I know there are massive social divides between many similar faith groups. There are, of course, important historical differences between Catholics and Protestants in Ireland. Wealthy and callous English Protestants cut deep scars into the hearts and minds of Irish Catholics; they took land and exploited the poor ruthlessly. It’s not that none of this is important. It is always worthwhile to understand the context of conflicts like this; however, for many it is the religious divide that matters now. It is the fuel of Catholic or Protestant dogma that keeps the fires of resentment burning and continues to ruin lives.
None of this is helped by the fact that many Catholics have had to stay in unhappy marriages while the Protestants have flitted from partner to partner as their foul lust and fickle hearts demand. That really pisses off the Catholics, many of whom are stuck in loveless marriages with more children than they know what to do with. Even the affairs of Protestants can be done from within the consequence-free debauchery of a condom. Sinners one and all. Henry VIII has much to answer for, the tubby, murdering shag-monster. Of course, there’s the money too. One group is rich and powerful. Then history shifts a little and one group is rich and the other powerful. That never lasts because the powerful will usually strip the rich of their riches to make themselves both rich and powerful again, and so it goes on. Then political elites will emerge and the minority will rule the majority because they’re propped up from elsewhere, then the majority think bugger that, there’s only about ten of them and a million of us, why are they in charge? And somewhere underneath all of that is God. God stirring the pot and making it mean something that it doesn’t. God giving people the idea that what they’re doing is special. Add God to this mess and soon you have the idea that this perfectly normal, ugly human behaviour, the to-ing and fro-ing of everyday affairs, means something more than just a simple understanding that politics corrodes and people are flawed. We all are and it’s OK, but as soon as you add God to the mix then before you know it children are walking to school while parents from the other faith spit on them, throw stuff at them and scream the most foul nonsense because their lot don’t get to school via the man in Rome with the red shoes and fancy hat. I’m sorry if you’re in it, if you’ve seen it, if you live it, or have lost a loved one to it, but it’s all just bollocks.
If you want to know whose God is best – follow the money. If you want to know who will fight hardest for their God – follow the money. If you want to understand how religion has taken hold to such an extent and with such a merciless grip on so many of us – follow the money. If you want to know which religion does the most for the poor and needy – follow the money. Religion is big business. A lot is at stake. Ever so much more than the souls of the faithful, which are by comparison easy to account for. It’s roughly one each and they divide into two sorting trays. Inbox for Heaven, outbox for Hell. Stick a few quid in the collection plate and you’re in the inbox. Easy.
Rich, poor, bearded, hatted, remarried, childless or parent to a football team, they all believe in the same God. It doesn’t matter how many times I say it, I still find it hard to get my head around that fact. When you look at what’s happened culturally and historically, you’d think that all the faiths believed in different ones. To simplify the different approaches of the faiths, I like to imagine God as Birmingham. The large throbbing hub of the Midlands. I think of God as Birmingham and then Judaism and Christianity and Islam are the M40, the M5 and the M6 motorways. They’re all going to Birmingham. They will all get you there in the end, they are just different routes. You will take whichever route you were nearest to when you began your journey. I’m sorry, but your belief system is no more profound than that. You may turn off, you may merge with another route, you may even break down on the way and give up on your quest for eternal oneness with the Holy Trinity of Birmingham, Dudley and Blackheath. Your faith and your journey to the one God recognized by Jews, Christians and Muslims is little more than a simple matter of geography. Born in the south-west of England? You’re a Christian; to get to God you need the M5 northbound. Born in London? Muslim, take the M40 past Oxford. Jews, you’re on the M6, and yes it’s a special road made specially for you by God and he’s dying to meet you. You are the Scarecrow to God’s Dorothy and she’s missed you most of all.
I’m not questioning the existence of Birmingham. I couldn’t. I’ve been there. And very much like God, it seems to be where people go when they’re dead. You often see people stopping Brummies in the street to enquire, ‘Is this the afterlife?’
‘No, mate, it’s the Bullring shopping centre and over there’s the Pallasades and New Street. Fancy a Mr Egg?’
