Another Journey

“A Journey” is the title of the recent memoirs from Tony Blair. A man who, while going through the all the trials and tribulations that were thrust upon him and that he brought upon himself during his Prime Ministership, also underwent a conversion to Catholicism. While he was doing that, I was going the other way and this is my story.

There is an aspect of my life that I had been promising that I would expound upon for quite some time, which was my experience with religion. Over the course of three blog posts on 6^th, 7^th and 8^th September 2010, I shall attempted to document that story; beginning with my childhood years at school, continuing through the university years before finally summarising where I had arrived. Given that this is an ongoing narrative and despite the fact that I have found myself in a very comfortable place from a spiritual perspective, I realise that there is a chance that my position could change once again. However, I now class myself as a skeptic and an atheist, which is a million miles from where I started as a faithful catholic. What you will find below is a collation and re-wrire of those three blog posts in to a more structured “blessay” (a term that I first heard employed by Stephen Fry for a a blogged essay). This tale of my move from catholicism to atheism is something that has influenced me in many ways and probably more than I realise too. This is my first attempt to try and structure all these thoughts that I have in to one, articulate, cohesive whole and the first writing that I undertaken to be (a) so autobiographical in nature, and (b) to be so open about a personal subject. The process has been cathartic, although it is perhaps the case that when I come to re-read this at some indeterminate point in the future, I will find myself dissatisfied with what you see below.

Attempting to remember ones experiences from childhood is a peculiarly awkward exercise. When you are living through those years the big, wide world seems to be a monumentally unfathomable, scary and complicated place but one from which, hopefully, children are protected by the sanctity of the family home and the security that comes from that. This fortunate state of affairs seems to make the world small and manageable and easy to grasp. I can barely imagine the childhood endured by the millions of impoverished youngsters around various corners of the globe who do not experience this security but those considerations are for another time. This short piece of self-indulgence is just writing about my all-too easy life. When I young I had that domestic security complete with a nice and loving family, a fairly reliable good school, and suburban peace all around me. It was as though the scary bits of life were all safely hidden away somewhere else; at the other end of the television, I guess. Family breakdown, divorce, crime, unemployment, poverty were all other people’s problems (I learned all about them by watching Corrie and Emmerdale with my mum) and it was only later into my teenage and young adult life when I realised how, and I use the word advisedly, “blessed” that I had been. I am sure that what I am about to tell you is not true for all kids, so I will try my hardest not to litter this text with crass generalisations but, for the moment, I do tend to assume that the passing of the decades somehow colours all of our experiences and our recollections merely represent only one side of the “truth”. However, that (and, indeed, this) is as objective as one can get about these things.

I come from a working/middle class background in the south of England: dad at work, stay-at-home mum (well, she stayed at home until I was safely independent enough to be off at school, at any rate), and a big brother who was a couple of school years ahead of me to plough a furrow that I could follow. A nuclear family, I believe is the term. And everything was, literally and figuratively, rosy in the garden. And an essential, integral part of my childhood was my Catholicism. It was ingrained into me to the extent that I did not need to question very much about my faith at all. Obviously, I did question it eventually and that was probably at some point after I went to high school at the age of eleven. Until then, being Catholic was all I knew. Two catholic parents, four catholic grandparents, one catholic brother, a catholic primary school with catholic teachers and catholic friends and all my parents’ friends seemed to be catholic too because mum and dad knew them all from church. It was, from that description, a time of happy ignorance and, for an eleven-year-old, it sounds pretty perfect to me: eleven is not an age when you should be worrying about too much.

