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Revitalising the Catholic Church in Ireland: VI – The World and the Kingdom of God

Articles, Church Renewal, Covetousness, Equality of Dignity, Kingdom of God, Mimetic Desire, Scripture, Status Anxiety, Worldliness, , , , , ,

Sean O’Conaill © Reality 2004 

Christians have always seen Christ as a king who will reign visibly some day, but what kind of ‘king’ would he be? How would his ‘kingdom’ differ from a modern state? And in the meantime, how should the idea of ‘the kingdom of God’ influence the way we think about the secular world?

These questions are particularly relevant at a time when western political life seems increasingly corrupt. Modern media place a searing spotlight on all prominent people, revealing their private as well as public weaknesses. The flaws of nearby royalty are now common knowledge, so that the whole idea of a ‘kingdom’ is also out of fashion. We associate it with snobbery and inequality, and we cling to the ideal of a truly equal society. Does this mean we should forget about the whole idea of a ‘Kingdom of God’?

The answer is a definite ‘no’ – because we need to understand Jesus’ ‘kingdom’ to have any hope of building a truly equal and just and peaceful society – especially here in Ireland.

The first thing to note about Jesus is that he differed in a quite remarkable way from the great kings of Israel: he never entered into rivalry with anyone, or sought to exercise an authority based upon force, or even the threat of force. Nor did he ever establish a court from which to overawe people and dominate politically. He had already acquired the only status that mattered to him: closeness to the Lord God of Israel.

The most interesting thing about the kingdom of Saul, David and Solomon is that it was seen by the God of Samuel as a rejection of his own kingdom. The Bible tells us:

So all the elders of Israel gathered together and came to Samuel at Ramah. They said to him, “You are old, and your sons do not walk in your ways; now appoint a king to lead us, such as all the other nations have.” (1 Sam 8:4,5)

Notice that these elders wanted a kingdom such as all the other nations have. This tells us something of crucial importance – that the earthly kingdom of Israel arose out of covetousness – the desire to possess something possessed by others – because they possess it. The supposed greater power of the surrounding monarchical systems – especially that of the Philistines – led the Israelite elders to envy them, to suppose that it was these systems that gave them this greater power, and to undervalue the system they already had. This was one in which prophets and judges ruled in a relationship of equality and familiarity rather than hierarchy and splendour.

The text goes on to tell us that Samuel was displeased by that request, but that the Lord God told him:

“Listen to all that the people are saying to you; it is not you they have rejected, but they have rejected me as their king.”

So, according to the text, the kingdom of Israel essentially involved the rejection of an earlier ‘kingdom of God’ over which the Lord ‘reigned’ through the prophet Samuel, but without placing Samuel on some sacred plane above other men – a ‘kingdom’ that God preferred, and one without a palace or court.

The word ‘kingdom’ in that context obviously has the widest possible meaning: that over which there is some kind of rule or dominion. We ought not, therefore, when attempting to understand Jesus’ ‘kingdom of God’, begin with the military kingdom of David or Solomon – for these were inferior to the original kingdom of God. Nor should we suppose that the kingdom of God is incompatible with a modern democracy.

The Bible is also unsparing in its account of the flaws of the three great kings of Israel. Despite their anointing they all suffered from the very sin that lay at the root of the foundation of that kingdom – mimetic desire or covetousness. David’s victory over Goliath made him the hero of the women of Israel, who accorded less glory to Saul – and Saul became murderously jealous. In other words he entered into rivalry with David for esteem – as did Absalom later, with equally tragic consequences. But David disgraced himself also by committing murder in order to possess Bathsheba – the wife of a subject. The fact that she was already married meant that David’s essential weakness also was associated with covetousness.

As for Solomon, he became renowned for his wisdom and, according to the text, ultimately preferred this renown to fidelity to the God who had given him this gift. ‘Renown’ is simply wider esteem. The need of the man of eminence to be esteemed by other humans had become his undoing also. And this same weakness was the root source of the brutality of the Herods in Jesus’ time.

The whole idea of sacred kingship essentially turned a mere human being into a mystical being – with the consequence that the individual so honoured usually became virtually obsessed with his own reputation or ‘glory’. Another consequence was the inevitable withdrawal of dignity from the people – those ‘subjects’ who could never expect to come close to this semi-sacred being. Here again the book of Samuel is highly specific:

“This is what the king who will reign over you will do: He will take your sons and make them serve with his chariots and horses, and they will run in front of his chariots. Some he will assign to be commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and others to plough his ground and reap his harvest, and still others to make weapons of war and equipment for his chariots. He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive groves and give them to his attendants. He will take a tenth of your grain and of your vintage and give it to his officials and attendants. Your menservants and maidservants and the best of your cattle and donkeys he will take for his own use. He will take a tenth of your flocks, and you yourselves will become his slaves. When that day comes, you will cry out for relief from the king you have chosen, and the LORD will not answer you in that day.” 1 Sam 8:11-18

This is a remarkable account of the consequences of earthly kingship – giving essentially the same reasons for the rejection of monarchy as the American subjects of George III were to use in 1776 – about three thousand years after the foundation of the kingdom of Israel. People eventually resent being treated as inferior by other people who are obviously as flawed as they are.

Here we find the essential difference between Jesus’ ‘kingdom of God’ and any state built originally in the world by force: it is built first of all within the person, by a spiritual process. Those who live in it are governed by their love of the king who placed it there, not by fear of the consequences of disobedience. Equality is part of its essence. As Thomas Merton observed, the Gospels lead us to a state of mind and heart in which ‘there are no strangers’.

We should remember this when trying to picture any future ‘kingdom of God’ – even one in which Christ visibly reigns. God does not desire our subjection. Indeed God will endure personal humiliation rather than reign through fear: why else would he have tolerated crucifixion in preference to the use of force?

It follows that we need to ponder on ‘the kingdom of God’ to understand the mysteries of our own time – especially the mystery of inequality. Why is it that almost three centuries after equality became the central goal of western political life our societies are still deeply flawed by snobbery and inequality?

Again the bible tells us clearly: we want to be ‘as Gods’ – that is, superior to one another. A perfect political illustration of this is the history of the British Labour party over the last century. Founded to achieve the socialist ideals of people like George Bernard Shaw it became ‘New Labour’ in the 1990s, bound to the ‘meritocratic’ ideals of Tony Blair.

