"In the beginning..."

I have a confession. Not the oddest thing for a Catholic to say but there it is. I never memorised the Apostles’ Creed. For years sitting in Mass I would have to mumble my way through the Creed, like the middle lines in my school’s war cry. The Gloria I was all over, the Holy Holy Holy  was all good, the Lord’s Prayer a doddle. But the Creed? I can still see the pictures in the prayer book Mum bought to help us learn the Mass, as well as the two pages of type that made up the Creed. And although the rest lodged in my memory, for some reason the Creed never stuck. As an actor I have had to learn much larger speeches so I thought one day I should sit down and learn the Creed just as if it were a speech. But I never got around to it.

And now it’s all changed. Australian Catholics are now using a new translation of the Mass, which has altered many of our responses and prayers. These aren’t huge – we aren’t suddenly saying the Jews or the Protestants were right,  you know – but they are significant. If you go to Mass these days, you are given a large card with all the responses and prayers. – our new script. This is supposed to a more accurate translation of the Latin Mass

For example, “The Lord be with you” the Priest starts, to which our response has been since Vatican II (I think) “And also with you”. Now we are to respond “And with your spirit.”  In Latin the exchange was “Dominus Vobiscum. Et cum spiritu tuo.” Even I can see the Spirit is mentioned there but not in the English translation. And so I assume this translation is better. Mind you, years of habit die hard and even with the script in hand the old response pops out before you realize it. I suppose we will get used to it.

Because the words do matter. I mentioned elsewhere that poetry is where we go when words are not enough. Music has the same function. People, as in a well-written musical, will use music because what they feeling goes beyond what they can say. And so in Mass we have prayer and music and ritual, in an attempt to codify spiritual experience. We can only talk about God in metaphor. There is I think a deluded arrogance in the idea, shared by believers and atheists alike, that we should be able to understand God, a being or a spirit that has existed forever and can create space and time and universes. Do you really think if you met God, if you could, you’d be on the same wavelength? Or do you think it would be like an intellectual meeting between you, say, and a bacterium?  

It has been the trend for some years now to try and humanize God, to normalize the religious experience. And so we have had the Bible translated into flatter and flatter prose, which wouldn’t excite or interest you in a newspaper article but was somehow supposed to take us toward the Ineffable. I remember Stephen Fry satirizing a trendy vicar, talking about the Bible being about a guy on the streets, rapping with the kids. But we have fallen into a well-intentioned trap here. By trying to make it seem approachable, we have suggested the religious experience is explicable, ordinary and finite. But in a real sense it is strange and inhuman. Which is why we use poetry, song, ritual and depending on your religion chants and dance to deal with it – and have always done so, long before Jesus or even the Jews came along. 

That’s also why the Bible sounds better in archaic language. We are entering into an area where our everyday words are inadequate. No-one in Elizabethan England spoke in the rich cadences of the King James Bible, but the richness of the language was a metaphor for the potential richness of the experience. No-one these days speaks in the flat and dreary English of the Good News Bible, but the language is still a metaphor, suggesting what we are reading or hearing is dull and ordinary. Both Bibles are a result of stylistic choices. I know which approach works better for me.

And now there’s the option of two Creeds, the Nicean and the Apostles'.  I approach Mass with the same thought as Week 3 of rehearsal – I’ll never learn these bloody lines!

Forgiveness

The other day, a racist, homophobic, totalitarian, intolerant, misogynist mass murderer was killed. I refer of course to Osama bin Laden. Some people celebrated the event, some felt we should somehow be ashamed it happened. I felt, I must say, glad the man was dead. I wasn't going to burst into the street cheering nor on the other hand was I going to join the hand-wringing. The world is better off without such people. The man reaped what he had sewn. Those who live by the sword die by the sword. (Little bit Biblical that - and always worth remembering.)

Some pastors and priests put him on their Remembrance list in their parish newsletters. That's a list of people who have died or whose anniversaries occured during the week, the idea being the parishioners pray for their souls. They expected their move to be controversial. I didn't hear what came of the approach. It didn't happen in my parish but I thought the idea a sound one. It was a challenge to our ideals, and one that we should accept. We should pray for those who hate us. Edith Cavell, about to be murdered by her German captors in WWI,  set herself the challenge we should all be conscious of: "Patriotism is not enough. I must have no hatred or bitterness towards anyone."