‘No, sorry, I thought I was dead. Well, on balance – I’m pleased.’
The Abrahamic faiths all share the same creation story too. It varies only slightly between the religions. It doesn’t make any difference whether you think the creation story is fact, myth or metaphor. It makes no difference to the social and cultural impact it’s had on mankind. Particularly on the differences between men and women. As we know, the creation story has it that God created Man. On the sixth day God created Man in his own image. In the image of God he created him. He placed Man upon the Earth in the Garden of Eden, which he’d done up all nice for him like a regular Alan Titchmarsh. It’s my firm belief that the Garden of Eden had decking and a small pond. God said unto Man, ‘You are the king of all you survey. I have created this for you, Man.’ And so the Earth was given to Man as a gift, which was nice of God since he’d spent five entire days creating it all. Lucky old Man.
Sadly, as the story relates, it took all of about ten minutes in this tropical paradise with a lovely trellis and pergola before Man was bored. It’s a shame, but that’s what Man has always been like. A little bit listless, ungrateful and crap. Man had it all on a plate, but like the pillock he is, he was easily distracted and thought there might be something better going on some-where else. Poor old Man was lonely because the Garden of Eden was really big and there were no flumes, quad bikes or bars. So Man stood there in the Garden of Eden, arms swinging floppily by his naked side, sifting sand through his bare and perfect toes, mumbling, ‘This is rubbish. I’m so bored. I want to go windsurfing. How long till you invent windsurfing, God? I should have gone all-inclusive. I knew this would happen. It’s like Gran Canaria all over again. I’m lonely.’ Well, this put God in a very awkward position. God had bought Man the best toy ever and Man pointed out that it needed batteries … And God shuffled his feet and glanced around … there was a silence. Some coughing, a quick riffle through the heavenly cupboard and, lo and behold, God thought of just the thing to make His gift to Man more exciting … chicks.
So, as an afterthought, a secondary thing. Something that God had apparently not even planned. As little more than a gesture to cheer Man up because Man had become bored and listless, God created Woman. And he put women on the earth, and within about ten minutes women had ruined it for everyone for ever. Thanks, ladies, nice one. It’s ruined now. For ever. You did that, girls. On day one! That’s some speedy manoeuvring. It was only one tree you were asked not to eat from. Just the one! But oh no, you knew better, because women always do. What is wrong with you? You greedy apple-scrumping whores?
I hope you see what I’m getting at. Fact, myth, metaphor or whatever, that’s a shitty starting point for any set of ideas. It was supposed to be a boys’ club. God’s a boy and that’s how He planned it. But as any keen golfer will tell you – let women in and the whole thing turns to crap.
After Eve had disgraced herself with exactly the tools that God had given her to do so, God came down to see what was going on. Even though he had his divine CCTV on the Garden of Eden, he wanted to turn up and shame Woman in person. So God popped down and like a cruel, twatty, power-mad boss who’s seen you swiping Pritt Stick from the stationery cupboard and knows it’s in your bag and knows you’re gonna get fired – he pretended he had no idea what had happened. He said to Woman, ‘What have you done?’ And Eve
was honest and said, ‘I’ve eaten from the one tree …’ And He said to Man, ‘What have you done?’ And Adam looked at the floor, then at Woman, then back at the floor, then pointed at Woman and said, ‘She made me do it.’ And that’s how it’s remained for evermore. That’s how it began. Women wrecked it and God knew they would and because of stupid bloody Woman, we live like this for ever. Cast out and suffering.
I know some women. I’ve met several over the years and some of them are quite nice. It just cannot be the case that all women are accountable for the downfall of mankind. I once paid a woman to show me her bottom on my stag do but even she didn’t strike me as being singularly responsible for the burden of original sin. Come to think of it, she didn’t strike me like that at all.