A ‘meritocrat’ is someone very like the said Tony – a clever chap who has ‘risen to the top’ because he supposedly ‘merits’ it. It is clear that to rise to the top there must be a ‘top’ to begin with, so ‘meritocracy’ is based upon the acceptance of inequality. And so it is not essentially different from ‘aristocracy’, which means simply rule of the best.

Irish political life demonstrates the same paradox over the same period. In Ireland in 1922 a political elite emerged out of a violent revolution, promising to cherish all of the nation’s children equally. It now secures its own privileges by a taxation system that favours the wealthy. One of its most outstanding second generation products scandalised the country by aping the aristocratic lifestyle of a member of the 18th century Irish ascendancy, complete with country house and lavish entertainment – all financed by corruption.

If this could happen to the revolutionary parties that emerged out of the period 1916-22, there is absolutely no reason to believe it will not happen to parties emerging out of more recent violence. Today’s populist revolutionaries almost inevitably become tomorrow’s aristocratic elite.

The root of inequality lies in the very same ‘sin’ that founded the kingdom of Israel: covetousness, or mimetic desire – we choose our goals and objectives by imitation of those who seem superior. Which means in turn that deep down we are dissatisfied with ourselves, unsure of our own value. We are prisoners of ‘the world’, our own enveloping culture – nowadays represented by the media which tell us who the ‘superior’ people are, and what they own – so that we can know what we should desire.

And this is why ‘the kingdom of God’ is such a crucial concept – because in consciously seeking it we seek also a consciousness of our own value as Christians, followers of Christ. As a brother or sister of Christ we have a dignity that is greater than any honour ‘the world’ can confer – and a true equality also.

We acquire this title and this dignity through our baptism. The unfortunate tendency of our church leadership to confer other supposed honours upon themselves – honours accessible only through ordination – has undermined the dignity of Christian baptism. It has also deprived lay Catholics of the awareness that they are equally invited into the closest possible relationship with God through Jesus of Nazareth.

All Christians are now called to develop a ‘kingdom’ spirituality, and to explain to the secular world why inequality arises out of worldliness – the search for status.

If our Catholic leadership is to respond to that call it must begin by ending the radical inequality within the Church, and by honouring the dignity with which baptism endows every lay person.

That inequality represents not the will of God, but the corruption of our church by clericalism – the belief that ordination confers a higher status than baptism. It is also the root of all the problems that now beset us.

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Is There an Haute Cuisine Catholicism?

Articles, Christendom, Evangelisation, Humility, Review, Snobbery, Status Anxiety, Worldliness, , , , , ,

Sean O’Conaill  © Doctrine and Life April 2004

“We are afflicted by a congenital uncertainty as to our own value,” observes Alain deBotton, author of an unfashionably lucid recent work of philosophy entitled Status Anxiety  1Alain deBotton, Status Anxiety, Hamish Hamilton, 2004. This affliction compels us to seek the attention and admiration of others – a quest virtually guaranteed failure since so many are now seeking the same from us.

Having reached much the same conclusion about the deepest human problem in a reflection on the history of Christianity published in 19992Sean O’Conaill, Scattering the Proud, Columba Press, 1999, I was intrigued especially by deBotton’s account of the role of Christianity in ameliorating status anxiety down the centuries. This account is not as detailed or complete as one would wish, but his conclusions are provocative and potentially fertile for others who might wish to take up the theme.

To begin with, he brackets Jesus with Socrates as an outstanding example of indifference to the opinion of others, and understands the Gospel concept of ‘worldliness’ as virtually identical to status anxiety – quite correctly in my view. He also correctly credits the Churches with insisting upon the equality of all in the sight of God. However, he goes on to insist that Christianity for most of its history did not seriously challenge, even philosophically, the worldly status pyramids outside the sacred spaces of cloister, chapel and cathedral.

He points out that St Augustine’s ‘two cities’ model of history did not allow for the defeat of the worldly, and therefore status-ridden, earthly city by the Church (the City of God) before the day of judgement. Though Christendom could affirm the dignity of the peasant ploughman – for example through the corporatist social model of John of Salisbury – (for whom rulers supplied the mind and peasantry the feet of society) – it has been less effective in ameliorating the impact of meritocratic ideas upon those of low status in a modern society. So much for the penetration of Catholic social teaching, and of Vatican II, into deBotton’s consciousness – but this is significant in its own way.

Meritocracy has, deBotton insists, increased rather than reduced status anxiety. In medieval society ‘the poor’ tended to think of their work as useful, of their lot as inevitable, and of their status as both acceptable and none of their own fault. However, the eighteenth century changed all of that. In came the ‘new story’ of Adam Smith – that it was the entrepreneurial spirit that not only produced most wealth, but made wealth potentially limitless. Social Darwinism – the theory that ‘success’ was proof of a genetic and even moral superiority – followed in the nineteenth century. This was countered for a time by ideological socialism, but the recent victory of laissez faire economics and liberal democracy has consolidated the status of a new aristocracy rooted in ceaseless energy, shrewd investment and entrepreneurial cleverness. The seemingly absolute and final ascendancy of a so-called meritocracy implies that the unsuccessful are without any merit – a supremely dispiriting conclusion for them at least.

The most entertaining part of the book is a robust treatment of snobbery, a term that may have originated in the 1820s with the use of ‘s. nob.’ to abbreviate ‘sine nobilitate’, inscribed opposite the names of non-aristocrats in Oxford and Cambridge examination lists. The snob is forever fearful of being considered insignificant through association with the common herd. A Punch cartoon of 1892 (reproduced in deBotton’s book) captures the problem precisely by observing a trio of stately London ladies parading through a park. One of these is looking after another similar trio that has just passed by. She says:

“There go the Spicer Wilcoxes, Mamma. I’m told they’re dying to know us. Hadn’t we better call?”
“Certainly not, Dear!” Mamma replies. “If they’re dying to know us they’re not worth knowing.  The only people worth Our knowing are the people who don’t want to know Us!”

When we recall that the person at the summit of that Victorian status pyramid was a monarch distinguished only by her longevity (and at one stage ironically hailed as ‘Mrs Brown’ by the London mob for her attachment to a Scottish manservant) we have even more reason to laugh at the follies of snobbery.

Snobbery and status anxiety are, of course, one and the same. Television situation comedy has exploited a rich vein here in recent years in the UK – in series such as Only Fools and Horses, Yes, Minister and Keeping up Appearances. The belief that advantages such as wealth and education – and country houses and exclusive china – make people somehow ‘better’, more worthy of respect, is, seemingly, a universal and timeless illusion.

