That was a very moving final episode of the current series of Gay Byrne’s (RTE 1 television ) The Meaning of Life in which Gaybo interviewed Norah Casey, one year after the sad and sudden death of her beloved husband. It was touching, sad, honest, true and insightful, marred only by Gaybo’s cultural conditioning within Catholicism and seeming inability to transcend that limited and relatively recent (loopy) worldview. However, he remains a master of his broadcasting craft, verging on the peerless in fact. And I’m pretty sure I saw his eyes well up too at the raw grief evident still of Norah’s sad loss. It is true that Catholicism offers tools to help deal with grief – whether rattling off rosaries like a mantra, or the music and colour of the requiem mass. It’s just a pity that it often seems to hijack the human inevitability of death, as if the Catholic way is the only language of handling death when it clearly isn’t. And when, as is the case now, increasing numbers of people no longer believe in Catholic dogmas – happily – it can leave people floundering for an alternative rite of passage which is meaningful for post-Christians/unbelievers. True, humanists offer secular funeral services but as yet not so many people know about these. And Catholics have the advantage of dry/warm/sheltered church buildings in which to hold ceremonies for the bereaved. I wonder if they are sufficiently ‘catholic/universal’ to allow non-Catholics or former Catholics to shelter there from the elements on cold, rainy days to conduct secular funerals for bereaved fellow humans? Finally, Gaybo mentioned he’d never been present at anyone’s death and Norah seemed surprised. I was lucky/privileged enough to be present at the death of my father and my father-in-law, profound experiences both. Regardless of one’s religious/secular worldview, death is the one thing that unites us all. Each of us must die. How appalling that some religious people exclude people, even in death. It is not long ago that unbaptized infants could not be buried in ‘consecrated’ cemeteries and when crazy religious thinking deemed such infants left to fester in ‘Limbo’. What unmitigated nonsense was taught to us and we, with our brains parked somewhere other than inside our heads, believed such waffle.
Author Archives: Joe Armstrong
religion warps thinking
I sometimes wonder what my life would have been like had I never been told the lie that ‘God’ exists. Imagine a life without picking up all that negative made-up, loopy thinking about ‘sin’, ‘sex’, ‘Hell’, ‘guilt’, ‘damnation’. Religious thinking warps normal thought. It leaves us believing in mythical beings. We choose things on the basis of false information. We make life decisions based on the biggest lie of all. Little wonder, then, that once we realize that God doesn’t exist that it takes a long time to shake off all that warped thinking.
The Emperor has no clothes. Yet people place religious leaders like the Pope on a pedestal, even though he is peddling nonsense and piffle.
When you think of the history of religions, their rise and fall, it is inexorable that all current religions will decline and fall. What’s happening in Ireland these days, and in much of the Western world, is a gradual realization that, in Christianity, in Catholicism, in Protestantism, we’ve been sold a pup. That which we once believed in is, we now see, literally incredible. That a carpenter rose from the dead. That a child was conceived in a female human by an angel. That the Pope – heavens forbid! – is infallible.
The West is waking up and realizing this. It’s a painful realization. Catholicism has all but shed the great openness introduced by Pope John XXIII: like the collapse of the Soviet Union, they see that once freedom and honest thought is introduced, most reasonable people leave. And so they clasp at the past, wind back the clock, retreat to conservatism and control and ostracizing the thinkers. Where, for a while, it seems people could engage with theology, now they are not to think but merely to submit their uncritical minds to the party line. That is no future! That is the death of any organization and any religion. Their own leaders will strangle it, twist life from its body politic. And, in the process, they will warp more lives, as mainly those too lazy or unable to think critically will respond to the dodgy invitation to pay up and shut up and park their brains outside the increasingly empty and chilly churches.
TV3 interview
If you liked my documentary on my journey from belief to unbelief you might also be interested in the TV3 interview which was broadcast today in which myself (Joe Armstrong) and my pal (John O’Sullivan) were interviewed on Irish television.
Shariah law and the shooting of Malala
According to the Taliban, Shariah law says that even a child can be killed if he is propagating against Islam. And hence they shoot Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani schoolgirl, aged 14. How can adults be so blinded to rational thought and shield their ghastly deeds and justify their heinous behaviour by hiding behind any such so-called ‘law’. And if Shariah law does indeed say such a thing, why do responsible Muslims not critique and condemn it?
My documentary ‘From Belief to Unbelief’ now live online
Click here to listen to my documentary ‘From Belief to Unbelief’ which charts the story of the journey of three men – Declan Wynne, John O’Sullivan and myself, each of us former members of a Roman Catholic religious congregation – from religious belief to outgrowing those beliefs.
John Murray Show interviews Declan, John & Joe
To listen to Declan Wynne, John O’Sullivan and Joe Armstrong being interviewed on Irish national radio about our journey from belief to unbelief, click here.
‘From Belief to Unbelief’ documentary on RTE Radio 1, Sat. 13 October, 2012.
I’ve spent more than six months working, with Nicoline Greer from the Documentary on One team at RTE Radio 1, on making a 40-minute documentary called ‘From Belief to Unbelief’.
It charts the story of my journey from belief to unbelief, and also that of two fellow novices, John O’Sullivan and Declan Wynne, who entered the Marist Fathers’ seminary at Mount St Mary’s, Milltown, Dublin, in September 1980.
Of the twenty who entered that year, only three remain in religious life. I left after nine years. Declan after ordination, having spent thirteen years in the order. John is the most recent to leave: he was a member of the order for some thirty years.
