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I WAS ON a second date in Shoreditch and the girl couldn’t tell me which religion she belonged to. Internet dating is awkward enough without insisting on declarations of faith, but I pressed her anyway.
She texted her mother, who confirmed that she’d been baptised a Calvinist. “I don’t really know what that is, to be honest”. I explained that Calvinists believe in pre-destination, which means she would be going to heaven no matter what she did on Earth. She seemed pleased with this.
In England, it’s not uncommon to meet someone who is not just irreligious but has no lived experience of organised religion. The separation of church and state means that a person can enjoy civic life without ever having to think about God at all.
How liberating it must be to be unencumbered by inherited spiritual neuroses. Catholicism is not something you opt in or out of. It feels seared into my skin, whether I believe in its cabalistic rituals or not. Like la Cosa Nostra, you don’t get to just walk away.
My first confession was a bitter experience. I was seven and I didn’t feel like I’d done anything wrong. Confession was for sinners – why should I go down for a crime I didn’t commit? My parents told me to just “make something up”. So I did.
I wish I’d told the priest – a harmless boob in an ill-fitting dress – that I’d been coveting my neighbour’s ox.
They knew it was a cod, but my Mum and Dad handed me over to the costumed holy man anyway. This was Ireland in the 1990s and before.
The social stigma of pulling me out would have been too much – scripture had nothing to do with it. That I was encouraged to invent a story and hope for the best seems now like an appropriate introduction to Christianity.
When the census came to our house in 2016, my mother had filled in my bits. “Mam, I’m not Catholic anymore!” I was genuinely annoyed that she’d put the whole family down as papists when none of us had been to mass in years. She just shrugged. “Ah, of course you are”, she said. No more was said about it.
Maybe she had a point. I still find myself having a cheeky pray a couple of times a year, following the priest’s cues at a funeral or firing off a rogue plea to St. Anthony when I lose my phone. It feels a bit dirty, like drunk texting an ex. Remember me, Lord? You up?
The English have no time for such hocus pocus. When their new King was coronated recently in Westminster Abbey, many were taken aback by the supernatural aspect of the ceremony.
They would prefer, perhaps, to believe that their enduring class system is based on brute feudalism rather than something underwritten by Jesus Christ. Charles himself was surely relieved to escape the archbishop and his grisly hangers-on as soon as the liturgy concluded.
Since Henry the 8th, there’s been an understanding in Britain that religion is very much a lifestyle choice, like a fad diet or hot yoga. This philosophical flexibility has had its advantages – the country has long been a more tolerant, liberal place than Ireland. But the absence of a folk deity is probably to blame for the often-nasty libertarian streak in the British psyche, too.
Immigrants tend to be more spirituality-credulous than the natives. Perhaps it’s because we believe that it maintains a link to our homelands, giving us a sense of identity in a country where “Britishness” is increasingly exclusive. Or maybe it’s because we’re lonely.
In a city where you don’t know a soul, who wouldn’t want a place to go at the weekend to drink tea and have a chat with ostensibly friendly, conscientious people?
I definitely fell into that category when I first arrived. Every Saturday afternoon for a year I’d pop down to the local Buddhist temple for a group meditation and a sniff of the incense, overlooked by a shimmering, golden Buddha. I couldn’t believe that such a peaceful place could exist amidst the city’s fluorescent dish of noise, light and pollution.
I loved how meditation took the reflective quality of prayer and mostly stripped away the overbearing, judgemental bits. Truthfully, Irish people are probably too begrudging to take on Buddhism en masse. If we believed in reincarnation, we’d probably look at newborn babies and think “Is that Oliver Cromwell? Oh, we’ve been waiting for you.”
But as a tourist of Eastern mysticism, it scratched an itch. It gave me a place to go at the weekend where I could feel part of a group, practice mindfulness and have a biscuit at the end. How different from mass was it, really? Behind the burning candles, gold effigies and cathedrals made of glass and stone, humans and their needs are simpler than we pretend.
Peter Flanagan is an Irish comedian and writer. You can find him on Twitter @peterflanagan and Instagram @peterflanagancomedy.
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A funny read but hard to take seriously. The notion that anyone remembers how they felt about sin before making their first confession is hard to take seriously.
Religion is one of those things that if it works for you then great, go for it.If not then leave it alone.
@Justin Gillespie: oh if only those who don’t believe would leave those who do alone, now that would be a thumbs up from everyone Justin.
@quacquac 51:
Them: My religion says I can’t do x.
Me: Fine.
Them: My religion says you can’t do x.
Me: F off.
@quacquac 51: the solipsism in you comment is blinding. “Leave those who believe alone”? The RCC still has a powerful voice in Ireland particularly among Conservative politicians. Its in our schools our hospitals and many other facets of Irish life and its quite vocal about aspects of Irish life that shouldn’t concern it. It is important to remember it raped and tortured children and subjugated women for decades here.
