The papal plane flew down to Africa, he got out, kissed the tarmac, then had a good wash and got on with the business of looking at poor people. He spoke on a number of subjects, one of which was the ever-controversial topic of family planning. I suppose because he was on his holidays he’d given the subject some thought. Well, you have to when you travel, don’t you? The Catholic plan for families is that they should be absolutely massive. The bigger the better. Hundreds of children please, the poorer the better, just keep ’em coming. If you can squeeze a baby out every time you think about the opposite sex, then God will be well pleased. Jesus loved children – blessed are the children; Jesus also loved the poor – blessed are the poor. So imagine how blessed you’d be if you had lots of poor children. Double blessed, right?
I’m not sure why exactly but huge families with next to nothing seem to uphold their Catholicism extremely well. This has been particularly effective where education has been a sparse commodity and, for those lucky enough to get any at all, the learning comes soaked through with Catholic dogma. I suppose if you’re poor and struggling to feed your children, the promise of God’s love and salvation would take on a very special appeal. Add to that a few good scare stories of a vengeful and jealous God watching your every move, limit reading material and access to health care, and bingo – your Catholic stew is ready to simmer. The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. In this case, the Lord giveth to the Vatican and the Lord taketh away from much of the rest of the Roman Catholic Church’s empire.
In his helpful talk on family planning and the issue of contraception, the Pope explained to the African people how the use of condoms is making the spread of HIV worse. I’m going to type those words again because as I read them back I can’t fucking believe that anyone in a position of responsibility and access to the facts would say something so dangerous, wicked and stupid. He went to Africa and explained how the use of condoms is making the spread of HIV worse. The Catholic Church doesn’t like condoms or any other form of contraception. If a Catholic man wants to have sex but doesn’t want to have a baby he has to put his penis in something that cannot conceive. This has proved most unfortunate for altar boys and their friends. I’m not clear as to why exactly the Catholic Church has hung on so very tight to their refusal to recommend contraception. I suppose it’s hard to keep on putting people in a position where they are vulnerable and weak enough to accept Catholicism if they don’t keep having children they can’t afford to take care of. I find it impossible to imagine how his highness the Pope could travel across Africa, look at what’s happened there over the years and still tell his many converted followers that condoms are what’s making the spread of HIV worse.
How has he arrived at this twisted conclusion anyway? What games do they play at the Vatican on a weekend that might make him conclude that condoms are making HIV worse? Do all the cardinals pop on a blindfold and run about with their clothes off and mouths open, while the Pope fills a condom full of HIV-infected blood? He would then have to spin it round his head and after a count of three unleash it at an unsuspecting passer-by who might be unlucky enough to catch the virus. I suppose, in that way, the use of condoms really can make the spread of HIV much, much worse. If you’re considering that as a way to spend an afternoon, I’d recommend you read the condom packet and follow the directions on there instead. It’s much more fun, it’s what they’re for and it won’t give you AIDS.
If they’re not playing the spinning condom of death game at the Vatican, I don’t see how they can conclude that condoms are the problem. Ready access to condoms and reliable information is the best way available of avoiding the spread of this disease, which continues to tear Africa apart and destroy families. If there is anyone reading this wondering why I am not advocating abstinence as the very best way of avoiding both the spread of HIV and unwanted children, it’s because I like sex. I like it a lot. I wouldn’t wish to ask anyone who is old enough to enjoy sex safely to do anything other than get plenty of it. It’s fun, it’s exciting and invigorating. In the right hands (and feet and mouths and fingers and armpits and bottoms …), it can be endlessly varied and creative. It’s mucky and interesting and refreshing. If it’s done carefully it can even be a delightful expression of affection between people who love each other. If you wish to go to Africa or anywhere else and tell people they’ve lost the right to enjoy sexual intercourse because they are unfortunate enough to have got ill, then go ahead. I hope you spot someone on the journey there who makes you tingle all over, enjoy an eye-wateringly brilliant shag and abandon your foolishness before you get quite justifiably punched in the chops.
The Catholic Church is not evil. It’s too large and unwieldy to be described as either good or bad. Many of its members seek to do good, and succeed; others use the power of the Church for sins ranging between serious assault and sexual abuse all the way down to being a bit smug and judgemental. It has immense power and influence and I would argue that as an institution its inability to move with the times makes it increasingly unable to be helpful to its members. Certainly when the Church punishes a nine-year-old girl who had been raped and made pregnant with twins by her stepfather, I feel disgusted. The nine-year-old in question lived in Brazil and had been raised as a Catholic. When she became pregnant with twins in 2009, it was felt that this presented serious health risks for her, so her mother and two doctors aborted the pregnancy. She was nine. She had been raped and made pregnant by her stepfather and had to undergo the emotional trauma of a double abortion. The Catholic Church’s response was to excommunicate her, her mother and the two doctors who performed the operation. Under different circumstances I’d say that excommunication from that church was a good thing and that the child should enjoy a life free from dogma and lies, but it was all she knew. Her life was that of a Catholic and when she needed the love of her community and the support of her church she was told that what she had done could never be forgiven by God. This decision was backed by the Vatican. Her stepfather was not excommunicated.
