Divining the ultimate truth is a tricky business

SO the Vatican is at variance with the views of many Irish Catholics.

Hardly a great surprise. There’s married priests and divorce and homosexuality, to name but a few of the contentious issues: though interestingly, no one even bothers asking Catholics about sex before marriage anymore; which if you didn’t know, is still a sin.

The media reports it all as if it is a political argument or an economics story: that this is an ‘internal row’ in which the liberals or conservatives will eventually prevail; or that the Catholic Church, like any other branded product, is grievously losing touch with its customer base: people who are now looking for something a bit more right-on in their religion — and will inevitably move to other aisles in the religious supermarket.

Usually, the explanation for this drift is that a) the Celtic Tiger made us all a bit more materialistic and secular and b) the rash of child abuse scandals led to a profound loss of faith in the church institutions. It would be silly to discount either of these factors, but perhaps they mask a more profound philosophical shift in the thinking of ordinary Catholics: not just in relation to the institutional church, but to religion and God; to the eternal questions of what it’s all about.

The Celtic Tiger may have made us all a bit more obsessed with decking and house prices, but it also inculcated into us a certain idea of freedom: a grasping, rather boorish version of it, yes, but nonetheless one where we felt we had more control over our destinies — which inevitably led to a questioning of pre-accepted truths. Along with that, an organisation that claimed to represent God on earth was found to be acting in anything but a divine manner.

And this development didn’t just undermine the Vatican — it undermined the idea that any organisation could truly represent ‘God’ at all. The Catholic Church, after all, has always claimed to be the One True Church, representing the Word of God in an unbroken line from St Peter; explaining everything from the Garden of Eden to the Second Coming. But if that church proves itself as self-serving and imperious as any other institution, then its adherents can hardly go off to find another One True Church. Catholicism either is the Real Deal or it isn’t. And if it isn’t, then it’s the same as any other religion.

Thus we enter the era where to be a ‘believer’ is a messy and subjective business: where the individual has their own conception of God and draws a distinction between their own beliefs and what any religion may wish to prescribe. ‘Religion’ may well become a matter of cultural or family habit or even geographical convenience. God is God as you see it, no matter what the owners of the church or mosque or synagogue may wish to tell you. Perhaps the One True Church is the one that doesn’t claim to be.