“I don't believe in an afterlife, so I don't have to spend my whole life fearing hell, or fearing heaven even more. For whatever the tortures of hell, I think the boredom of heaven would be even worse.” – Isaac Asimov

Last year when my mother knew she was dying and opted not to countenance sympathy notices in papers her logic was simple but unassailable: there are enough people profiting from death without friends of the dead having to add to the booty of the profiteers. Her attitude was the same toward mass cards. Each that is sent would make two pound sterling for the priests. She was determined that not a penny would make it into their coffers.

An intensely private person, her remains had been removed from her home late at night in the presence of her children so as not to draw the attention of the neighbours. Their living should not be disturbed by her dying. She would have been mortified had she known that on the Sunday after her death, and a day before her funeral, the local cleric would announce from his pulpit that she had died. She preferred that the details be withheld until after her cremation. But even with the best of intent some things cannot be managed. A private funeral is not a secret one.

It is clear that she had a strong disregard for both the convention of funeral rituals and those well wishers all too eager to rush to print bidding godspeed to the next world. This caused me some bemusement in recent times upon reading a death insertion which read ‘Mary Queen of Ireland pray for him.’ The deceased in question had no religious belief. That he, an atheist of all people, should be the intended beneficiary of a plea to an imaginary being to pray for a soul that had no existence left my wind wandering in search of reason through a maze without any rational exit.

How people express their regret at the passing of a friend is their own affair. How that expression comes to be interpreted is the affair of others. There is no control over who reads what is placed in a newspaper. The notion that issues with a religious connotation, including sympathy notices, should somehow escape discussion is a no no. To my mind it read as far out as ‘Santa Claus emperor of Toyland pray for him.’ Yet, Santa has as much right to be petitioned as the queen of Ireland. He is an invisible man that many young people believe in. For them the evidence is clear: how else did the toys get here other than by way of the chimney? And if there are toys that are magically made to come down chimneys there must be a magical toy maker. All very simple really. The equality agenda amounts to zilch if invisible men are to be discriminated against in favour of invisible women.

The republican in me, steeped as it is in a history of secularism, recoils at the thought of seeking the prayers of a monarch who was undemocratically installed as queen by unelected clerics. Had the petitioner to the Queen of Ireland made the plea for prayers to Mary President of Ireland, there would at least have been some sense in it. The praying aspect would have seemed quaint but at least the President of Ireland is a tangible living being whose existence can be verified and whose position as president has been ratified by Irish voters. But the Queen of Ireland is invisible and ringfenced from the recall of any electorate. And here she was being entreated to pray for a man who did not even believe she existed.

When the bell tolls for me to pop my clogs perhaps somebody suitably irreverent will step up to the plate and implore Beano the spinning jelly bean monster to intercede on my behalf. The displacement of pious cant with some secular wit might give rise to a few laughs and at the same time not lend itself to a view that either the facetious implorer or I were by any stretch of the imagination believers in jelly bean monsters, spinning or otherwise. It would also serve to blur the arbitrary psychological demarcation between life and death that gives the latter such finality by pruning from it the buds of a humour to be enjoyed by living beings. Seeds of social human joy can be tilled from individual death. Life constantly renews itself.

That aside, there remains at the bottom of all this something of a theological conundrum which a Jesuitical mind is best equipped to deal with. We are dying every year, millions of us. As a Belfast wag says there are even people dying who never died before. And if the queen of Ireland is busy praying for so many of the dear departed, who then walks and feeds the celestial corgis?

Mary Queen of Ireland


“I don't believe in an afterlife, so I don't have to spend my whole life fearing hell, or fearing heaven even more. For whatever the tortures of hell, I think the boredom of heaven would be even worse.” – Isaac Asimov

Last year when my mother knew she was dying and opted not to countenance sympathy notices in papers her logic was simple but unassailable: there are enough people profiting from death without friends of the dead having to add to the booty of the profiteers. Her attitude was the same toward mass cards. Each that is sent would make two pound sterling for the priests. She was determined that not a penny would make it into their coffers.

An intensely private person, her remains had been removed from her home late at night in the presence of her children so as not to draw the attention of the neighbours. Their living should not be disturbed by her dying. She would have been mortified had she known that on the Sunday after her death, and a day before her funeral, the local cleric would announce from his pulpit that she had died. She preferred that the details be withheld until after her cremation. But even with the best of intent some things cannot be managed. A private funeral is not a secret one.

It is clear that she had a strong disregard for both the convention of funeral rituals and those well wishers all too eager to rush to print bidding godspeed to the next world. This caused me some bemusement in recent times upon reading a death insertion which read ‘Mary Queen of Ireland pray for him.’ The deceased in question had no religious belief. That he, an atheist of all people, should be the intended beneficiary of a plea to an imaginary being to pray for a soul that had no existence left my wind wandering in search of reason through a maze without any rational exit.

How people express their regret at the passing of a friend is their own affair. How that expression comes to be interpreted is the affair of others. There is no control over who reads what is placed in a newspaper. The notion that issues with a religious connotation, including sympathy notices, should somehow escape discussion is a no no. To my mind it read as far out as ‘Santa Claus emperor of Toyland pray for him.’ Yet, Santa has as much right to be petitioned as the queen of Ireland. He is an invisible man that many young people believe in. For them the evidence is clear: how else did the toys get here other than by way of the chimney? And if there are toys that are magically made to come down chimneys there must be a magical toy maker. All very simple really. The equality agenda amounts to zilch if invisible men are to be discriminated against in favour of invisible women.

The republican in me, steeped as it is in a history of secularism, recoils at the thought of seeking the prayers of a monarch who was undemocratically installed as queen by unelected clerics. Had the petitioner to the Queen of Ireland made the plea for prayers to Mary President of Ireland, there would at least have been some sense in it. The praying aspect would have seemed quaint but at least the President of Ireland is a tangible living being whose existence can be verified and whose position as president has been ratified by Irish voters. But the Queen of Ireland is invisible and ringfenced from the recall of any electorate. And here she was being entreated to pray for a man who did not even believe she existed.

When the bell tolls for me to pop my clogs perhaps somebody suitably irreverent will step up to the plate and implore Beano the spinning jelly bean monster to intercede on my behalf. The displacement of pious cant with some secular wit might give rise to a few laughs and at the same time not lend itself to a view that either the facetious implorer or I were by any stretch of the imagination believers in jelly bean monsters, spinning or otherwise. It would also serve to blur the arbitrary psychological demarcation between life and death that gives the latter such finality by pruning from it the buds of a humour to be enjoyed by living beings. Seeds of social human joy can be tilled from individual death. Life constantly renews itself.

That aside, there remains at the bottom of all this something of a theological conundrum which a Jesuitical mind is best equipped to deal with. We are dying every year, millions of us. As a Belfast wag says there are even people dying who never died before. And if the queen of Ireland is busy praying for so many of the dear departed, who then walks and feeds the celestial corgis?

1 comment:

  1. This is great Anthony..thank you for sharing.

    I've already made plans for when I die. I have already paid for the services..cremation and a memorial service. My friends and family know how much music means to me, so at my memorial service..they will hear my favorites..Pink Floyd, Pavarotti, Luke Kelly, et al. They will be trapped into listening and knowing them..it will bring smiles to their faces. And that's what I want. I don't want tears when I go..just a lot of stories about my screwups and lots of laughter. And the understanding..that I will suffer pain no more.

    Absolutely nothing to do with religion.

    I'm hoping to take the worst of the load off my children, who want me to live to be a hundred. When the time comes..they won't have to wonder "what mom wanted."

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