But I have no personal axe to grind with religion. There is much about it that upsets and confuses me, but that is based on decisions I have made with regard to what sort of person I wish to be and what sort of world I wish to inhabit. I realize, of course, that I am powerless over how the world behaves – often I can’t even get my children to eat a pea, wipe their face or go to bed – but none of that discourages me in the slightest from attempting to reorganize the world as I see it. None of my resistance to religious practice is based on revenge. Certainly I was bored by my C and E upbringing. This is similar to C of E (Church of England) but in this instance stands for Christmas and Easter. It’s an approach to faith that works on a quid pro quo basis. I went to church when I knew there was a loaded stocking or a chocolate egg in it for me.
I recall a feeling of having to endure what seemed like interminable services at school. Bits of something or other read out loud in Latin were especially odd. Only a maximum of 10 per cent of my school had even a fleeting understanding of Latin so if they were trying to make us feel anything other than excluded and bored then they failed. A few of us knew there was some rhyme about some ammunition and mass gathering of ants. This was supposedly something to do with conjugating the verb ‘to love’, I think, but Latin was not for me.
There were readings in English but they were from an old Bible and to a fat eight-year-old boy sitting on the gym floor with an increasingly numb bottom they sounded like this: ‘And yay, hast thou within thine heart, with the glory of the lord, unto thee, something, blessed art the whojamaflips as they in the sight of Our Father who arty party, did verily praise the one Lord God giveth and taketh away again. And traveleth thee upon a donkey, but knowest thou that the lord doth … Here endeth the lesson.’
As a tubby pudding bowl whose small shorts were fighting a losing battle with the flesh spread beneath them on the bleached wooden floor, there were never words more sweet than ‘here endeth the lesson’. Salvation at last! Relax, everyo
ne, the lesson hath endeth. Why everybody’th thuddenly thpeaking like thith, I couldn’t thay.
With those words the droning voice of whichever joyless, dead-eyed master was prattling on about thee, thou, thine, God, Jesus and some tribes from a couple of thousand years ago I couldn’t care less about, was finished. Then just as you felt you might be excused to go and be a child for a while, some berk in a white robe would say, ‘We shall now sing hymn number seven-six-three from the red hymn book.’ Shit! His use of the word ‘sing’ was generous, to say the least. Three hundred disappointed children having faith rubbed up against them without a trace of passion or inspiration are inclined to make a sort of drone like the one you get if you accidentally buy a house too near to a motorway. It was the listless sound of passive lips gently flapping against each other, releasing a barely audible hum that carried despondent praise up towards the Lord, then, in the airless assembly hall, bumped hopelessly against the ceiling like a day-old helium balloon, realized it was never going to make it up to the Lord, gave up the fight and eased its way back towards the stupefied worshippers below.
Boredom doesn’t tend to motivate people into great acts of rebellion or revenge. It drives you slowly towards inertia, with occasional outbreaks of rage, but that’s not how I feel about religion. It was over for me as a subject once I’d been expelled for the last time, aged fourteen. After that even my parents didn’t insist on Christmas Day church attendance. I often used to go because my much younger brother was made to and it seemed unfair that he should be the only one of us scuffing his feet mournfully towards the grinning vicar standing at the door of the church as earnest-looking families tried to remember the good reverend’s name. Vicars must be stifling a veritable volcano of resentment on Christmas Day. The desire for the average vicar, seeing his church full for the first time since last Christmas, to turn to the assembled throng in the church and let them have it with both barrels must be stronger than the brandy-laced mulled wine that got him through the deserted evensong the night before.
‘Where in the name of Mary Mother of Christ have you lazy, disrespectful bastards been for the past three hundred and sixty-four days? Eh? You think you can turn up here for one hour of carols and non-threatening stories about babies and stables, then go and eat yourselves into a turkey coma? Not today. Not this Christmas. I’ve had enough. Where were you six weeks ago when I opened the church for me, the verger and one bell-ringer, who it turned out had got squiffy on real ale and slept in here the night before anyway? Where were you then, eh? You bloody buggers? At home in the warm, drinking wine and eating cake. You think you can turn up once during the festive season, sing a bit, shove a fiver in the tray and piss off for the rest of the year to watch Strictly Come Dancing and YouTube? Well, not today. I’ve locked the door and we’re staying here until the second coming or, failing that, until the police arrive. We shall now sing hymn number seven-six-three from the red hymn book.’