I have a mother, a wife and a daughter, each of whom I love. We don’t always get on perfectly. My mother retired from her job as a headmistress some years ago but still likes to practise many of the day-to-day functions of a head teacher with whoever is available to be organized. It’s been a long time since she left teaching but to this day, when she enters a room groups of adults and children alike arrange themselves in neat rows, sitting cross-legged on the floor, and as one slowly chant the words ‘Good morning, Mrs Brigstocke.’ I’m not very good at being told what to do and our agendas clash. My mother is, however, one of a very few head teachers I’ve met who has never expelled me. My wife falls asleep almost every time we go to the cinema or watch TV, leaving me to discuss what we’d seen with only myself or, worse still, fill in the missing forty minutes of the plot lost to a catnap. She’s fascinated by medical horror stories and footage of operations that sicken me. She finds childbirth and all the details of how one passes large babies through small openings thrilling and never tires of discussing this ‘miracle’. I’m as grateful to her as anyone could be for the safe arrival of our children but if I never hear about another vaginal tear or partially prolapsed bladder I’ll be delighted. My daughter eats at roughly the same pace as an anorexic sloth with a sore tooth, she doesn’t listen and she leaves piles of toys lying in places where you’re guaranteed to fall over them or impale a bare foot on a bit of Lego. Despite all of these crimes against my person, I still love these women and at no point have I sought to saddle them with an eternal judgement of shame, nor have I cast them out of whatever garden we share. If they touch my CDs, mess with my laptop or interfere with the BBQ, then all bets are off. That’s man’s stuff, it’s not for girls.
The creation story would have us believe that women come second and are to blame for all our ills. They don’t and they’re not. I can be ungracious and difficult as a son, exhausting and aloof as a husband and inadequate and controlling as a dad, but for my many faults I don’t ever treat my daughter, wife or mother as second to me, my father or my son. I can be unbelievably selfish but I apply my disregard for the feelings and needs of others equally to any person I see as an obstacle to my getting what I want, regardless of whether or not they are male or female.
It’s glib, of course, and shouldn’t need pointing out, but women are equal to men. They are not the same as men and there are things that each is better equipped for but the basic rights of human beings apply equally to both sexes … unless you’re religious.
In Catholicism, the universal church and largest of the Christian organizations, a woman cannot be Pope. She’s not allowed to be Pope no matter how hard she prays and how much everyone is convinced of her goodness. In fact, they do a test. Many people will think I have made this test up for comedic effect, but I haven’t. Trust me when I tell you this is true. When I say true, I don’t just mean Wikipedia true, I mean ‘weird-as-hell, only the Catholics could do it’ true.
There is a period after the new Pope is selected and before he is crowned Pope in which a whole range of preparations must be made. Floaty white gowns must be stitched, the stereo in the Pope-mobile must be pimped, the red shoes must be polished and the Pope in waiting must be made ready. He takes a long bath, sound-checks the PA system in St Peter’s Square and changes all the stationery so that his name and photo are on the top of all his letters. There is an immense amount of pomp and ceremony that presumably God thinks is important for his chief ambassador on Earth. Part of the preparation includes a few final checks before his Popeness commences waving, mumbling and ignoring sex crimes. One of the most important final checks is to make sure the new Pope isn’t a horrid smelly girl. Because that wouldn’t do at all. Before the new Pope is allowed to become Pope, he is required under Catholic law to sit naked on a chair with a hole cut out of the seat part of it. Like an old-fashioned commode. This is the part where you think to yourself, bollocks. Well, it has a lot to do with them but it happens to be true. The Pope sits naked on the special holy holey chair and is then carried aloft through the Vatican with his bits protruding beneath like a tiny turkey hanging in the butcher’s window. The chair is carried to a special ceremonial place and then they stop. The new Pope must feel terribly exposed, nervous and a little excited. Stationed beneath the commode-style chair is a cardinal with an odd but essential job. He is the honker-in-chief. He must stand beneath the chair and, without looking up, because that would be weird and possibly hazardous, he must put his hand above his head and feel the Pope-to-be as his bits and pieces dangle just millimetres from the roof of the cardinal’s hat. The cardinal must delicately probe with his fingertips to check that the inductee into the papal hall of fame has all the things you might expect a person to have when they are about to take on a job exclusively available to men. I presume the cardinal is allowed to make a honking noise upon contact. You’re not really alive if you can resist the honk sound when giving someone’s bits a tweak, are you? The temptation for the new Pope to play a practical joke at this stage must be overwhelming. He could dangle anything down there for his cardinal to squeeze, a selection of berries and a banana, some holly, perhaps even a balloon filled with custard. I think that hanging mistletoe would make for a particularly amusing and awkward scene, but I suppose overcoming the temptation to piss about like a teenager is one of the key differences between the Pope and me.