That Christian thought and instruction should ceaselessly puncture snobbish pretensions is clear, but the fact is that the mainstream churches have never made a serious direct assault upon snobbery since Constantine. I cannot remember ever hearing a sermon on the subject – although I have been bored to tears all my life by the theme of ‘materialism’. As people acquire expensive property and luxury goods for reasons of status, never for their material composition, that complaint has always missed the mark.

Here in Ireland this failure to indict snobbery from the pulpit and the schoolroom has been especially destructive of the moral persuasiveness of Catholicism in a society aspiring to equality. It has allowed middle class prigs to dominate, and even to characterise, the public face of the church, while the inhabitants of our inner cities now tend to see Catholic bishops as snobbery in purple – simply because they almost always behave as remote grandees rather than accessible and socially relaxed pastors. Bishops generally have been delegating to others the virtue of humility since the fourth century – and this has now become the outstanding scandal in the Church, the root source of its alienation of egalitarian societies.

The part played by Irish Catholic snobbery in the maltreatment of those at the base of the secular period – too often by those at the base of the clerical pyramid – in mid twentieth century Ireland is something that surely needs to be explored in the context of the scandal of child abuse in Ireland. Status pyramids always deprive those at their base of a sense of their own dignity, and brutality is an almost inevitable consequence.

We need to re-evaluate also the devotion by the Irish church of so much educational capital to the children of the middle classes. The assumption that this investment would guarantee the fidelity of the Irish meritocracy to the values and truths of Catholicism was clearly sadly mistaken. There is now not a single national news medium in Ireland that can be said to be sympathetic to and supportive of the church – proof that its efforts on behalf of the middle classes are now interpreted as part of a right wing political agenda rather than as an example of social concern.

And in the context of the growing problem of bullying in our schools, and the self-hatred and self-harming that can follow, the failure of Irish Catholic education to make any explicit connection between social derision and the Gospel account of the crucifixion must be regarded as another disastrous failing.

All of this casts an interesting light upon deBotton’s analysis of the historical failure of the mainstream churches to tackle the spiritual challenge of snobbery in society at large. It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that snobbery has become deeply embedded in the church itself.

Just as the secular world is now full of wine, food and all kinds of consumer snobbery, so do we find in the church the liturgy and sacred music snobs who just cannot abide the typical novus ordo mass or folk music hymns. There are even fashions for styles of meditation, for theologians and philosophers – and even ‘spiritualities’ – but little intellectual attention to fashion itself. The awarding of ‘papal knighthoods’ – even to globally notorious pornographers – speaks for itself – as does the English Catholic Herald’s obsession with eulogising supposedly high status converts to Catholicism such as Alec Guinness and Ann Widdecombe. Opus Dei’s recruitment priorities and social attitudes are snobbery incarnate. (It never fails to remind us of its founder’s alleged noblesse.)

Meanwhile we are urged by hierarchs to ‘engage with culture’ – without reflecting upon the very essence of culture itself – its mimetic character. That is what fashion and culture essentially are – the mimesis or imitation of the behaviour of those who have somehow acquired status. No Catholic bishop to my knowledge has yet connected the careerism of bishops – the subject of Cardinal Gantin’s astonishingly frank post-retirement outburst in 1999 – with status seeking in the secular world. This does not bode well for an effective ‘engagement’ by Irish bishops generally with the culture of meritocratic Ireland.

And this means that there is also scant hope at this stage for an effective national response to the challenge of ‘new evangelisation’. True evangelisation elicits an awakening from the mimetic compulsion to seek status and celebrity, an awakening to the good news that one is lovable for oneself and so can be both autonomous and spontaneous. Those who would propose to lead a ‘new evangelism’ in Ireland would need to be sure they have experienced this themselves.

DeBotton reminds us poignantly of one of Tolstoy’s greatest characters – Ivan Ilyich – who discovers on the brink of his own death that the status he has achieved in late 1800s St Petersburg does not mean that he is truly loved by either friends or family. He has sought all his life the regard of others, and so has taught his children to do the same. His supposedly cherished beliefs are the fashionable opinions of others, and nowhere near his heart. His work colleagues’ tepid sympathy cannot disguise their greater interest in who will benefit most from his demise.

Late nineteenth century St Petersburg was no less, and no more, Christian than 1950s Ireland – because (as Cardinal Cahal Daly has acknowledged in the case of Ireland) conformity in pursuit of status had become in both the norm – and conformity is just another word for fashion.

How could Christianity and conformity ever have become confused? It happened, surely, as soon as Constantine’s opportunistic vision was blessed by the Catholic bishops as the real thing, and this Caesarean mass murderer was eulogised in the most excruciating terms by Bishop Eusebius of Caesarea, the proto-typical Catholic snob. This set a new priority for evangelism itself: to convert the socially elevated, because this would guarantee the setting of a spectacular conformist fashion among their ‘inferiors’. This fashion was already established in continental Europe before Patrick came to Ireland, and even Patrick could see the advantage of converting political and social elites first of all.

Thus the support of social elites became essential to the power of the Church all over Europe. And it was the social elitism of the Irish Catholic church that placed it in opposition to the equalising, and therefore, in that limited sense, more truly Christian, tide of modern secularism. Clerical elitism is also the root cause of the tide of clerical scandals that we have seen over the past twelve years – scandals that egalitarian secularism could almost gleefully exploit.

Work such as deBotton’s suggest, therefore, an essential preliminary to any attempt at a ‘new evangelism’ in Ireland – a revision of the history of the Church that correctly identifies Christendom as a failed attempt at evangelisation-through-elites – and military elites at that. It failed because it compromised the Gospels which are centrally an assault upon elitism itself, and especially elitist violence. It failed also, probably, because the Christian God could not let it succeed while remaining true to the radical egalitarianism of his Son.

I do not believe that neo-scholastic philosophy has yet produced a book as relevant, fascinating and revealing as this on the problem of status-seeking – one of the key components of the global environmental and social crisis. This too underlines the fact that the best of secular thought has much to teach the church – especially when secular thinkers reflect honestly upon the mysterious failure of secularism to achieve its original 18th century programme. When the apostles asked ‘which of us is the greatest?’ they were revealing what Christianity, and secularism, need to recognize as the basic human flaw – our boundless desire for priority, measured in the deference of others.

