JUST A REMINDER . . .

I am so accustomed to being an atheist that I have to remind myself – and right now I feel I should remind you, my readers – just how significant it is that the atheist I now am was once a PRIEST, someone who several times a week performed, for example, what this present series of posts is attacking and ridiculing : Preaching.  This blog is not just theoretical, intellectual stuff, academic, journalistic or even bar-room talk of an outsider about the weird beliefs and practices of the Church.  Half a life ago I made a massive, life-changing decision to abandon not only the priesthood but the Church and even belief in God.  I claim to know my subject better than most.  I know what I’m talking about.

I have two classmates from my Marist Brothers High School who, like me, became priests (but never did post-graduate, doctoral studies in Theology in Paris as I did ) and later returned to secular life.  One, like many ex-priests, has remained a believer and even a practising lay Catholic.  The other is a more unusual case.  Though he left the diocesan priesthood, today, decades later, he still considers himself a “sacerdos in aeternum”, “a priest forever”, who actually expects people to call him “Father” !  For me, the break was complete, with not only rejection of the priesthood – preaching, hearing confessions, celebrating Mass and the rest (including being called “Father”, except by my children !), but the espousing of militant atheism condemning not only the Catholic faith but any belief in God, along with pie in the sky when we die.

What you read here is not your common or garden, amateur variety of atheism, but a professional theologian’s recognition and renunciation of religions’ absurdity.  This blog may not be the world’s most brilliant or most insightful expression of why religion is irrational and ridiculous (“Ridenda Religio”), the fruit of wishful thinking, fear and credulity.  But it is exceptional, a rare phenomenon in the blogosphere.

I thought it might be useful, appropriate and timely to recall who and what I was, to readers who may underestimate the sea-change that was my “conversion” (the biblical word in Greek is “koinonia”) from Priest-Preacher-Professor of Theology to the hard-hitting atheist blog-author I have become.

I’m conscious of the fact that the above might sound like blowing my own trumpet.  It’s meant to be just a “Lest We Forget”.

RIDENDA      RELIGIO

GOD T. V.

Before we plunge into today’s blogpost, a brief reflection on our current coronavirus crisis.

It  W A S  a “wonderful world” – more than we realized – when Satchmo sang the song in the present tense.  But though we are now facing what looks like becoming apocalyptic chaos, if not the end of the world as we knew it, the 20th century was not exactly Heaven on Earth.  Small comfort perhaps.  But we tend to forget history’s principal lesson : “Ab esse ad posse” (“From what has happened in the past, we can deduce what could happen in the future”).  The adage works both ways, of course.  Dropping atomic bombs on cities is no longer unthinkable, nor are World Wars.  But we are programed, as a species at least, to attempt to survive.  Covid-19 might yet prove not to be the ultimate Grim Reaper of mankind.  “Hope springs eternal”.  Most of us  have never read Alexander Pope’s “An Essay on Man” (1734) but we all know its most famous quotation.  Is social distancing beginning to flatten the  curve ?  Will the vaccine prove that Pope (not THE Pope) was right ?

Today we begin a short series of posts on PREACHING, which – after Catholic schools and Protestant Sunday schools – is Christianity’s principal vehicle for evangelization, what it calls the spreading of the “Good News”, the “God-spel”, the Gospel.

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Americans are accustomed to televangelists.  Senior Europeans are more familiar with telecasts of “Crusades” by Billy Graham years ago, or with papal spectaculars, complete with Popemobile, in the recent past.  But even in Europe, if you want non-stop televangelism, tune into “God TV”.  An aging, totally uncharismatic preacher, whose sermons are punctuated with unconvincing, unenthusiastic “Alleluia”s and “Praise the Lord”s, is the central attraction (?) in this U.S. T.V. station’s program dedicated entirely to the Deity.  Fortunately for God TV, there are also younger men and women preachers, dynamic performers, who captivate their audience.  The show includes not a little Bible-bashing, but also testimony, interviews, song, fervor and faith-filled disciples, as well as the hawking of books, tapes and DVDs.  But it is not a patch on the old Oral Roberts’ extravaganzas of the sixties and seventies.  The preacher with the predestined first name had come a long way since the days of his tent revivals.  Now he had created in Tulsa, Oklahoma, a complex of futuristic buildings constituting his University, called, of course, ORU, “Oral Roberts University”, renowned not only for its sports teams and its itinerant choir, but also for the quality of many of its academic programs, including a highly respected department of Musicology.  State-of-the-art electronic pedagogical tools were at the disposition of the students.  Their President was not only founder of ORU but also President of the Tulsa Chamber of Commerce.  His multi-million dollar religious empire, supported by donations from around the world, reached into the homes of millions, as his successors’ and confreres’ telecasts do today.  One has to admire the ingenuity, the showmanship and sometimes the professionalism of the televangelists.  Roberts, who continued to “cure” the sick by the laying on of hands, could now invite his followers to touch the screen and find health and redemption (the reward for their “seed-money” … ) without leaving their living-room.