Forgiveness is, I think, one of the gifts of Christianity. I don't believe the concept had much currency in older religions and societies. I could be wrong but that's the idea I have. Even if that is incorrect, it is fair to say that forgiveness is one of the keystones of Christianity, and a key to a better world. Jesus told us to love our enemies. If that wasn't enough, he also said we should love our neighbours, which may be even tougher. It's easier I think to forgive a man who lived in a cave or a luxury house halfway across the world and who killed people in other countries ten years ago, than it is the neighbour who has the drum-kit, the loud car and the wild parties when you have to work the next day. I have a friend who has hurt me, and I am still working through forgiving him. I have a friend who I hurt. I hope she has forgiven me. Forgiveness is a simple word, but a difficult concept.

That said I'm not sure I have forgiven bin Laden. His crimes were monstrous, not only in his mass-killings but the harm he has done to world society. He has helped to bring back sectarianism to a world that desperately didn't need it. He has created a mistrust of Islam which it will take moderate Islamists years, decades to overcome - if they even can. He may be dead but his legacy of violence and division will linger. Still I accept it behoves me to forgive him, and will continue to try to do so. What will that feel like? I am not sure.

Incidentally, people often call the fundamentalist Islamists 'medieval'. If only. Medieval Islam was a curious, outward-looking, tolerant, scientifically progressive society. As Karen Armstrong in her excellent The Battle for God shows, fundamentalism - whether it be Christian, Islamic or Jewish - is a modern creation of the 19th century.

Hello and welcome.

This is a blog about me and God. That's a big subject but small at the same time. The title comes from a quotation I just discovered from Voltaire: Doubt is uncomfortable, certainty ridiculous. I have no idea what the context of that is, but to me it speaks to me of belief and disbelief in God, and I think it is true. We would love to know but we cannot, and it is ridiculous to pretend otherwise. There are many insistent voices in the argument of belief and atheism. In the first place, it shouldn't be an argument, it should be a discussion. But there is a lack of respect, on both sides, for those who hold a different view. And what I am surprised by is the number of people who insist they know. It is my belief there is no scientific proof of God, no more than is scientific proof that there is no God. There are only facts that we can infer from, and then we make our leap - of faith, or lack thereof.

Someone once said that a good newspaper is a country talking to itself. My blogs, this is my second, I think are me talking to myself. I do not posit myself as a great or original thinker. So perhaps this blog will contain no great insights, no original thoughts.  But it will let me try to arrange my ideas into some sort of system, for want of a better word, so perhaps I can see what I am thinking in this area. If you want to see as well, please do.

I decided to create this blog this afternoon during Mass. I went to St Francis' in the city, which is the oldest Catholic church in the city. It has a wooden-panelled ceiling, with an ornate side chapel, and other features I won't list - I'm not an architectural writer. It's quite beautiful.

Today I found Mass quite the struggle. I didn't know any of the hymns and could barely hear the choir so that was no fun. They did use Beethoven's 'Ode to Joy' but with generic and ill-fitting lyrics - not much joy at all. The old ones from my youth, 'Come, sing a song of joy, for peace will come my brother/ Sing sing a song a joy, so men shall love another' have disappeared on the altar of equality, which is fair enough I suppose, but the replacements are so bloodless and uninspiring. Surely we can do better.

Only twice did I feel connected: the sign of peace and my own prayer after Communion. The sign of peace is one of my favourite moments of the Mass, when for a moment we turn and acknowledge the other members of the congregation. We smile at each other, shake hands and say 'Peace be with you'. That's a lovely thing to say. And how joyful would it be if we did have peace within ourselves.

My prayer after Communion I found most affecting. Before the Mass I had offered my doubt to God, and then the gospel was the story of St Thomas, the Doubter. That can happen. And though I cannot remember the content of my prayer, I had a strong physical reaction to it. It was powerful, though I cannot say why.

But for the rest of the time, I was bored, disconnected and thinking about other things. But that's okay. Prayer is like anything else. It doesn't always work but unless we keep doing it, it never will. Maybe tomorrow will be better.

So there you have it, a rambling wander through a few moments of my day.