The 'Thinking Anew' column in The Irish Tmes today.
Michael Commane
Best-selling author John Grisham in his novel 'The Last Juror' tells the story of a young journalist Willie Traynor, who buys a poorly-run newspaper in Mississippi. The story hinges around the rape and murder of a young widow of two children, Rhoda Kassellaw. The perpetrator of the heinous crimes is Danny Padgitt a violent young man, who is a member of a family short in morals and big in all forms of crookery.
Willie finds his vocation editing and managing 'The Ford County Times' in Clanton. The Kassellaw rape and murder, and the corruption surrounding it catapults Willie into investigative and campaigning journalism. He's the man about town in Clanton. A kind and caring person too.
The novel is set in the 1970s, the war in Vietnam has claimed 50 thousand US lives and the young Willie Traynor is loud in his criticism of the war. He's a young idealistic journalist who believes in a fair deal for all, whites and blacks.
While there is no Catholic church in the surrounding towns and villages, there is a large number of churches where Christians of varying denominations worship. Willie is not a churchgoer but decides as part of his getting to know the place to take time out on Sundays to attend worship in all 88 churches in Ford County.
Concerning his church visits he writes: "More often than not the sermons were loud and long, and many times I wondered how such good people could drag themselves in week after week for a tongue-lashing. Some preachers were almost sadistic in their condemnation of whatever their followers might have done that week. “
“Everything was a sin in rural Mississippi and not just the basics as set forth in the Ten Commandments. I heard scathing rebukes of television, movies, cardplaying, popular magazines, sports events, cheerleader uniforms, desegregation, mixed-race churches, Disney - because it came on Sunday nights, dancing, social drinking, postmarital sex, everything."
Does it sound familiar?
Over recent Sundays, the Gospel has concerned itself with Eucharistic themes. This Sunday too, St John writes: "This is the bread come down from heaven; not like the bread our ancestors ate; they are dead, but anyone who eats this break will live forever."(John 6: 58)
The Mass is our highest form of prayer. It is also the community at prayer. The Mass has many aspects to it but one of its central themes is communion.
In my childhood, youth and early adulthood, people spoke about 'getting Mass'. Wasn't it a strange way of talking about a community at prayer? These days large numbers of Irish people don't 'get Mass' any longer.
It's far too easy to say that we live in a secularised world or, to quote TS Eliot how he "journeyed to London, to the timekept City, /Where the River flows, with foreign flotations. /There I was told: we have too many churches, /And too few chop-houses."
Have we forgotten about the communion aspect of Holy Communion/the Eucharist/the Mass? Has the central prayer of the Christian churches become some sort of overly-pious exercise that's out of step with how we live our lives?
Have ministers of religion prattled on talking much nonsense for far too long? Ordinary people will “talk with their feet” and walk away when what they hear from the pulpit does not chime with the lives they live.
Is much of the current anger and alienation that we are witnessing the result of years of neglect and a silly style of pious religion? It made life easy for the high priests but now it is all collapsing.
Unfortunately in the shadows there is a tendency to hark back to an old church, an old “piousity” professed by self-styled 'religious' groups who claim an inner track to God.
For the Eucharist, Communion and Mass to be real, to be holy and make sense, they must convey the genuine prayer of the people. In addressing God, we must always be prayerful, devout, and thankful. God does not want us to put on a show.
In all his wandering around churches, despite journalism’s innate scepticism, Willie Traynor is impressed, inspired too by Pastor Cooper, who was at peace with himself. His sermon was about tolerance and love. "Love was Christ's principal message", John Grisham's Willie Traynor tells us.
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