“Marjo” – not to be confused with the Quebec singer you’ll find when you  google – was an American child baptized by his preacher-parents “Mary-Joseph”.  He grew up as a child-preacher and minister in the fifties and sixties, and continued into adulthood to become a highly successful, and wealthy, revivalist.  Still a young man, he organized a final tent-tour which he had filmed.  He used the film later to expose his own fraud and the hypocrisy of such religious scams.

But the show must, and will, go on.  There will always be a market for God on T.V. , thanks to God TV and its ilk.  If Anyone were listening, I would pray “Libera nos, Domine”, “Liberate us, O Lord”.

RIDENDA      RELIGIO

HAIL MARY PASSES

( Back to our series on PRAYER, of which this is the . . . last post.  It could very well be MY Last Post, but so far I have none of the feared symptoms of Covid-19.  Here in France, my adopted country for nigh on half a century,  I am enjoying  –  all alone (not unusual for me)  –  a gorgeous Sunday, cool but sun-drenched, as we adjust our watches to Summertime (when the livin’ may not be exactly easy).  “Spring forward, Fall back” is the way Americans say it, but the rest of us don’t mind their replacing “Autumn” with the less poetic but more descriptive “Fall”.  Anyhow I’m jumping one day ahead with the Monday Morsel, as I know that some of you are still reeling after reading my “Too Young to die”, and want desperately to change the subject.

You may know that I’m 83.  I had planned on living till 128, having decided as much in my rewriting of Paul McCartney’s “When I’m 64”, nineteen years ago : “64 more”, I promised myself.  I have long since revised that to four score and ten.  But with thousands of virus-victims already, and perhaps millions in the near future, I’m right now even less ambitious.  “Que serà, serà”, I quoted, to the scandal of some.  If this turns out, in fact, to be my Last Post, I reckon it’s not a bad choice.  I hope you agree.)

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For those uninitiated into the arcana of gridiron (American football), a HMP is a last-minute attempt by a losing team to score a goal by throwing a long pass to a point near the adversary’s end-zone, with the vague hope that a team-member will catch it and thereby win the match.

When there is nowhere else to go, even tepid, half-hearted believers fall on their knees and hope that God is listening and disposed to get them out of the mess they are in, even if it takes a miracle.  Of course, if perchance (literally) the ploy is successful, faith is reinforced.  If it doesn’t, hard cheese.  At best the reaction might be that “God works in mysterious ways”, that His refusal is no doubt for our own good.  At worst (or perhaps at best ?), the believer no longer believes.  Christ did say “Ask and you shall receive”.  Sometimes, however, often, more often than not, it just does not happen.

No wonder.  Because God does not exist.  Hail Mary passes sometimes work.  Some people do win the Lottery.  Some people do survive accidents.  Some people do get cured.  Sometimes there is a player who reaches the end-zone just in time.  Some people do seem to get what they pray for.  But I wouldn’t bet on it.  On the other hand, what have we got to lose ?  That’s exactly what Blaise Pascal thought about belief in God.  You might just as well bet that God exists.  If He does, you’ve got it made.  If He doesn’t, what have you lost ?  I prefer intellectual honesty and the recognition that wishful thinking and hedging your bets about an “afterlife” are unworthy of beings whom Evolution has gifted with intelligence.

RIDENDA      RELIGIO

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OK.  That’s all we need to say about why praying is the most extreme example of brain-dead credulity ever practised by Homo Sapiens.  If you want a one-liner to sum up all you need to know about prayer, here’s my (once again) last word on the subject :  “You might just as well talk to a tree.  Some wackos do.”

You read all that here.  It’s never been said anywhere before, ever !  I am a River to my Readers.

P.S.   Netflix’s “Anne with an ‘e’ ” calls herself “Princess Cordelia” but also “She who speaks with trees”.  She was not wacko, just a gifted weirdo with the wisest words a tree ever heard.