We each speak of the insights, realisations and key events in our personal paths starting with our sense of a call to the priesthood and religious life; entering the seminary; our challenges, questions and crises; our deeply personal and painful decisions to leave religious life; and our contented lives today as unbelievers.
The documentary is not only the personal story of three men: our lives may be seen as a microcosm for the transformation taking place in Irish society in the last 20, 30 or even 50 years. In the early 1980s there were some 40 seminarians in the Marist Fathers’ seminary in Ireland alone. Nowadays, there are no Irish seminarians in the order and Mount Saint Mary’s is no longer a seminary. The chapel which once reverberated to the sound of many young vibrant seminarians now lies silent and is rarely used. As recently as the early 1980s, the houses of the Marist Fathers in Ireland boasted full communities of priests, compared to the small and aging communities remaining today.
Thirty-two years after entering the order, I revisit the former seminary in the company of Father Denis Green SM, now in his nineties, who used to be my spiritual director.
Documentary maker: Joe Armstrong.
Production supervision by Nicoline Greer.
‘From Belief to Unbelief’ is scheduled for broadcast in the Documentary on One slot on RTE Radio One, at 6 p.m. on Saturday, 13 October. It will be repeated the following evening at 7 p.m. From broadcast date it can also be listened to online or downloaded from www.rte.ie/radio1/doconone as an mp3 or Podcast. If it isn’t on the front page of that link, simply search for ‘From Belief to Unbelief’ in the RTE Radio One, Documentary on One search bar, or find it under the ‘Life’ category.
Olympic lessons
I have been much inspired by watching the Olympics. I’m amazed by the healing of my own attitude to the British in light of the Queen’s recent visit to Ireland. Even my inherent reaction to the Union flag has changed for the better. That nod of the royal head towards our dead patriots in the Garden of Remembrance earlier this year has shifted something tangibly within me. Intellectually I’d long discarded the myopic nationalism of my childhood and youth, one which watched Bloody Sunday live on television when I was aged ten. Then, the British were the enemy on the day that the Parachute Regiment did more to recruit for the IRA than any campaign the republicans could have dreamed of.
I was thrilled by Katie Taylor’s much-deserved success. But Annalise Murphy’s heartbreak probably taught me more. The commentator mentioned how she would see that the wind was on the right and that the third time she would take the more favorable course. But she did not. And after the race, a distraught Annalise realized that it had been within her power to choose a different course. But then, she, and I, may have learned more by her mistake than had she blazed to Olympic gold. She was doing so many things right and only one thing wrong. And the realization that we can choose a different course, that it is within our grasp to change our destiny, is a wonderful lesson to learn. Think of Invictus, that wonderful film about Nelson Mandela: we are masters of our fate (even if we’re in prison!).
We can learn from our mistakes. Sometimes victory is missed not by forces beyond our control but by our passive repetition of a repeated mistake. Realizing I could choose differently is a powerful realization that we are masters of our fate. And we can, today, choose a different course. We are not slaves to habits or windless tunnels. The open seas are ours for the taking.
‘Punk prayer’ & Putin’s repression of free speech
The continued imprisonment of the feminist Russian girl punk band Pussy Riot is an outrageous repression of free speech by Moscow’s Putin regime. The punk trio – Nadezhda Tolokonnikova (23), Yekaterina Samutsevich (19) and Maria Alyokhina (24) – have been detained since March 2012 following a noisy but peaceful protest in an Orthodox church last February 2012 at which three masked people sang a ‘punk prayer’ calling for the overthrow of Putin and mocking the head of the Russian Orthodox Church. Last Friday their detention was extended for a further six months. If convicted, they could face up to seven years’ imprisonment. The London Times rightly last Saturday, 21 July, 2012, ran an editorial on this unconscionable attack on free speech, seeing it as a test case for freedom of speech under Putin’s regime. No less chilling than their imprisonment for musical political protest is the report that a Russian Orthodox Patriarch has accused the singers of ‘blasphemy’, that hairy old chestnut of those who believe in ridiculous things wanting their daft beliefs protected rather than being exposed for what they are: abject nonsense.
Amnesty International have called for the immediate and unconditional release of the trio. Amnesty have pointed out that the European Court of Human Rights has repeatedly ruled that freedom of expression applies not only to inoffensive ideas, “but also to those that offend, shock or disturb the State or any sector of the population”, even if the action was calculated to shock and was known to be likely to cause offence. Amnesty adds that ‘the activists left the cathedral when requested to do so and caused no damage. The entire incident lasted only a few minutes and caused only minimal disruption to those using the cathedral.’
Putin: release these women now. Tear down the new walls you are erecting of fear, imprisonment and silencing freedom of expression. History shows where that leads. Be brave and release those who criticize you. As for the Patriarch: your life is based on a lie: Jesus did not rise from the dead. Grow up and leave aside your silly religious beliefs.
Do it today!
Today is all we’ve got. The past is gone and we may not have a future. All we ever have is now. This moment. Let’s live in this moment. I’m thankful for this fleeting second. That I exist. That I live. That I breathe. That I express. I’m thankful for music and birdsong, for language and technology, for my wife and son and daughter. I’m grateful for this moment, for this transitory opportunity to ground myself and come into the present. Today is full of possibility. Today, we can create. We can express. We choose. We decide. We create ourselves anew. We are masters of our fate. We choose our thoughts and, so choosing, make a heaven of hell or a hell of heaven. Let us also be thankful for ourselves, and not be shy about it. Let us be ourselves today. Be different. Imagine if you had died already (death will come far quicker than any of us realize) and you were given an opportunity to come back and live just one more day. What would you do? Do it today!