Many readers of this blog have sent me reports about Cesare Bonizzi, a Capuchin monk who fronts an Italian rock band named “Fratello Metallo” (“Brother Metal”), and I cannot stop being engaged and entertained. It looks like their music confounds distinctions between “secular rock” and “Christian rock.”

Bonizzi performs with a full complement of metal musicians, plays secular venues (like the 2008 “Gods of Metal” festival in Italy), submits to rock vocalist power gestures, wears the habit, and writes songs that discuss “sex, alcohol, God, life, and tobacco.” He’s also over sixty with a downright Mosaic white beard. I think that makes the score Benedictines: 1 (Notker Wolf), Franciscans: 1 (Cesare Bonizzi), in the unlikeliest battle of the bands.

But more important is Bonizzi’s theology (the kind, anyway, articulated in his commentary on his music), which strikes me as hitting the right notes for a “world come of age” (Bonhoeffer). In the report from Reuters (see embedded video above), Bonizzi is quoted as saying:

“I am religious and I am a priest. I believe in it and I put my whole life into it. But I don’t play to draw people closer to Christ, to the church, or to religion. I do it to convert people to life, to understand life, to grab hold of life, to savor life, to experience life and enjoy it, full stop.”

Rarely has a crucial aspect of a theological mission in rock been more exquisitely expressed. Now it would be interesting to see how playing rock works reflexively on his understanding of what it is he believes in and puts his whole life into.

And you better believe he is going to throw the horns while saying he loves you. (See under “Music” here.)

Tom Beaudoin

New York City