I SEE that in the calendar of religious feast-days, today - October 2nd - is allocated to an entire class of spiritual entities: guardian angels. This is a slightly odd situation because, so far as I'm aware, the churches have never quite decided what such angels do, writes Frank McNally
According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, even their existence is not an article of faith.
The concept as we know it probably goes back to Roman mythology, in which every man was followed from cradle to grave by a guiding spirit known as his "Genius" (the corresponding figure for women was a "Juno"). But Christian philosophers have differed on how important a job guardian angel is.
Thomas Aquinas thought it was given only to the lowest order of angels, whereas Duns Scotus and others argued that members of any rank could volunteer for the mission.
I haven't seen my own guardian angel for a while, come to think of it. We used to be in regular contact - I spoke to him every night, in fact. But you know how it is. We grew up, or at least I did, and lost contact. Perhaps he's still out there somewhere protecting me from harm. Maybe he follows me everywhere at a discreet distance and ducks into doorways when I look around. I don't know.
Probably the most famous modern portrait of a guardian angel is the one who stops James Stewart jumping off the bridge in It's A Wonderful Life. That film will have added resonance when screened (as it surely must be) yet again this Christmas - because, as you may recall, it centres on the fate of a financial institution threatened with closure.
As the heroic George Bailey, Stewart plays a man who has spent his life working for others through the family firm, the Bailey Building and Loan Association, once even spending his honeymoon savings to defuse a run on the bank.
The business specialises in helping poor people to buy homes (what is now known as the "sub-prime" sector). Yet it somehow makes money, until George's damn-fool Uncle Billy mislays several thousand dollars.
As the business faces ruin, our hero becomes convinced of his worthlessness and decides to end it all.
Whereupon - in a plot-twist jointly authored by Thomas Aquinas and Scotus - a second-class angel called Clarence Oddbody is sent to earth to intervene (and thereby earn his wings).
The angel shows George what his town would be like if he had never lived - ie, a dump populated by losers. In the meantime, the community he has helped to prosper is also rallying to George's cause. And without giving the entire plot away for the two readers who have yet to see the movie, suffice to say Clarence gets his full pilot's licence in the end.
The film remains enormously popular after 60 years, despite rather stretching the credibility of a modern audience. In 2008, nobody really believes in that stuff about idealistic bank managers who help the poor. By comparison, the depiction of a guardian angel is grittily realistic.
Whether any such angels are involved in the current bail-out of bank managers I can't say. But if they are, my advice is that they should insist on getting equity as part of any deal.
STILL on a spiritual theme, a study in Oxford University has cast new light on a famous claim by Karl Marx: suggesting that, whether religion is the opium of the masses or not, it may have an important role to play in pain relief.
In a fascinating experiment, a group of practising Catholics and a group of non-believers (including agnostics) were subjected to a series of small shocks, calculated to induce "moderate pain", on their left hands. This happened while they alternately viewed two paintings: a Virgin and Child by the 17th-century Italian painter Sassoferrato; and the similar-looking - but clearly secular - Lady with an Ermine by Leonardo da Vinci.
Asked to rank their pain on a scale of zero to 100, the groups returned similar figures while studying the Leonardo painting. Among the Catholics, however, the Sassoferrato image was found to reduce pain scores by 12 per cent relative to the non-believers.
Simultaneous brain scans suggested the difference centred on activity in the "ventrolateral prefrontal cortex", which lit up in the religious volunteers.
Interesting as this is, one's initial reaction is that, even if the effect can be attributed exclusively to religious faith, 12 per cent is not that impressive. It might be a decisive commercial advantage for a pharmaceutical manufacturer. But in a really devout believer, you might hope for something more like - I don't know - 50 per cent.
Presumably the skill of the artist has an influence on the picture's anaesthetic power. Maybe a Virgin by Leonardo would have produced higher scores (while, conversely, a badly painted Madonna might actually increase the pain for a believer, especially one who was also an art critic).
In any case, the study's author disclaims suggestions that the effect is specific to religion. Or in her robust term, the study has "not found the God blob in the brain".
It is probable, the researchers think, that non-believers could access the same pain control mechanism through meditation or other strategies. But the findings also hint that, like certain inoculations, the effect, once acquired, could be permanent.
According to the researchers, preliminary studies on "lapsed Catholics" suggest the Sassaferrato painting reduces their pain levels too.