Religion

Long ago and far away, small children used to arm-wrestle their siblings for the privilege of opening a door in a cardboard Advent calendar. It was reward enough to find a picture of an angel or an awestruck donkey. How quaint that now seems. Because then Cadbury saw an opportunity and launched an alternative calendar, with little chocolate inducements. I mean, which would you choose, the donkey or a chocolate button? It was a no-brainer. Childhood, which used to end around the time you were tall enough to reach a clocking-in machine, now drifts on and on. Grown men forget to leave home, women in their fifties buy colouring books, and we are all exhorted to cosset our inner infant. Treat yourself. Go on, you know you deserve it.

Last month, the Vatican and the Chinese Communist party announced the renewal of a two-year agreement on the appointment of bishops in China. Under the deal in 2018, the Catholic Church lifted the excommunication of bishops hand-picked by the atheist CCP and formally recognized them. Besides interfering in such appointments, Beijing subjects Chinese Catholic congregations to state regulation and the reeducation of what it considers insubordinate priests. These methods are evidence of the party’s efforts to cull Catholicism of the traditions, doctrines, and practices that have defined the faith for millennia.  Anyone who prizes religious freedom worldwide should be disturbed. Why is Beijing so hostile toward those looking to practice their faith according to their conscience?

Over the weekend, more than a hundred religious figures from across the different faiths launched a legal challenge against the ban on communal worship in England. They claim the Covid restrictions are a violation of their basic human right to freedom of religious expression. Leaders from the Anglican and Catholic churches, as well as the Muslim Council of Britain, are in agreement on how unfair they view the ban. It's difficult to think of a cogent argument against their position.  For background, I am an atheist. Raised in a Catholic family, I never truly believed, even as a small child. Atheism has been something that has been with me throughout my whole life. Yet the argument that those of faith should be allowed the freedom of communal worship is compelling.

Of all the sad and surreal things to happen in the past few months, the Catholic church’s decision to abandon the dying was, for me, the worst. The Church of England abandoned its churches, forbidding first congregants then priests from setting foot in them, making it clear that in fact it actively dislikes church buildings. But the Catholic church in England betrayed the people who needed it most: the men and women who found themselves in the awful eye of the storm, dying of Covid-19 without family and, as it turned out, without even the possibility of a priest.

If only God had clearly decreed exactly what sort of music he wanted us to make in church. For uncertainty on this matter is highly problematic. If only he had said, for example, unaccompanied female voices on weekdays and an all-male choir on Sundays, with nothing composed before 1800 and no stringed instruments, except at Christmas. Or something else, similarly specific. The Calvinists of the sixteenth century decided that he had said something of this sort: no music at all, except for chanted Psalms. You can imagine the Dean of Sheffield Cathedral feeling a flicker of sympathy for this position. For Sheffield Cathedral has announced that its choir is not working and needs a fresh start.

Though you wouldn’t know it from most American media outlets, the phenomenon of vandalizing and burning religious sites which is accelerating in Europe has, like a virus, jumped an ocean and is now among us. Over the past month, statues of Christ and the Virgin Mary have been damaged in states as far apart as Colorado, Missouri, New York, Tennessee, and Massachusetts. On July 11, a vehicle was driven into a Catholic church in Florida with the clear intent of burning the building to the ground while congregants were inside. But it’s not just Catholic symbols and edifices being targeted. America’s Jewish community has received similar treatment.

The only memorable argument I have ever heard in that tedious debate about whether Shakespeare was a Catholic came from the poet Tom Paulin. I remember him claiming in a lecture that the ‘bare ruin’d choirs’ sonnet must have been written by someone who had seen the despoiled monasteries, desecrated churches and ravaged holy places of a faith of which they were a part. Famously, such an argument only gets you so far, for by this logic Shakespeare was also a king, empress, ex-king, sailor, magician and fool, among many hundreds of others. But part of the rationale stayed with me. Which is that the bitterest truth of all is that loving a thing does not mean you can protect it, and that even the things you consider most sacred can be trampled over.

During these months of inertia, I confess to having on occasion made illicit trips to churches in the English countryside. Enjoying the frisson that surely accompanies all law-breaking, I have often gone so far as the church door, there to examine not only the locks and bolts but also the laminated notices which adorn so many buildings of the Church of England. The other week I visited a 12th-century church whose laminated instructions were an especially fine example of their kind. These signs informed the visitor that the church was closed due to the Covid crisis and that God can of course be worshipped anywhere, but (and this part was underlined) ‘not here’. A little harsh, that wording, I thought.

The closing of churches Sir: Stephen Hazell-Smith is quite right in writing that churches should re-open (Letters, 18 April), however the issue is now more fundamental. Recent weeks have demonstrated a crisis of leadership in almost every aspect of national life, excluding the Queen, who has exercised a spiritual leadership made necessary by the failure of bishops. The closing of churches may be seen as a defining moment in the life of the Church of England. As the Archbishop of Canterbury broadcast from his kitchen on Easter Day, impervious to the damage his ‘leadership’ has caused, many Anglican clergy and people I know looked to the image of the Pope in an almost empty St Peter’s, and saw the true image of Christian service.

The toad who lives at the bottom of the garden in the pile of bricks beneath the potting table was very happy with his new plunge pool. I made it on a particularly slow afternoon when I had run out of ideas for things to do. It was either make a toad Jacuzzi or darn socks, so naturally Mr Toad lucked out. Before that, I tidied the cellar, going through all the laundry bags full of horse tackle. I sorted and bagged rugs, cleaned and polished bridles, reorganised my ever-burgeoning collection of multicoloured lead ropes, overreach boots and numnahs, and even sorted out all the saddle soaps and boot polishes. From the back windows of the houses around me drifted the urgent sounds of people working from home, barking instructions such as, ‘Listen, guys, we need to nail this issue!

On Saturday evening, Christians will prepare for an Easter unlike any other. With every church closed, from St Paul’s Cathedral to the meanest country chapel, Anglican worshippers will be directed to a website where lay leaders, priests and bishops will hold a ‘virtual vigil’ ending at dawn on Easter Sunday. In Westminster Cathedral, the mother church of Catholics in England and Wales, a deacon will sing the great Easter proclamation known as the Exsultet. But this year, when the final syllable dies away, he will look out into the nave and see row upon row of vacant seats. It’s faith, but without the faithful. It’s happening the world over. This week Jewish families were forced to celebrate the Passover Seder without guests for the first time.