By the time I arrived at high school (and yes, of course it was a catholic one), I was exposed to slightly (but only slightly) more diversity among my peer group. There was independence gained from the train journey to and from that crumbling, old education establishment; there was the inevitable growing up and coping that results from the shift from being the eldest in the school to suddenly being youngest; and there was a brand new set of friends to meet and play with and learn with as well. School wasn’t bad to me at all and, in those eye opening days and months and years, and as all kids do, I started to ask some questions – about everything! However, despite studying RE as part of the curriculum, I didn’t really ask other people many questions about my faith; essentially those questions that I was asking were internal dialogues. [By the way, in the 1980′s, a catholic secondary school’s idea of Religious Education was to teach us all about being a catholic and not much else. The amount of time spent learning about other religions, and I include other parts of Christianity in this, was limited to a few occasional lessons here and there as though the teacher was just begrudgingly doing as he was told in case he was ever audited]. However, the clever thing about theism is that there is always an answer. It may not be obvious to outsiders but even when it comes to the big questions of the Catholic doctrine (like Apostolic Succession and the infalability of the papacy, Transubstantiation, the acceptance of Sainthood, belief in the virgin birth, and so on and so forth), there are answers aplenty on hand, supplied by many a learned fellow and, as a consequence, my faith remained strong.

I guess the culmination of this part of my life, i.e. my high school education, were the first two of my three pilgrimages to Lourdes that I think must’ve taken place at the age of 17 or 18. These were experiences that, despite my current views about Catholicism / Christianity / and even religion as a whole, I still recall fondly and from which I learned a massive amount about humanity and humility. Take religion out of a pilgrimage and what is left a quite uplifting and reaffirming slice of human nature, but more on Lourdes will follow later. In hindsight my relatively simple acceptance of the answers provided by the church might have been due to my environment, in which my beliefs were blissfully unchallenged but it seems to me now, that my upbringing was the epitome of an indoctrinated childhood. A fact that I do not necessarily label as A Bad Thing, thanks to the “relatively” moderate and progressive Catholic beliefs of those around me. On the flipside, if I had been exposed to the darker side of the catholic church, then I guess my faith would’ve been tested and broken earlier but it is sometimes worth remembering that, among all the easy and justifiable criticism that my fellow atheists can levy against the catholic church, there can be (and often is) a positive side to this Christian faith.

With O’levels (yes, I am that old) and A’levels out of the way, my school life was over. I did okay academically speaking, leaving school with nine O’s and two A’s but the failure to capture three A’levels meant that I could not head to the Universities or Polytechnics of my choosing, so I had to go through “clearing” if I wanted to continue with my full time education. I mention this in context because it turned out to be a potentially life-changing moment. One of my A’level passes was in Geology, and I soon found out that my local Polytechnic in Portsmouth had a Geology degree that it ran. I borrowed my mum’s car, drove the relatively short 20-mile trip down to the campus and managed to talk my way, without too much difficulty if I recall correctly, on to the course. I assume that most people attempting to get in to a university* via clearing would not be able to turn up in person, so my appearance at the door seemed to impress. With that, I signed away the next three years of my life to further education. [* - As an aside: A year into my course at Portsmouth, the poly was upgraded to a University, so I always refer to it in the more impressive sounding way. A touch of self-agrandisement that I hope you forgive]

When I arrived in Pompey for day one of my degree, I felt like a rabbit in the headlights. My closeted, quiet, catholic self wandered around the campus with a photo-copied map looking at all manner of human life around me. This was not my world. Who were these people and where did their self-confidence come from? How could I possibly fit in to their culture? Although I soon discovered one particular culture that I did suit: the pub culture. It was something I had been successfully ingratiating myself into for many months (if not years) before university began, so the lure of the Student Union bar was a strong one and, once I had met a bunch of soon-to-be-friends from my various lecture groups, I slowly found myself settling in. Proximity to my family, though, meant that I was only ever half-an-hour from home comforts, which in hindsight was probably preventing me, for better or worse, from embracing full-on student life. Not only that but for the first year of Uni I was lodging with my grandmother who lived in Portsmouth and it was just as Catholic as being at home.