So I went to church on Christmas Day to keep my brother company and because my brother is one of the funniest people I know, particularly in places where being funny is not the done thing. He really comes into his own in a church, doctor’s waiting room or theatre. My brother Henry makes me laugh a lot and there’s no laugh more delicious than the stifled giggle of naughty brothers at the back of a church. I remember one Christmas service where all the children were invited to come to the front to sing ‘Away In A Manger’. Henry was at the age where he had to sing it but was old enough to feel mortified by the experience. I got him with a trick I like to call the ‘false start’. I’ve done it a few times when I’ve had to be in a church for weddings and funerals and so forth. It’s a simple but pleasing trick and I recommend you try it. All you do is take in a deep breath as if you are just about to sing the first word of the hymn, but you do it much too soon. Usually there’s about four bars of organ playing before the singing commences. So pick your hymn, then, at the right moment, you just catch the eye of the person next to you and go for the in-breath combined with the tell-tale raising of the songsheet and the wide open mouth. Nine times out of ten, they’ll panic, think they’ve missed it and fire off with a loud but half-breathed note well before anyone else. In my brother’s case he hit the ‘Away’ of ‘Away In A Manger’ with enough force that it still makes me chuckle to think of his livid reddening face and the genius way he tailed off the hymn when he realized I’d got him and his was the only voice filling the hushed church. ‘Awaaaaaaay in a …’ Good times.
I’m convinced that a lot of religious people experience similar subversive feelings during ceremonies. It’s not because we don’t care about the gravity of a church service. It’s the opposite of that. It’s precisely because it’s important and earnest that we want to feel our way towards the outer limits of what’s acceptable and test their elasticity. The thrill of shouting a rude word in a supermarket, of making stupid noises when someone is saying something important, of showing a mouthful of food in a smart restaurant – all these things provide the childish and silly thrill that I’m proud to say I’ve spent as much of my life as possible pursuing. Because I’m British, and pretty much devoted to the creation of laughter, being in a formal environment makes me want to misbehave. When I’m in church, the desire to fart is probably stronger than anywhere else on earth. It’s not out of raging disrespect for God, His worshippers or the people running the service; it’s just funny. To me. To my brother. I hope I’m not alone in this, though of course I accept that not everyone experiences the kind of puerile, helpless joy I find in being utterly, needlessly revolting. It’s partly because you shouldn’t break wind in a church, but let’s not forget the role played by that very pleasing echo. It’s like two farts for the price of one.
For a long time now I’ve wanted to sneak into a church at night and replace the little wafers they use to represent the body of Christ with Berocca. I think it would be lovely to see the body of Christ represented in the form of a highly effervescent, mineral- and vitamin-rich fizzy orange tablet, capable of administering 780 per cent of your recommended daily allowance of the Body of Christ. Sure, it’s not bread as Jesus indicated would be appropriate, but I feel that Berocca better represents the lively and refreshing character of Jesus’ life. With one delicious and very fizzy orange pill you could follow the teachings of the New Testament, get a health boost and make your pee glow like you’d successfully enriched uranium in your own kidneys. The receiving of the Berocca sacrament would make for a magnificent and spectacular communion. The kneeling congregation would lift their heads with tongues out in expectation, listening for the words ‘The Body of Christ’. Then the cool, chalky sweetness of Berocca would meet their tongues. Odd, orangey, different but not unpleasant. Then time for ‘The Blood of Christ’, and the cup would be passed down and pressed to the lips of the faithful. A sip of red wine and within seconds a thick, vitamin-rich, dark purple foam would shoot out of your mouth. It’s a miracle! But quite a confusing one that’s fairly likely to make your eyes water and mess up your Christmas jumper.
I get the devil in me when I’m around religion and sometimes I just can’t help myself. On a couple of occasions I’ve visited a mosque and jumbled up the shoes. A word to the wise – leg it, if you’re doing that. Jumble, rearrange, hide a sandal if you wish, but when you’re done, get out of there lickety-split. Barefoot or not, I have found that Muslims are quick when they’re pissed off. I’ve never moved faster around Finsbury Park in my life.
I love a good mosque. A great many of them exist as part of modern dwellings or in a multifunctional space these days but some of them have truly awe-inspiring architecture. Not in Switzerland obviously, theirs are very dull, not a minaret in sight, but the others are beautiful. If you go to a predominantly Islamic country, you’ll find they have a powerful PA system tucked away in the mosque too. They use it for their call to prayer, a very important wake-up for the sleepy Allah fan. It kicks off unpleasantly early if you happen to have gone to bed cuddled up with your ruc
ksack only a few hours before, after a night dedicated to missing the point of visiting foreign climes amongst your fellow travellers. I think it was a little before 5 a.m. when the shrill, whining top notes of the adhan came wafting through my dorm window and saw me swear like a bleary git at the grapefruit pink of the rising sun. I’ve no idea what the chap was saying, I thought his voice was rather nasal and didn’t hold out much hope for a singing career any time soon, but despite the grating drawl I noted that within minutes there were a goodly number of exhausted-looking men and women clearing their throats into the streets of Penang on their way to morning prayers. They were drawn towards the noise like it was a magnet. To watch them trudge, jog, spit, walk, run and almost hack up a lung was inspiring and disheartening at the same time. It was so early and yet there they all were going to practise their faith. I wondered if I’d ever felt that much devotion to any one principle or idea in my life, and then felt slightly despondent. The mucoid flobbing all over the road and pavement isn’t an official part of Islamic devotional practice but it’s certainly done with religious regularity and a deep-reaching determination that both impressed and sickened me. Once you get used to it, the call to prayer is an oddly exciting sound. Nothing makes you feel like you’re a long way from home more than the sound of something you don’t understand at all but enjoy none the less.
God Collar Page 7