  1. Alain deBotton, Status Anxiety, Hamish Hamilton, 2004
  2. Sean O’Conaill, Scattering the Proud, Columba Press, 1999

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Rethinking Freedom

Articles, Celebrity, Equality of Dignity, Freedom, Liberalism, Mimetic Desire, René Girard, Spirituality, Status Anxiety, , , ,

Sean O’Conaill © Spirituality 2002

This era should be one of unprecedented freedom. A revolutionary period lasting over two centuries has seen the overthrow of a series of political tyrannies, from absolute monarchy to Fascism and totalitarian Communism. Yet the absurd violence of these times, in which addiction can drive individuals to random mugging and murder in the streets of the richest cities, and international terrorism can send a jumbo jet through the office windows high above, was inconceivable when this era began.

Freedom from fear seems even more remote than when FDR made it one of his Four Freedoms in January 1941. Freedom from want should be far behind us also – given the extraordinary productiveness of our economic systems – but this too eludes many millions around the globe, as do freedom of speech and freedom of religion still in many parts of the world.

What is the root of the problem? Why are we still oppressed?

The standard answer is that capitalism is inherently evil – as though evil was a function of economic and political organisation. Logically this analysis proposes a repetition forever of the capitalist/socialist face-off that dominated the period before 1989. Who really wants to go through all that again? There is need for a new analysis – one that does not scapegoat ‘systems’ for human failure, but looks for the root of the human failing that prevents capitalism from developing a truly human face. That failing clearly warped political socialism also, especially when it gained control of a sizeable economy – creating an oligarchy of ideologues even more nasty than the reactionary aristocracy of the ancien regime.

We can gain some insight into this by remembering one of the most obvious anomalies of the Soviet Union in its last years – those secret shops that imported western consumer goods and sold them only to the soviet socialist elite. Western hi-fis, videos and large-screen TVs – and no doubt Irish whiskey – passed through these places into the luxurious dachas of the politburo outside Moscow – and it was eventually the shortfall in such goods (as well as Reagan’s proposed Star Wars anti-missile defence system) that convinced Gorbachev that Marxism-Leninism as he knew it could not match the West either technically or economically. The world’s greatest experiment in socialism failed at that moment.

The soviet demand for such goods can be explained simply as mimetic desire – an irresistible and largely unacknowledged urge to possess what is possessed by others – especially those with whom one is in rivalry. It can be guessed that Khrushchev’s goggle-eyed amazement at US consumer society on his visit to the US in 1959 led directly to these Orwellian purchases, which eventually bankrupted the integrity of his own revolutionary generation.

Rene Girard insists that where we find conflict we should look for similarity, not difference. As a teacher of history I was trained to explain the Cold War as essentially a struggle of contradictory ideologies – free market liberalism versus Marxist totalitarianism. However, there was also simple rivalry for global dominance between two societies that had both risen to the status of superpower in the preceding two centuries, their armies meeting along the Elbe in 1945. Wherever human endeavour brings triumph, an antithetical challenge will sooner or later emerge.

Mimetic desire (that is, desire borrowed by imitation) and rivalry also dominate the current face-off between Islamic radicalism and the west. Osama bin Laden emphasises the differences between his ultra-puritanical version of Islam and western decadence, as the root of his quarrel with America. Why then not simply take pride in this moral superiority and leave the West to perish in its decadence? The fact is that the west possesses something that bin Laden wants – supremacy in technology, especially military technology, and the geopolitical supremacy this also brings. Radical Islam is, through people like Bin Laden, in rivalry for global political, cultural and religious supremacy with the West.

So, wherever there is conflict look not for differences, but for similarities – especially similarity in objectives. President Bush is currently riding on the crest of a wave of patriotic fervour in the US, with many feeling that the original zeal of the American dream is being restored. Yet every TV picture of the flaunted stars and stripes is bound now to call forth equally chauvinistic Islamism when redisplayed by El Jazeera. Outside Latin America the ‘War on Terrorism’ seems to have only Islamic targets – Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Yemen and possibly even Indonesia – and this can only feed into the polarisation bin Laden and his followers seek. It is above all TV that declares who is glorious and who is impoverished today – and TV currently contrasts the ruins of Afghanistan and the lush lawns of Hollywood, stating clearly the disparity that Islamic radicalism seeks to end in blood.

And similarities too explain the current crisis between India and Pakistan. Both states want undisputed possession of Kashmir, but neither government can yield it and survive.

As for Ireland’s conflict, although the surface complexities have deterred people as intelligent as Graham Green from attempting an analysis, it’s clear by now that simple rivalry for dominance of the north-east lies at the back of the contest between green and orange paramilitarism. The latter emerged in mimetic response to the rise of Provisionalism in the early 1970s, until then the focus of the global media. Although Sinn Fein has stressed its leftist credentials, it has not rejected suggestions that it might become the crutch supporting Fianna Fail if the latter again fails to win an overall majority in a general election this year – so mimetic desire for political status is clearly paramount for this supposedly new political broom also. And the standard explanation for the original outbreak of the Troubles in the late 1960s is that a newly educated young Catholic intelligentsia found itself shut out of the usual economic rewards in a discriminatory Unionist society. That is, frustrated desire for wealth and status was again crucial in explaining the onset of violence in 1969.

As for the random violence of the streets, in London in early January of this year a teenager was shot in the head when she objected to the theft of her mobile phone – currently the most saleable and portable of consumer durables. The wealth-producing sector of western society must display the fruits of its labour – infuriating those who still remain outside that sector, especially if they also belong to a racially disadvantaged minority. This same factor was clearly at work in the race riots that traumatised several British cities in the summer of 2001.

What of that other western anomaly – school violence – the focus of so much American angst prior to what they now call 9/11? Significantly, the leading spirit in the worst example of that violence, Eric Harris, confided to video the root of his alienation before shooting twelve of his schoolmates dead in Littleton, Colorado: “Everywhere I went I had to start again at the bottom.” He was referring to the problem posed by his semi-nomadic soldier father – moved about from base to base. US High Schools too are pyramids of esteem – an extraordinary fact in the state supposedly founded upon the principle of human equality.

The root of the violence that oppresses the world can therefore, it seems, be reduced to conflicting mimetic desire. The possessions, status and power we acquire through success, automatically become desirable to those without these. Our media flaunt our Western success globally in the faces of the uneducated and impoverished. Where these have inherited a proud memory of earlier cultural and military achievement – and this is especially true of the Arab world – we can expect a deadly rivalry to flourish.

Rivalry is also the basic dynamic of the power games played by competing political parties in the democratic world, and often causes internal fissures within parties as well – as the relationship between chancellor and prime minister in Britain currently illustrates. Here again the media are misled into looking for differences between rivals, rather than similarities. Very little of ideological importance now divides the parties or personalities that alternate in office in the major democracies.