Those three years, in one way or another, shook the foundations of my faith to the very core. I suddenly found that I was in a minority. Not only was I one of relatively few catholics in my peer group, I was almost certainly the only one still practising. I love the way that people describe themselves as “a practising catholic”, as though they are still not very good at it at all, and need to keep trying for a while longer before they progress from amateur to professional standard. Anyway, two things happened. Firstly, I realised that the students I was studying with were living happy, contented lives. They were absolutely delightful people; fun to be with, generous, intellectual (in the best way possible), upstanding members of the community, and not a shred of reliance or guidance from any kind of deity or faith system. Those internal dialogues that I had been having with myself as a school kid, where questions about my beliefs were easily answered by well rehearsed answers that I knew from my catholic brethren, suddenly became external conversations and debates. For the first time, I was having to justify my christianity and catholicism to a sceptical audience. I did okay for a while but the seeds of doubt had been sown in my head. The problem that I was having with my faith during those college years was relating to the more political-type arguments, i.e. less about “Does God exist?”, and more about my views on abortion, homosexuality, birth control and the like. In the main, I felt like I stood my ground, justifying the church’s views to an audience who didn’t even believe in the god from who I believed these answers had been delivered. However, there was no “anti-Road-To-Damascus” type moment in my journey and I never had a metaphorical light bulb burst in to life above my head. Instead the loss of faith came from a logical progression of thought over, literally, years.

The second thing that happened at Uni, and perhaps the more significant part, was the subject I was studying. Geology is a bloody marvellous science, incorporating a massive breadth and depth of scientific disciplines that attempt, when viewed as a whole, to answer some fairly fundamental questions of why we’re here. And in the three years of lectures, God was never an answer. There was a sequence of those lectures that I recall quite vividly about the evolution of human beings: they were broadly about “Opposable thumbs”, “habitual upright bipedalism” and “How to design an eye”. I am not going to make this into a discussion about Evolution versus Intelligent Design or how science and religion may or may not be able co-exist as this more of a personal story rather than I debate I wish to open up. Suffice to say, over the course of those university years and the few years that followed, I began to think in an entirely different way about myself and my place in the universe.

However, the interesting thing (well, I think it’s interesting) about this stage of the journey that I was on, is that I really, genuinely missed my faith. I had stopped going to church while at college, much to the chagrin of some of my family and I regret causing the disappointment that some of my catholic cohort must have felt at my desertion of the faith. The flip-side to being an aforementioned “practising catholic” is to be a “lapsed catholic”, that was me. Whenever, I was asked what religion I was, I would answer “I am a catholic but…” as if I had not quite been successful in stopping being catholic. I could still not fully wash the catholic ideology and doctrine from my system. Almost as if “Catholic But” should be a new part of the church. In my now confused state, I decided to go back to Lourdes on my third pilgrimage. To the uninitiated, this activity is where a diocese will seek to recruit a number of able and relatively fit volunteers from its membership to help and assist the elderly and less-abled folk to collectively go on a spiritual journey to a holy place. While I felt emotionally fulfilled by this thanks to the selflessness and community minded attitude of the vast majority of the pilgrims, I also felt very differently spiritually than I had done before. All the hymns, the happy clapping, the belief in the miracle of Lourdes and the constant praying, just left me cold. If I was to try and identify a tipping point when I changed from being “fully signed up catholic” to being a “committed atheist” then I guess this was it. However, it was not exactly that simple, because the period between the former and the latter can be described as the agnostic years; and it’s not like you can tear up your membership to the catholic church or stop paying your subscription. It remains with you. In the four or five years that it had taken me to lose my catholic faith it was to be at least another four or five years before I got the answers I wanted

When it comes to the so-called big questions, life does not feed you any easy answers. I left university with a belief system lying in ruins. The cornerstones of my faith had been challenged by both a deeper understanding of the methodical diligence of the scientific process and the very human interactions that I had been having with the people that were around me. University was over and I was about to head back home. I had had a conversation with my parents about it, informing them that I was no longer going to go to church. It was a troubling conversation that I can only think is akin to the “coming out” child-to-parent conversation that we have probably all seen with people we know or at the least imagined courtesy of some TV show or other that attempts to portray the nuances of such a tricky chat. My parents had reacted to my “lapse” as only good catholic parents would, with sympathy, understanding and a promise to pray for me. They always have been the best parents anyone could ask for. However, in the cash-poor days following university I found myself back at my parent’s home nonetheless. Objectively, I should have sought escape to independence a lot more quickly, but, despite the theological differences, I chose to stay for a while, comfortable in the familiarity and ease of a family home although simultaneously struggling to quantify my agnostic state of mind. In the words of The Clash, should I stay or should I go?

