Singer-songwriter Jimmy Buffett, who popularized beach bum soft rock with the escapist Caribbean-flavored song “Margaritaville” and turned that celebration of loafing into a billion-dollar empire of restaurants, resorts and frozen concoctions, has died. He was 76.
In the process of that famous song he showed a better grasp of responsibility than many
“church people,” as I pointed out in Jimmy Buffett and the Miserable Offenders of the Book of Common Prayer, where I referenced an earlier post about the same subject in the Novus Ordo Missae:
As far as the sins are concerned, the Roman Catholic Church’s (the Jesuits of Pascal’s days notwithstanding) emphasis on the seriousness of our sins is well founded, and anyone with a Biblical understanding of the subject should know this. Even some whose Biblical understanding falls short know this too. In the same 1970’s when the “old” NOM translation was current in Catholic Churches, Jimmy Buffett, wasting away in Margaritaville, knew all too well whose fault it was. His lyrics, although liturgically inappropriate, were in their own way closer to the NOM Latin original than what was recited every Sunday.
One of these days we’re going to face reality on whose fault our sins really are. Miserable offenders who know it’s our fault, our most grievous fault just might blurt out Buffett’s admission. And, as someone who came of age just up U.S. 1 and A1A from “Margaritaville,” it wouldn’t be very nice but it would be truthful and refreshing.
Memory eternal.
Positive Infinity 