Yet real equality remains elusive. A large underclass, often educationally disadvantaged, seems permanently shut out of the ‘good life’ shared by the ‘meritocratic’ elites. And it is this underclass that suffers most from addiction, unemployment and urban violence. Meritocracy is, of course the self-promoting ideology of the ‘bright’ people who currently enjoy the western gravy train.

Post modernism tends to argue that all ideologies are designed to empower those who purvey them. Very little separates this insight from the basic Christian premise that, unredeemed, we are a selfish species that makes war upon our own weakest members. Mimetic desire describes our basic weakness precisely, in a manner that makes it rationally inescapable.

The conclusion is inescapable also: western politics can be rejuvenated only by a realisation that true freedom and equality can be achieved only through a recovery of spirituality. The deep well of corruption that alienated voters from British Conservatism in the early nineties is now beginning to taint pristine New Labour – and in Ireland cynicism on the same evil knows no bounds. Although Ireland is now gearing up for another general election, the political polarities of the 1920s that provide the only logic of our two-party system are now entirely meaningless. There is a need for an entirely new kind of politics here and throughout the West.

It will be based upon a value system that will roundly challenge liberal meritocracy by arguing that humans everywhere are inalienably equal in dignity, and can never lose or gain in that respect. We are indeed differentially gifted, but this asymmetry should be seen as similar to that of an orchestra, in which the differing contributions of all are of equal value. Education will be redesigned to develop all intelligences equally – including, above all, spiritual intelligence.

There is this much wisdom in liberalism: that genuine equality is indeed the only route to freedom. However, how come that in the most ‘egalitarian’ societies liberal politicians are themselves tolerant of a social hierarchy almost as layered in terms of social esteem as any that preceded it? How come they accept that some people become more equal than others by hogging media attention as well as power, and then rigging tax and educational systems to perpetuate that inequality? How come they are blind to the dynamics of rivalry, which explains their corruptibility as well as their conflicts? They above all need to become spiritually aware.

For Christians this awareness is best expressed in the Sermon on the Mount. Only a deep appreciation of its wisdom can undermine the whole notion of celebrity that currently fuels the upward journey of millions. Media-borne celebrity is the supreme mirage – the stupid notion that some people are truly deserving of separation onto a higher plane of being. It is also the supreme object of political mimetic desire, as Tony Blair’s air borne posturing so well illustrates.

Which means in turn that the next Pope will need to include this in the re-evaluation of the role of the papacy that John Paul II has called for. As mimetic desire is the root of oppression and injustice, every spiritual leader should be emphasising that no-one ever really becomes more important, more worthy, than anyone else – and behaving accordingly.

This really should be no problem for any Christian. Nothing more characterises Jesus of Nazareth than the refusal of worldly elevation – from his first step down into the Jordan to join the sinners, to his acceptance of the cross. If the west is to deliver freedom to the world it must rediscover Christ as the gentlest but greatest enemy of mimetic desire. Imitating Him in this alone can indeed set the world free at last.

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The World of the Wannabe

Articles, Careerism, Corruption, Original Sin, Personality Cults, Theology, Wannabe, Youth, , , ,

Sean O’Conaill © Spirituality 2001

New verbal coinings sometimes reveal an aspect of contemporary culture that takes us back to the ancient world. ‘Wannabe’ is just such a word – a descriptor for the (usually) young person who ‘wants to be’ someone else. Most young black Americans, the polls tell us, ‘wannabe’ celebrities of some kind – rock musicians, TV or movie or basketball stars. Currently millions of adolescent girls wannabe the pop ‘sensation’ Britney Spears.

‘Wanting to be’ is probably the major problem of the moment. It is a state of alienation from the self – a sense that the ‘being’ one now has is not worth having, and so must be exchanged for another.

What happens if we relate this to the temptation in the garden of Eden, that place of greatest happiness, where Satan promised ‘you shall be as Gods’. Genesis tells us that we fell for this, and notice here the coincidence of the word ‘fell’. The Fall results from ‘wanting to be’ something other than we are, the loss of the sense of being already all we need to be.

We find a superb illustration of this in Robert Bolt’s screenplay for ‘A Man for All Seasons’. Young Richard Rich pesters Thomas More for patronage – the use of personal influence to advance another at court. Chancellor More, disillusioned by the corruption he sees in the court of Henry VIII, insists that this ambition is misconceived.

“Be a great teacher,” he says, offering Rich such a post in a local school.

“And if I was, who would know it?” Rich asks.

“You would know it; your pupils would know it – and so would God. Not a bad public.” More returns.

But Rich has set his sights on the political summit – and eventuallyperjures himself and betrays More – in order to become attorney general for Wales. More goes to the block.

Rich pesters More because he sees himself as being ‘out’ as well as ‘down’. More is a doorway ‘into’ the charmed circle of Henry’s court. If you are ‘in’ you are also ‘up’. So when More does not let him in, Rich tries another door – the unscrupulous Thomas Cromwell. Cromwell’s price is Rich’s perjury.

Here too we find the connection between ‘wanting to be’, personal corruption, and the desire to climb. The ‘higher’ we are, the more people will see us, and the ‘greater’ we become. Herein too lies the extraordinary power of modern electronic media. Alexander the Great’s desire to ‘conquer the world’ can be achieved today by an Andre Agassi, or a Tom Cruise – for each is known globally via the TV and cinema screen.

“Top of the world, Ma”, “We’re going to the Top”, “The Jet Set” – these familiar clichés also connect fulfilment with elevation – as though the world actually had a ‘top’. The building of political empires followed the same logic – to subject a world conceived as planar to a single political edifice at the centre. George Bush is probably as close to fulfilling Alexander’s ambition as anyone will ever get – hopefully.

But what happens to this logic when we reflect that Earth has no ‘top’, that every one of us occupies the same boundless surface, which has no ‘rim’ or ‘edge’ because it meets itself in all directions – and that logically therefore, since there is no ‘up’ we are all equal, and since there is no centre, no-one is ‘out’?

It follows that there is no need to ‘want to be’, for we already ‘are’.

In evolutionary terms, to get the global human population to this insight as quickly as possible, someone sometime had to affirm that no-one ever is ‘out’ or ‘below’. The man who set out to build a kingdom for all the rejected of the world – even before the limitless nature of human space was understood – and without violence or self-admiration – must surely take the prize. As a consequence we find the inclusive symbol of the cross on all continents – however ambiguously it may first have arrived.

