Dublin's hosting of the Eucharistic Congress in 2012 offers a chance to address our spirituality and capacity for hope, writes John Waters.
RECENTLY, I participated in a debate organised by The Dubliner magazine about whether Irish society any longer needs God. There are few more challenging situations in Ireland now than seeking words to speak to a general audience of the entity formerly known as "God" - and this was not a general audience. The Dubliner being what it is, the attendance was about 90 per cent atheist, with the rest angry lapsed Catholics, and most seemed to have shown up to see their champions defeat the God-botherers.
Having figured out some time ago that this type of situation requires a particularised form of language, I spoke about God as human need, about religion as fundamental to the structure of mankind rather than something imposed, about the ineluctable nature of our relationship with mystery, and about how the language of conventional discussion renders the articulation of such perspectives increasingly problematic.
Following a lively discussion, a few who had identified themselves as atheists came up and said they had been surprised to find themselves nodding at what I said. "That's me you were talking about," they all pretty much agreed. "But why," asked more than one, "do we need to call this God, and why do we need institutions to concern themselves with what is fundamentally personal? Why can't we just keep it in the realm of the human heart?"
You do not need to be a theologian to intuitively know some of the answers to these questions. One that I heard tripping off my tongue was: "Because you are not the last man on Earth." Have we really become this myopic? From where did I receive the knowledge of my own nature? How do I preserve this in a world speaking different tongues? Do I not hope to hand it on?
I relate this experience by way of suggesting that the news that we are to host the next Eucharistic Congress in 2012 may be of relevance to more of us than may immediately be interested. The intitial commentary about last Sunday's announcement tended to gravitate around comparisons with the last such event, in the dramatically different Ireland of 1932.
The implication, indeed the express prediction, has been that it will be a more subdued affair and attract the attention of far fewer than the million or so who thronged the Phoenix Park and the streets of Dublin on that occasion. But why should this be? Are we less human than our parents, grandparents or great-grandparents?
The Archbishop of Dublin has wondered aloud how many baptised Irish Catholics any longer understand the meaning of the Eucharist. It is a good question, though not in the sense that we should feel chastened because we do not know our cathechism. It is a good question because it asks us if we have the capacity still to reach behind the veils of prejudice, piety and ideological distraction and tune into the most vital element of our humanity. You do not need to be religious, never mind Christian, to feel the need to connect with what is mysterious, eternal, absolute, infinite, unknowable. You need only to be human and open to the idea that this connection is vital to that condition.
The Eucharist is, exactly as it was 80 or 800 or 2,000 years ago, and will remain in 80 years' time, the celebration of the mystery-made-flesh, an event that happened once in history but continues as a presence, moment-to-moment, announcing the hope beyond hope that keeps us alive.
Would it not be interesting if we were to approach this 50th Eucharistic Congress with such a concept in mind? What if, rather than anticipating some peripheral and underwhelming gathering of a declining institution - with which most of us have had a brittle relationship - we were to consider it an opportunity to establish a more fundamental engagement with our own humanity?
We live in a time when, captivated by our own cleverness, or out of a clinging to a reduced concept of reason, or enraged at an institution riddled with human weakness, or filled with desire for a freedom that still eludes us, we have ensured that we can no longer access in mainstream culture the nutrients most essential to our survival.
As a result, our bodies move around with a deceptive nonchalance while our spirits struggle for breath. This is not a victory over the Catholic Church, but over ourselves, over our children and their children, denying us all access to the hope that, ultimately, is the essence of our existence.
If we choose to see the event in four years' time as the huddling of a dishevelled and dwindling group of partisans engaged in arcane rituals that once engaged our more simple ancestors, we will be turning our cynicism and disillusionment upon ourselves.
The alternative is to grasp the opportunity for an open-minded dialogue, to revisit the context of our most vital relationships, and, above all, to decontaminate in advance the language used to talk about these vital things.