It’s so easy to play the religious game

This week’s column in The Kerryman newspaper.

Michael Commane

I have been causally watching what the commentators are saying about new Pope Leo; from my perspective most of it is leaning towards the right and being silly at the same time. Maybe right-wing thinking and silliness go together, especially in church matters. 

Sunday was the feast of the Ascension, some weeks earlier we had Easter Sunday, the feast of the Resurrection, next Sunday Christians celebrate the feast of Pentecost and then the following Sunday we celebrate the great feast of the Holy Trinity.

Outside of the clerical bubble and a small number of regular Mass goers I wonder what all those feasts, indeed, what all those words mean? The Ascension might remind people of an elderly man with a long beard living above the clouds and we call him ‘God’.

In 1984 Anglican priest David Jenkins was appointed Bishop of Durham. He had taught theology at Leeds University. He was a controversial figure and questioned the interpretation of many of the stories in the Bible. On the Ascension he said that at the time had he been there with a video camera he doubted he would have captured on film Jesus rising above the clouds. 

What do you think of that? Do you believe that Jesus headed upwards above the clouds on into blue skies? And dare I ask where are you with all that?

These Easter feasts all have a thread going through them. The feast of the Resurrection is about Jesus overcoming human death, the Ascension is the idea of Jesus returning to the Father, Pentecost is the Spirit of God living in our presence and then the feast of the Trinity is a reminder to us that this God we believe in is made up of three persons but three persons so perfectly united with each other that it is One. It is love gone mad, love so perfect that it is one. 

These Christian feasts are shouting at us that we who are made in God’s image are at our best when we are living in love, harmony and kindness with one another, a reality that has no hatred or wrong doing; respect is writ loud and clear.

Look at our world; the Middle East, Ukraine, Sudan, the divisions there are in every corner of the planet. 

How can there be billionaires living side by side with people who have nothing.

These Easter feasts are telling us of other possibilities. But of course we are not listening, so what do we do; we cliche them out of existence and turn them into some sort of pious games we use to satisfy and justify our own styles of living.

When I hear right-wing commentators spout that ‘Pope Leo is no Pope Francis II. Viva il Papa’ I laugh but really want to scream.

Why have so many in established religions placed such emphasis on aspects of the Christian faith that are simply not at the core of what it means to be Christian? I can’t help thinking so many have walked away because they know in their hearts that, that man with the beard above the clouds has nothing to do with the merciful God that Jesus Christ preached.