However, the vertical structure of the church, the source of all the ambition within it – is now a serious barrier to the growth of this spiritual insight, and a relic of the flat earth consciousness of antiquity. The investment of so much reverence in the person of the Pope – despite the historical evidence that God does not invest all grace there – creates a ‘wannabe’ culture within the church itself – as Cardinal Gantin confirmed when complaining about episcopal careerism just a year or so ago.

What is the implication of organising monster meetings for the central purpose of getting close to the Pope, other than the notion that we thereby come closer to God than we can be in our own backyard or parish church? What is the implication of a papal ‘court’ other than the notion that this man is most worthy, more ‘in’ and higher ‘up’ than we?

Were the Pope on the other hand to insist that no-one needs to ‘want to be’ anyone other than he or she is – for all are equally important – what then? In asking the church to reconsider how his office might be exercised, John Paul II draws us closer to this eventuality also.

Nothing is more certain than the need to challenge the ‘wannabe’ problem head on. Adolescent girls starve themselves because they want to be the super slim model they see on the catwalk. Young men may often deny themselves participation in sport because they don’t possess the idealised physique that TV sports coverage tells them they should have. Self-rejection is a primary factor in suicide, clinical depression, addiction, and criminality. The political corruption we are currently uncovering in Ireland is clearly a result of ‘wanting to be’ the lavish Irish country squire – the centre of attention and power.

And ‘wanting to be’ is also at the root of rampant consumerism and environmental decay. Advertising has discovered that our sense of our own inadequacy can be exploited by associating consumer wares with the people we ‘want to be’.

Which means that ‘sin’ is centrally concerned with self-dislike and the self-advancement that follows. The fixation that sexual desire is the root of all evil is entirely misplaced. The Decalogue connects even adultery with covetousness – the desire to possess what someone else already has. The media deliberately create sexual desire by creating sexual stereotypes – icons of desirability to create dissatisfaction with the partners we already have.

The current Blairite craze for ‘meritocracy’ should be another target of spiritual awareness – for it implies a pyramid of worthiness without ever clarifying that most of the ‘worthy’ have simply purchased their privilege by virtue of an historical advantage that has nothing to do with ‘merit’. The principle that ‘everyone should be able to rise to whatever position their talent and efforts deserve’ implies a level playing field to begin with, an inequality of worthiness, and a perfect arbiter to determine who is worthy – while apparently the possession of vast inherited wealth and a drone lifestyle do not disqualify. The whole notion is palpable nonsense – a thin disguise for mere selfishness, and a source of disillusionment to those who find themselves rejected.

It disguises also the self-regard of the merely clever, and the elevation of a narrow kind of intelligence to power and privilege. Education today increasingly emphasises its capability to ‘change your life’ by making us ‘everything you want to be’. Thus, merely knowing has become more important than understanding, mere information more important than wisdom.

It is no accident either that meritocratic Britain is critically short of nurses and teachers – ‘wanting to be’ is taking over from wanting to serve.

Another wannabe problem results from the prominence given to theological expertise in the church – and especially the notion that the more theology one knows the wiser one necessarily becomes. This prominence creates the theological wannabe. Wisdom has to do with quality of being, not quantity of knowing. Of course we must know what lies at the summit of the hierarchy of truth, but this is essentially quite simple: that each of us is infinitely loved by the creator of all being, and can never be alienated from that love. To peddle the notion that we can only arrive at this understanding by subjecting ourselves to a course in theology is essentially to do what the lawyers were accused of doing: using the key of knowledge to prevent others from entering, while not entering themselves. Here, I believe, we find the reason that theology often leads to nothing but arid debate – pride enters in to convince us that our greater knowledge entitles us to greater respect. The internet is often a theological battlefield as protagonists aspire to be ‘right’ when the only source of wisdom is the compulsion to love and let be.

As we mull over the strange failure of Catholic education to develop in Ireland a community at peace with itself, and in love with God, we need to acknowledge that in buying into the secular meritocratic mirage we pulled from underneath ourselves the essential truth: that respect cannot be merited. We owe one another respect because we are all equally flawed, yet equally and infinitely loved by the same God, and cannot add another cubit to our height, whatever we achieve.

“For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” (Mark 8:36)

Discovery of the soul is discovery of the self – the self that we don’t wannabe, the core of our being that God knows and loves. We need urgently to acknowledge the power of global media to alienate us from the wisdom to be content to be ourselves – and counter it at every turn – by telling every wannabe that he or she already – gloriously – is.

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Twelve Steps to Being Christian

Addiction, Articles, Honour, Papacy, Shame, Spirituality, , , , ,

Sean O’Conaill © The Furrow 2001

How are we to understand and explain the basic vocabulary of Christianity today? It is a truism that people no longer understand ‘Sin’ as our grandparents did – which means that ‘Salvation’ too becomes problematic. Told recently that ‘Jesus Saves’ my twenty-one year old sceptical son inquired ‘at what rate of interest? Most of his generation wishes above all to be saved from the saved – so we surely need to revisit the original story of salvation to understand what relevance it might have in the twenty-first century.

Richard Rohr, the American Franciscan, helps us part of the way by observing that in this era most of the deepest spiritual work is being done in the basements rather than the naves of churches in the US. There, closest to the earth, the twelve-step programmes for alcoholics, gamblers, compulsive shoppers, partner-beaters and every other kind of self-destructive addict are worked through. It is clear that we live in a deeply addictive culture that – in the media cliché – ‘ruins lives’. What is the root of this addictiveness, and how does it relate to ‘sin’ as Jesus might have understood it? And how does the invocation of a ‘higher power’ – the basic strategy of the twelve-step program – relate to what he taught?

Talking recently to a close friend who is working through such a programme, I was struck by his insistence that the invariable problem of the addict is low or even non-existent self-esteem. A childhood deprivation of parental care or affection, an experience of abuse or systematic bullying or humiliation in early life, an inability to keep a job or a partner – these and other examples of rejection, failure, derision or contempt keep cropping up. And the result in the addict is a pervasive sense of shame and fear, a chronic inability to love the self.

‘Blessed are the poor in spirit.’ What happens if we translate ‘poor in spirit’ as self-rejecting – bankrupt of self-esteem – rather than as simply poor in an economic sense?