T O O Y O U N G T O D I E

(This is an exceptional interruption in our series on Prayer, Coronavirus oblige.)

If I were your age – I’m more or less 60 years older than my millennial readers – I think I know what my reaction would be to some old geezer giving me advice about how to accept the historic, unique crisis facing all of us in this year 2020.  I might or might not be polite about it, but I’m sure I would be thinking : “It’s all right for octogenarians like you to be resigned to your already imminent death, but we are teenagers or young adults in our 20s or 30s !  How are we supposed to accept a possible death sentence in the prime of our lives ?”.

You would be dead right to react like that.  No amount of words, however eloquent and reassuring, can cut the mustard, sweeten the bitter pill of injustice, or get you to accept a stacked deck in a game you can’t win.  I want indeed to reassure you – not by trying to get you to look on the “bright side” of this catastrophe (there isn’t any) – but to face and hopefully accept the present reality with calm and clairvoyance.  Quite a challenge.  I’ve faced and overcome some difficult challenges in my life but I’m not at all sure I can succeed with this one.  But it would be ignoble – yes, below my sense of dignity, justice and indebtedness – for me not to try.  I’ve had an undeservedly lucky, long life, and it has taught me a few things that might help you through what may be a tragically premature End-Time for you and your loved ones.

We’re talking about death.  Not just the death to which we are all condemned (“four score and ten” if we are,  like myself, lucky), but the death of young people like yourselves, thought up till very recently to be immunized against the virus.  It just ain’t fair.  Parents have often – in the past more often than at present – had to face the death of their children.  Parents in modern times have always found it intolerable to see their children die before them.  But now thousands, if not – in a worst case scenario – millions of the younger generation are predicted to die before their time.  Why ?

Religions pretend to have an answer to that question, which to atheists is a laughable, pathetic example of believers’ wishful thinking and blind credulity.  If you find solace in “God’s mysterious ways” and “Ours not to reason why”, fine.  You can stop reading this right now.

The fact is we are part of a natural world that we have only in recent centuries begun to understand.  We don’t know – our most brilliant scientists don’t know – where this new, vicious virus came from and precisely how it functions (let alone why !).  We have succeeded in eradicating certain formerly fatal diseases and in producing vaccines for other viruses.  We will continue to hope that we will rapidly dispose of such a vaccine for Covid-19, but we also continue to witness daily the mounting numbers of people worldwide dying from it.  Will you be among the lucky ones or be part of such horrifying statistics ?

We will take the precautions we can, but know that “whatever will be, will be”, “que serà, serà”.  Scarcely a consolation.  But better to recognize the . . . inconvenient truth rather than deny it.  Think of the good times which life, however short, has gven you – and try to think of its possible, premature ending as a whim of blind Nature.  Meantime remember what Horace, the Latin poet, wrote : “Carpe diem, et quam minimum credere postero” : “Seize today – and count on tomorrow as little as possible”.

Frank O’Meara

March 25, 2020

R I D E N D A       R E L I G I O

CATHOLIC LITURGY : FAITH REINFORCED BY SPECTACLE

The Catholic Church has become a unique impressario of religious spectacle.  Jews, Muslims, Buddhists and Protestants cannot compete with a Pontifical High Mass in the Vatican, or even on the beach of Copacabana or in an Australian race-course (during World Youth Days, 2008).  A parish Sunday Mass can itself be (excepting, perhaps, the sermon) a thing of beauty if not a joy forever.  Protestants and even Anglicans made the mistake of replacing the splendor and beauty of priests’ chasubles, copes and lace (effeminate) surplices with drab, austere vestments for their clergy.  (My own multi-medallioned lace alb took months for my mother to crochet; it was the most ornate of those of all the ordinands at my Ordination).  Some Protestant churches in the Southern U.S. dress up their choir-members in extravagant robes, but in spite of the a-hootin’ and a-howlin’ and a-hollerin’ and their Pentecostal gyrations (think of the James Brown church service and the conversion of Jake in the movie “The Blues Brothers”), the spectacle is no match for the quiet dignity, the exquisite taste in music and ritual, that is the mark of Catholic (and Orthodox) liturgy.

With or without  incense (revealed recently to be a possible cause of cancer), a Catholic Mass, baptism, wedding or funeral (and formerly Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament), has always been a powerful reinforcement of faith.  Their incantations, litanies, invariable prayers and repetitious readings from Scripture somehow continue to captivate congregations, which have tired of the innovations of the sixties with their folksy guitars and the marshmallow music in vogue at the time, in pitiful replacement of Gregorian Chant and traditional hymns.