” Religion comes to us now in an ingratiating manner because it has had to give so much up & concede a huge amount of power but never forget how it behaved when it really did think it had god on its side “.
Christopher Hitchens. Religion poisons everything.
@quacquac 51: the reverse applies also.
@Justin Gillespie: It was a humorous piece. Having said that, you surely have a short memory. It was a normal part of growing up in Ireland as a Catholic – being instructed to make up sins in order to take part in the ritual of confession.
Maybe the assumption was that you had sinned or offended adults inadvertently – if you had forgotten it, you should display contrition regardless.
I apologise if you had massive whoppers of real sins worth presenting at a young age. There were 45 of us in my primary school class, and we were often prompted to attend & declare this or that. It was completely usual to be told that you must be guilty of something.
Lisa Jones,,, sorry but I can’t reply directly for some reason. To answer your question? I’m afraid I can’t, you would have to speak to the families who didn’t want them in their homes. At least the Catholic Church put a roof over their heads. Granted, abuses took place but If I were you I’d aim your anger towards the families who rejected these poor girls and women. That’s the best I can do.
@quacquac 51: The story is a bit more complex. It was the church who indoctrinated families into believing those women had committed a sin & into believing they should not be harbouring such sinners
@quacquac 51: You seem confused. These were national homes to provide residential care, requiring all staff to obey without question. Accepted government funding to do so; then covered up decades of abuse, starvation and frankly, many deaths. That is not acceptable behaviour.
They were all paid to provide care, not to starve and bully. Those places were funded in good faith by the people of Ireland. They paid twice over to house and feed and care for orphans and in return, the organisations responsible sold and starved and bullied and buried young children. People raised money for them, believing that they weren’t all vindictive bullies. I fully accept that some were not. The rest most certainly have not been answerable nor have they made restitution for their lucrative racket.
Great read Peter, I have your answer by the way. If you voted to remove the eight then you’re no longer a Catholic. If you voted no to the removal of the right to life to the unborn child then you’re still a Catholic. Only about 40 percent of Irish people are Catholic today.
@quacquac 51: Catholicism has evolved and people can still be catholics without blindly following every instruction. Were we still catholics when we sent unwed mothers to the laundrys? When girls died and babies illegally adopted? So you don’t get to tell people what they are or are not.. that’s not very Christian of you.
@quacquac 51: Well no cause you need to request to be officially not recognised as catholic by the Catholic church, a process they made even harder. The church don’t care for what way you voted, the church is a business and in many ways its like an app, more users then more money, harder to unsubscribe then money keeps coming in. It’s a scam, one of the oldest and dare I say best scams going.
@quacquac 51: many peoples choice of vote on the 8th had zero to do with any religion.
@Lisa Jones: The state knew about the mother and baby homes and the abuse that went on there. What did they do? Absolutely nothing. Corruption happens at the highest levels, get over it and stop living in the past.
1. Church & state are not separate in the UK. The head of state is the head of the Anglican Church and bishops of that church sit in the House of Lords as a right. In Ireland those positions are elected so there is legal separation.
2. If you have a problem with childhood indoctrination, blame the parents who sent you for it and not the institution they sent you to. (And of course there was less choice in education in the 90s. As long as people of no faith put themselves down as of a specific faith in the census this will be the case.)
We had to go to confession nearly every week when we we kids. I used to have to make up sins. Every so often and just to make it interesting, I’d tell him that I stole a few pennies and he would bolt upright. A few pennies this week, he’d say and then a shilling next and 2/6 after that, he would warn me. What a good idea I’d think :)
What’s with this word ‘coronated ‘? It sounds too much like something they do to raw chicken in the U.S. I aways understood the appropriate verb to be ”crowned’.
Give up yer aul sins!
Good read. Personally, I gave up on religion years ago. I read the bible though. I accept the 10 commandments, and anything outside of that I take a jaundiced view of.
@AnthonyK: does that include the first 3 commandments? What about all the other commandments in the bible
Allora.. can’t reply directly. You were doing so well until you mentioned a man who went to his grave with so much hate for anybody with a religious belief. You were cute though as you mentioned him at the end, if you mentioned him at the start I would have read no further.
The Journal is a home for essayists who have nothing much to say – other than that were/are oppressed by the Catholic church.
Brilliant…I could have written this
It’s slightly paradoxical how this article is a critique of the value of confession when the article itself is a confession of hatred for traditional religious practice in Ireland and the Irish mindset as the author narrowly sees it. Imagine Catholicism didn’t exist, the journal when have nothing to attack in such a way. Of course absolute nothingness is the philosophy of certain belief systems.
And of course all other belief systems are benign, including the one where he get his Saturday afternoon tea, just ask the Rohingya of Myanmar, whose treatment Cromwell himself would have been proud of.
People who don’t go to mass or follow catholic teachings shouldn’t be allowed to celebrate Christmas.
Remember my 7 year old son “stealing “ two Bob from my pocket and when I asked him why- he said so that he would have a sin to confess!!
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