Coming at this as an historian rather than a theologian I see the ancient world as everywhere a pyramid of esteem or worthiness. At its summit in Jesus’s time were Roman God-Emperors whose exaltation had usually emerged out of military rivalry and conquest. Essentially this applied even in the Jewish world view, where David, the Lord’s anointed, was archetypally a military hero, the boy-slayer of the Philistine giant Goliath and father of Solomon, builder of the first temple.

And it was Herod’s temple in Jesus’ time that was the focal point of the religion of most Jews, the place where sacrificial propitiation of the Deity took place.

But those who came to John for baptism must have been outside the temple system – and the key to this is to understand that temple sacrifice and expiation was a relatively expensive business, involving the hiring of religious lawyers for advice, the purchase of sacrificial offerings, and the making of a pilgrimage to Jerusalem – all seriously problematic for those at the base of the economic pyramid.

It followed from this that the poor were thus also usually the poorest in spirit, the lowest in self-esteem, the shamed, the sinners – the ones looking for an inexpensive route to ritual cleanliness and divine forgiveness. These were the people who followed John and Jesus. Peter’s astonishment over Jesus’ observation that the rich would have trouble entering his kingdom tells us this also: good fortune was interpreted then as evidence of divine favour; ill fortune as proof of God’s anger. This was the reason that Jesus’ forgiveness of sin – offered freely to those who sought his help, without any interrogation – was so astonishing to his disciples, and so bitterly opposed by the hierarchs whose power rested upon respect for the Temple system.

‘You are beloved of God’: this was Jesus insistent message to those who had felt excluded – and this is the Good News. It follows that Jesus was overturning the pyramid of esteem of the Ancient World – and that this was the fundamental reason for Christianity’s growth within the Roman Empire also in the early centuries. Evangelisation was the doorway into divine esteem for those who thought they could never enter. And it was also an entry into the church as community.

‘You are loved by God’ was not, however, news at all to those who already held position in the older Pagan and Jewish pyramids of esteem. They felt sure of it already.

How then did Christianity become in the end so often associated with social respectability, coercion and sexual fear; and salvation a hypothetical eternal life insurance – pie in the sky by-and-by?

History again provides the answer. Christianity’s own success was eventually noticed by one of the many upwardly mobile military adventurers of the ancient world. “In this sign, conquer” – this was the message conveniently seen by Constantine underneath a fiery cross on his way to the battle of the Milvian bridge. Most Christian hierarchs tragically swallowed this gambit whole – as an offer they couldn’t refuse – and the result was a marriage of Christianity with the state that was to persist for more than fifteen hundred years. Augustine’s identification of sin with wayward sexuality rather than social unworthiness allowed the upper classes (of which he was a member) to retain their social eminence as well as their sense of chosenness. Conversion usually became a matter of attaching first the rulers of kingdoms rather than their subjects – these would soon follow out of deference.

It followed inexorably that Christianity would become associated with respectability and coercion, and that gradually the meaning of the story recited in the creeds – would become lost. In particular we lost the meaning of Jesus’ social descent as an expression of divine solidarity with the ‘losers’ of the ancient world. Medieval theology came to explain the crucifixion as the price exacted by a divine system of justice which insisted that God’s ‘honour’ demanded satisfaction by nothing less than the death of his son. Thus the ruling classes of the Middle Ages redefined God in their own image, scapegoating him for the death of Christ, and thus eventually making ‘salvation’ wholly unintelligible. It became merely inclusion in a scheme of divine providence that must wait upon the death of the one ‘saved’. It followed also that it need not mean full inclusion in the benefits of community on earth, and so became valueless to those who remained excluded from it.

But in our own time when the educated classes have mostly followed the Enlightenment in concluding that Christianity was nonsense, this opened the way for the retrieval of the meaning of the crucifixion by those at the base of our own pyramids of esteem in this era. The ‘junkie’ – the one discarded – is the very image of the stone discarded that became the cornerstone of the early church. The crucifixion is essentially not about the physical pain of Jesus, but about acceptance of the obverse of glory – ultimate shame and humiliation – and this can now be recovered when the socially esteemed can find no meaning in it.

The implications of this for evangelisation, and for how we think of ‘church’, are profound. In particular those who wish to revive Christianity in the third millennium must understand that social vertigo is the greatest barrier to success. We need to advance on two fronts – attacking the complacency and the intellectual assumptions of those at the summit of our own pyramids of esteem today, and learning to lose our inherited prejudices towards the socially outcast, the ‘losers’ of the world.

It must surely be obvious that if we organise life as a race, losers must outnumber winners. It follows inexorably that the root cause of failure is nothing other than the worship of ‘success’. Even a meritocracy involves judgement and rejection, i.e. crucifixion. That the UK’s chief executive should be both an enthusiastic meritocrat and an avowed Christian shows how far we need to go still in disentangling one from the other. All pyramids of esteem inevitably create shame at their base.

For on what Christian grounds should we declare that some are entitled to esteem, while others are not? If the answer is that those who don’t work don’t deserve esteem, why then do we tolerate those who live on nothing other than shrewd investments? For their shrewdness? If so our kingdom is for the shrewd only – and our world becomes an intellectual pyramid of esteem, deadly for those whose gifts may lie in other directions. Is this intelligent? More important, is it wise? Most important, is it Christian?

For me, the essence of Christianity is the assertion of the eternal and equal value of every single human person, irrespective of race, intelligence, gender, wealth or whatever. It follows logically that everyone is equally important, equally to be cherished. And that the cult of celebrity must be a target of a revived Christianity also. No-one ever was, ever is, or ever will be, more ‘worth it’ than anyone else.

It follows inexorably also that churches cannot be pyramids of esteem. As a lay Catholic I am now totally alienated from the papal system as it has been exercised in this overlong pontificate. The Pope’s own invitation to the church to reconsider how this office should be exercised should be accepted with alacrity, for celebrity Popes cannot undermine pyramids of esteem without attacking celebrity per se. The notion that you can re-evangelise the west by elevating a single individual to semi-sacred status, upon whose every word we all must hang, is the residual myth of a bankrupt Christendom. It ignores the patently obvious fact that by loading spiritual dignity onto one individual you withdraw it from the rest – the root cause of the sense of spiritual inferiority and incompetence that afflicts many lay Catholics today. It is also spiritually obtuse and abusive, for it deprives even the ordinary Christian of the gift given by Christ – a sense of our own dignity as brother or sister of the Lord. No title can bestow greater honour than this – not even Pope.

