inherently disordered in the form of rock music. To apply the old joke: there should be if it's done properly. Come on, Pope guy, it's only rock'n'roll. Free your mind - and see what follows.