So Cardinal Honker reaches up above his head to check that the new Pope has balls and willy. It’s an odd job for the cleric, of course, because usually if a Catholic priest is fondling genitals they have to bend down to reach them.
Once the test is completed and it has been confirmed that the new Pope has divine outsidey boy’s bits rather than horrible, sin-filled, insidey girl’s bits, they can carry on and the freshly honked Pope is allowed to lead the universal church in whichever direction he sees fit. That direction is always the same as the last Pope took it in. The Catholic Church is into many things and none of them is change. Catholicism has the clerical equivalent to a nut allergy – even a small exposure to change and the whole thing goes into anaphylactic shock, tongues swell up and people fall on the beautifully marbled floor gasping for air.
Why do they carry out this weird-as-hell, fetishistic test? Well, they do this because they once accidentally had a female Pope and it nearly destroyed the Catholic Church. She was called Pope Joan and is thought to have done her Poping around AD850. She may never have existed, or at least never been Pope, but the idea of a girly Pope is enough to make the Vatican very nervous. Why? Because you couldn’t possibly have a woman in charge of anything that important. Think what they might do … I mean, you know what women can be like … right, lads? Right? Who’s with me? Sadly several billion people are ‘with me’ on this preposterous, outdated and monstrously bigoted view of the unfairer sex.
In the Church of England, a woman is not allowed to be a bishop. They argue about it constantly, which is a good sign, I suppose, but the pace of change is still slower than a goth on his way to a swimming gala. At present a woman is not allowed to be a bishop because that would be too upsetting. The idea of it is just too unsettling for most people, so for now a woman can’t be a bishop. In the UK, regardless of what you are, man, woman or fascinating third cat
egory, if you are clever enough or work hard enough you can get pretty much any job. It’s still much harder for women, but officially you cannot prevent someone from having a job on the basis that they are not a man. Broadly speaking, I suspect that’s a good thing and for most people in the UK it’s regarded as an important right. But not in the Church of England. In the Church of England if you’re a woman you cannot be a bishop because God’s OK with divorce, abortions and condoms but women are still pretty grim and not to be trusted. This sexist nonsense is the view currently held by the Church of England, of which the Queen is head … Well, as long as that all makes sense to everyone, then on we go. I’m not C of E. I am ‘of E’ though, even if I don’t go to C, so perhaps none of this is my business, but that seems, if you’ll pardon my language, fucking stupid and childish.
A woman can’t be a bishop, that would be too weird, but, because women have been so very good, what with doing the flowers and playing the organ in church and stuff, they can now be the local vicar. In most places this is regarded with a great deal of suspicion and the female vicar starts her job from well behind the place a man might, despite having done nothing wrong other than to have been clumsy enough to have been born with a womb. This is the way with new things and women vicars are relatively new to most people, so you can understand an element of cautious appraisal before trust can be built. For many Anglicans it’s a question of turning up to have a look and then deciding – nope, she’s not Dawn French, this ain’t Dibley and the whole thing is awful. If she’s not a funny chocoholic with mythically large breasts, then it’s never going to work. Women vicars, and perhaps soon women bishops, are finding ways into ministry because that’s the way things are going. Any progress on this issue is good news and should be encouraged, but it is by no means with the backing of the overwhelming majority of Anglicans, and in much of the Commonwealth is regarded as a massive ‘Up yours’ to God and the Church. There’ve been a few high-profile defections to Catholicism from the Church of England over this issue; the Pope having furtively offered a special place in his gang for any C of E worshippers who felt that misogyny had been diluted by political correctness gone mad.
God Collar Page 15