Remarkably, one of the essential characteristics of the twelve-step process is the absence of hierarchy, the complete equality of all participants. All acknowledge their own brokenness, so none can claim precedence. Equally, no-one can be shamed or rejected. Yet the need for repentance – for taking full responsibility for all the hurt one has caused to others – is emphasised as an essential part of the process.

“Which of us is the greatest?” This insistent question from the disciples warns us that pride afflicts pastors also. Jesus’s response tells us that the essence of Christian community is nothing other than moral equality.

To the objection that only hierarchy can protect truth there is a simple answer. The creeds hierarchies protect have virtually lost their meaning in the very creation of ecclesiastical hierarchy, including the altogether scandalous notion of ‘princes of the church’. As history proved time and time again – for example, in the Crusades – it is perfectly possible to recite a verbal formula summarising the love of God one moment, and to disembowel someone the next. The urgent task of all Christians is to recover fully the meaning of the creeds. The only recoverable meaning that can change our world for the better is that God in allowing his son to be crucified renounced his own hierarchical privilege in favour of reclaiming those at the base of all worldly hierarchies. If hierarchical Christianity cannot rise to the challenge of such a God, it is unworthy of Him, and deserves to die.

On the other hand, it is the addict’s recognition of his brokenness in that of Jesus on Calvary that suggests that not even the Constantines of this world can prevail in the end. It is the shamed – the most prodigal sons and daughters – who can speak with greatest understanding of the love of the one who scans the horizon for their return, and even sends them his most precious son to meet them at the moment of their own ultimate humiliation.

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Irish Catholicism: A church in need

Articles, Clericalism, Paternalism, , , , , ,

Sean O’Conaill © Céide, 2001

The Irish wake is our traditional rural solution to the problem of radical discontinuity – especially the death of someone who has dominated our emotional landscape. We are shocked into huddling together – not simply to remember the departed, but to occupy the space that must otherwise remain a vacuum. Whatever roles and responsibilities are now vacant must fall on other shoulders – and the sons and daughters of a departed parent will in this moment begin their growth into a new reality, welcomed into it by the extended family and friendship network they will now need.

The problem of Irish Catholicism today is essentially the presence of a corpse that is unacknowledged – so that no wake has been formally declared. The corpse is that of clerical Catholicism – an inculturation of the gospels which has been, until very recently, obsessed with the dangers of sexual desire and blind to the moral problems of presumption, power and ambition. Sacraments revolved largely around cleansing after sexual error (from which their ministers were supposedly exempt); justice was a secondary issue that could remain forever aspirational; salvation had nothing to do with psychic health in this life; the gospels were effectively owned by an elitist male and avowedly celibate and secretive order that could never see the second temptation of Jesus as the temptation to climb a priestly career pyramid. Instead the cult of the papacy was essentially a celebration of ultimate success in that process, and it was the Pope who in the end would interpret the gospels.

And thus the relevance of the gospels to the secular pyramid of privilege, power and presumption, now rising ever higher under the many cranes in Ireland, has almost been lost. Catholic Ireland since the famine has managed to create a society almost as layered and unjust as the one next door – with the complicity of an educational system which trumpeted its Catholic ethos. The secular elite thus produced, would, (the theory went), make Ireland Catholic forever, from the top down. That Jesus was protesting about the very existence of any social or clerical pyramid of esteem never became part of the curriculum – with the result that our secular elite feel absolutely no qualms about their building of another, and can ditch Christianity altogether when it falls out of intellectual fashion.

Although school bullying has always been a feature of Catholic education, it never registered with the Tridentine church that the process is simply a childish re-enactment of the power game that has always gone on in the world, by which leaders become leaders, and the weak become victims – the process of crucifixion archetypally revealed by Jesus of Nazareth. That event had to be seen in isolation from all other crucifixions as part of a divine program which would also explain why the Church was a clerical estate. We laity pinned Jesus to the cross by our sexual indiscipline – God’s supposed obsession: damnation would inevitably follow unless we accepted the only possible means of escape – subordination to, and support of, clergy and their sacramental system. That this effectively scapegoated the first person of the Trinity for the crucifixion never seemed to register with most theologians, for they were clergy too.

So, when we say ‘Glory be to the Father, Son and Holy Spirit’ we do not associate ‘glory’ with ‘fame’ and ‘celebrity’ – its contemporary reality. That the shining of a spotlight on some has always corrupted them, while allowing others to be abused in the shadows, and that, in rejecting the worldly glory that went with military dominance Jesus was also questioning the essence of human hierarchy, could not be seen. So our intelligentsias can now tout ‘meritocracy’ as the end of history, never questioning their own merit – for are they not in control? The iron law of all history – that if some must merit eminence and wealth, then many more others must also merit neglect and poverty – must never surface in the ‘spin’.

And that the bible reveals this more clearly than any other book could never be acknowledged by a central clerical apparatus fixated on the ‘power of the media’, determined to put their own man in the spotlight, and to keep him there. Christianity ceased to be the ethic of humility lived by Christ, and liveable by anyone, and instead became whatever the Pope would choose to say next – and of course he would say it as beautifully as possible, dressed in virginal white in the centre of vast crowds, and headed for the top spot of Time’s Man of the Year. That no-one could follow such an act never seemed to register – and this too is part of the unacknowledged corpse of the clerical system – to define a model of spiritual excellence that must remain sterile.

Yet all can empathise with an old man in decline, now a powerful symbol of a system also in terminal decline. His greatest achievement has been the acknowledgement of the church’s long association with betrayal of the gospels in the areas of intolerance, violence and injustice, and this must inevitably take us sometime to an acknowledgment that the beginning of that problem was the hierarchical acceptance of state patronage in return for clerical support for secular hierarchy and its corollary – victimisation. That popes could ever have practised capital punishment and crucifixion of minorities is traceable to no other source – and John Paul II’s call for a review of how the papacy should operate may take us in time to a pope as free of panoply and crowd control as the dalai lama. Such a pope will insist that no-one ever was unimportant to God – that all are therefore equally, infinitely important. He will then ask the media to go away and film Christ in the 250 million children around the world who are living in slavery.

So what we need, and what we are inexorably approaching, is an extended Irish wake for a way of being church that is now truly dead. Compassionate towards those in denial of this, we need – female and male, young and old – to build together a church that is intimate, gentle, egalitarian, open, courageous, just – and related, like the old Celtic church, to the soil, the humus, of Ireland. There is no immediate prospect of Rome initiating an Irish wake, so why not let let the dead bury the dead, while the living gather to shoulder tomorrow?

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