The problem, of course, is that fewer and fewer people go to Mass.  Pretty soon, in many countries, priests will hang up their magnificent, lavish chasubles and stoles and copes for the last time.  The old folks who make up today’s dwindling congregations will soon have passed away (perhaps with the help of Covid-19 … ).  Catholic liturgy, however, has a solid future ahead of it.  The “Missa de Angelis”, the “Te Deum”, “Dies Irae”, “Panis Angelicus”, “Ave Regina” and the splendor of the Holy Week ceremonies will continue to attract believers, at least in Poland and the Basque Country, as well as in South-East Asia and South America, and reinforce their faith.  The liturgy’s force is in the feeling it creates.  And feeling is so much more powerful than thought and reason.  Religion is, by definition, irrational.

RIDENDA      RELIGIO

“COMIN ‘ IN ON A WING AND A PRAYER “

As kids during and after World War Two, we were moved by patriotic songs like this one, celebrating the heroism of the Royal Air Force and the Royal Australian Air Force, the British and Aussie airmen who fought in Europe and the Pacific.  “We’ve a full crew aboard but we trust in the Lord, Comin’ in on a wing and a prayer”.  Yes, they had “really hit their target for tonight”.  So they “sing as they wing through the air”, trusting God to get them back safely to base, albeit with just one wing intact.

We knew that God was on our side, but our enemies at the time also proclaimed “Gott mit uns”.  Impregnated with religious convictions, we all found it normal to pray that God would protect His own.  We never wondered why it was necessary to ask Him to do the obvious (nor could we imagine what German chaplains, Catholic priests and Lutheran ministers, could possibly offer as divine solace to soldiers of the Third Reich).

We never questioned why some Spitfire and Flying Fortress crews made it home, while others ended up destroyed by flak or drowned in the Channel.  God’s mysterious ways.  Some get saved, some don’t.  Ours not to reason why.  He’s got the whole world in His hands.  Et cetera.

Once again we must repeat (not “ad nauseam”, we trust) that “God” had nothing to do with all this back then, anymore than He has now as we combat Covid-19, an enemy far more powerful and insidious than Goering’s Luftwaffe.  We shall, as we did then, overcome – and presumably, as we did then, thank God for answering our prayers.

RIDENDA      RELIGIO

TOUCH – DOWN ? KNEEL DOWN !

For most of us, who have never played the game, American football is a mystery almost equalling that of the Trinity or the Virgin Birth.  The delicate dancing of the quarter-back before passing the ball into the hands of a team-mate – with amazing accuracy on his part and miraculous anticipation on the part of the receiver – is rivalled by the antics of the latter, if he succeeds in reaching the end-zone, for a “touch-down”.  In this game of “football”, where feet rarely touch the ball, and which seems to consist essentially in bulldozing the other burly astronauts on the opposing side, and throwing – not kicking – the ball, there is no necessity, apparently, as in Rugby, to actually touch the ball to the ground to score.  (Curiously, in Rugby, it is not called a “touch-down” but a “try”; why ?).  But in the U.S. game, if the receiver, after a successful catch and retention of the ball, gets into the Holy of Holies, the End-Zone, he will often be seen falling on one or even two knees and bowing his helmeted head.   The message is unmistakeable : the goal was God-given.

How can athletes, any more than soldiers, imagine that “God” is on their side ?  Then again, when you have spent your life listening to, and repeating, the incantation “God bless America”, I suppose the least the players can do is to thank the Almighty for this further proof of His benevolence.

RIDENDA      RELIGIO

” DON’T FORGET TO PRAY “

These immortal words of His Eminence, the Cardinal-Archbishop of my kinda town, Sydney (no, not Canada, Down Under), will, like the event which provoked them, have been forgotten by the time anyone reads this.  The occasion was the Pope’s very first visit to Australia, to mark World Youth Day (Week), July 2008, when 300,000 young Catholics from 160 different countries literally took over the country’s most beautiful city (I never said I was not chauvinistic), including its immense Randwick Racecourse.  The wags, of course, put a message on the Net : “Sponsor a lion !  300,000 Catholics, one stadium !”

