Extremely difficult to use any words about God

Michael Harding's 'Staring at Lakes' is a best seller.

The coumn below appears in this week's Independent News and Media's Irish regional newspapers.

By Michael Commane
I’m more than half way through Michael Harding’s ‘Staring at Lakes’. The book has been well advertised and Harding appeared on The Saturday Night Show, plus a number of radio programmes. The PR has been extremely clever.

The author writes a weekly column in a daily newspaper and also has a number of novels to his name. I’m embarrassed to say it but I only came across him about six months ago when someone suggested I read his column that week.

I remember the first time I heard Terry Wogan on BBC Radio Two, thinking that I could do what he was doing every bit as well as he. But that of course is the real sign of genius or excellence – when someone makes something look so simple.

Reading Harding’s book I keep getting the urge to sit down and write ‘my story’, thinking that I could do it every bit as well as he does it. All that suggests is that Harding is a fantastic writer and so he is. He makes it look so simple. The book is magic, at least for me. There are added aspects to it or links between him and me that endears him to me. He is just a few years younger than I and he was a priest, albeit for a short time. And I suppose if I am truthful it is the priesthood thing that captivates me right through my read, at least as far as I am now.

The book is the story about him. There is a real and tangible effort to be as honest as possible. That might well lead to all sorts of dead-ends, back alleys, disasters, depression, stupidity, yes sadness. But it is that honesty that grips me. It also makes me roar with laughter.

He tries priesthood twice. The first time around he heads off to the seminary at 18 and stayed one year. He then did a BA and on completion of his primary degree goes back to Maynooth being ordained a priest in 1981. But within a short few years of ordination he realises that it’s not for him and leaves.

And even that is fascinating. Immediately I’m off thinking of some priests I know, who exude such an air of certainty, convinced about their ‘calling’. For the life of me I have never understood how anyone could be so certain about such a way of life.

Why is it that reading ‘Staring at Lakes’ I have been confronted with the God question nearly on every page and when I listen to some active priests, preach or write I’m bored to tears? I get the impression Harding is saying what he believes and thinks. Some priests give into the temptation of saying what is expected of them. Maybe that’s the way of the world. Indeed, that’s the way it is in the world of work. Managers are expected to toe the line. But is priesthood not meant to be something altogether different?

Okay there might be some of you who are saying, you either toe the line or get out. Does the Catholic Church really need a group of clones? Does the church really need a large cohort of yes men who will play every game in the book to get preferment?

There is not one single issue of faith that does not push us to the very core of our being in any attempt to get our heads around it.

Some months ago in criticism to a column I had written in which I asked some questions, a priest wrote a letter to the editor suggesting that a priest should really have the answers to such questions. How in God’s name can you have answers when it comes to God? It’s that cosy certainty that I find so difficult to understand. Once we say we believe in God and subscribe to a faith, we really are entering the realm of everything to do with mystery. Wonder too.

Could Michael Harding have written that book, line for line, had he remained a priest?

I don’t think so. More’s the pity.