The problem was that while the rug had been pulled from under me in relation to my faith, I did not have a “new rug” on top of which I could feel comfortable. I guess that a lot of people go through this very process in life, where they reject the establishment of their familial surroundings and choose, or at least try to choose, a way to rebel or to find a new way of life to embrace. At this point in life I figured that it must take a lot of faith to be an atheist, at least as much as it would take to believe in a God by any measure. If the existence of God can neither be proved nor disproved then firm belief in either state would require, for want of a better word, faith. So, I accepted the uncertainty for a while and, as is its want, life moved on. Job, car, first house, girlfriends and all the trappings of starting out in the adulthood of my twenties were there for me to work at and they were more important than how I felt about this question of what I believed in. Looking back it is quite clear to me that I was drifting through this period in my life: I didn’t really have a plan, I was unable or unwilling to commit myself in a relationship, which I now kid myself is down to some lack of clarity about who I was within myself, but realistically is probably down to the fact that I was a bit rubbish boyfriend material. I am not even sure if the lack of direction that I had, and probably still feel from time to time, is anything to do with the state of my beliefs, it is probably vastly more complex (or much more simple) than that. However, as the alternative lifestyles on offer for the disenfranchised never appealed, I was never going to be a hippy, I was always going to turn out to be the person that is now typing these words.

So where am I now, exactly? Well, at a best guess I feel that I am half way there. On the brink of my forties I now know with an absolute certainty, that the missing piece of the puzzle, the replacement that I was looking for to fill the void left by the absence of faith, was a myth. There doesn’t need to be an alternative to being a catholic beyond simply not being one. There is more than enough going on in the universe to keep us all happily occupied and fascinated and it’s very liberating to be living a life where not knowing stuff is normal. There always seemed to be a preoccupation with answers when I was catholic. I was looking for answers all the time and the church provided a rulebook (although not a literal one in the case of the bible, although frighteningly some more wayward elements of christianity might think that a literal interpretation is what is required). The clergy, from the pope and all the way down, provided a way to live your life, with all the rules and expectations incumbent upon its members to follow. Right and wrong were absolutes and the shades of grey that I can now see all around me were all but ignored. Catholicism, I think, attempts to answer a bunch of questions that don’t need to be asked let alone answered and additionally, with my new-found sceptical eyes it is somewhat alarming to see that a lot of the answers that I was given (and believed) were simply made-up. This is where that thing called catholic guilt comes from and it is nothing but damaging to the individual because you end up externalising the blame when things don’t go according to the plan.

I still get moments when I am taken back to my early days of religion, especially as I still go to church at Christmas. This is essentially an exercise in getting together as a family and subsequently, I don’t particularly have a problem with it but as I sit in the pews at the church and see all the ceremony and false hope and all the nonsence of the exercise, I do begin to wonder at what the future holds for the people who are taken along for the ride. Are they like me and just going through the motions for the benefit of others? Or is their faith strong, and if so, why? If someone wants to follow the teachings of Jesus, a simple carpenter who chose a selfless life without seeking material benefit for himself and embracing the people at the margins of society then I wish them all the luck in the world. They are very probably better people than me. But if he was to come back to Earth today and take a look at what was being done in his name, I think he’d be seriously pissed off. But he’s not coming back. We get one shot at life, there is nothing after it, just like there is nothing before it, so we’ve got to cherish every piece that comes our way. I feel privileged to be a member of a species that not only is self-aware and has the capacity to learn but that also has the audacity to look at the universe around itself and ask fundamental questions of how we came to be here and where we are going. These are enormous challenges we have set ourselves. But please, don’t let anyone make up the answers.