There were no less than 400 rock concerts around the city.  That’s why Cardinal George Pell reminded the youthful participants not to forget to pray.  I am not sure they needed reminding.  But the pastorally sensitive Australian host of the event – who had, it would later be revealed, something of a soft spot for young, including very young, people . . .  felt they did.  This would not be a Woodstock (one could hope that there was no abuse of stimulants, apart from the joyous chanting of hymns and psalms).  It was to be a manifestation of faith, meant to eclipse the most fervent of the world’s Eucharistic Congresses and Jubilee Celebrations in Rome.  In my opinion, none of the young people who had spent a considerable amount of money and effort to participate, would be likely to forget the quintessential rôle of prayer in such an event.

Their predecessors, 2000 years earlier, in another stadium where horse-races were also current events, superceded in popularity only by the Emperor’s spectacle of Christians being devoured by lions, would not have forgotten to pray.  Pointlessly, of course.  No one, not even their Savior, was about – nor did they expect Him – to save them.  They prayed rather for the gift of perseverance, for the courage to maintain and not deny their faith.  “The blood of martyrs, the seed of Christians”.  The word “martyrs” means “witnesses”.  They sacrificed their lives for their exemplary faith in Jesus.

Their contemporary equivalent is hardly the international assembly of well-meaning, devout, sincere, comfortable Catholics assembled at Randwick, who risked nothing in affirming their faith, except wasting their time and the cost of their ticket.  So much the better.  But their credulity is almost as pathetic as that of the martyrs in the Coliseum.  The good news is that in Sydney they all seemed to enjoy it.  What’s wrong with having a good time, so long as no one gets hurt ?  Previous manifestations of blind faith, in Rome, for example, cost a lot more.

Today, twelve years later, Pell is once again in the international … spotlight, as he sits in prison for proven (?) pedophilia, waiting for final judgement (!) on his non-guilty plea.  He has, presumably, not forgotten to pray.

RIDENDA      RELIGIO

 

PRAYER – WHEELS

Most of us used to think that these efficient, time and effort-saving ways of exponentially increasing the volume of prayer, were a Buddhist monopoly.  Google a little and the Net will reveal Christian competition.  The latter may not have invented the wheel but some pious American patriots have found a new way of exploiting it.

After a series of photos highlighting the positive results of the invasion of Irak (touching images of GIs playing with local children) and a recall of the Oath of Allegiance, underlining the bit about “one nation under God”, a text disseminated in the U.S. proclaims :

“May the good Lord bless every one of our troops wherever they are.

“I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, ONE NATION UNDER GOD, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

“God bless our troops.  

“Please send this on after a short prayer !

“I’m praying to God for you.”

There follows  :  “PRAYER – WHEEL for our Marines, soldiers, sailors, coast-guard and air men and women.”

The illustration in the text is a circle around an American flag, in the center of which one can read : “She is worn, torn and burned but still waves PROUDLY for our FREEDOM” –  and around the circle (the wheel) are inscribed “WW1, WW2, Korea, Vietnam, Desert Storm and Irak (apparently “Afghanistan” was too long to include on the wheel … ).

“Dear Heavenly Father, hold our troops in your loving hands.  Protect them as they protect us.  Bless them and their families for the selfless acts they perform for us in our time of need.  Please stop a moment and say a prayer for our troops (land, sea and air) in Afghanistan, Kuwait, Irak and all around the world”.

“Of all the gifts you could give our U.S. military, PRAYER is the very best one !”.

I have only one reaction : “Oh, my God !”

RIDENDA      RELIGIO

THE ROSARY REVISITED

I was zapping my radio, looking for some classical music, when I stumbled on Paris’ Radio Notre Dame, where a bunch of people were actually reciting the Rosary !  The repetition of multiple Our Father’s, Hail Mary’s and Glory Be’s, can be done in private or in groups.  But to broadcast such gobbledygook is somewhat mind-blowing.  Like most people, I listen to the radio for an update on the news, for information, for debate on interesting subjects, for music.  I find it incredible that believers would actually tune in to, if not join in, the radiophonic recitation of the Rosary.  Then again, if you want to feel no pain, with none of the pernicious effects of drugs or alcohol, if you want to be lulled into a gentle stupor by the sheer repetition of meaningless words, if you are lookng for the warmth of shared religious sentiment (which Freud, quoting Romain Rolland, called the “oceanic feeling”), I suppose the Rosary on the radio makes as much (or as little) sense as anywhere else.  To me it is further evidence of the irrationality of religion.

RIDENDA      RELIGIO