Day 18

Sunday, again, so a drop of religion seems in order. For you atheists reading, I promise not to talk about God. Religion and God: two separate subjects, but people tend to get them mixed up. The reason I promise not to talk about God is that I am a disciple … of the Ludwig Wittgenstein method of philosophy (youse can sign up for Ludso Baby’s Thoughts 101 if you successfully complete this course) which clearly states on the cover: whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent. Stick that in your Cornflakes and chew it! Because he was Austrian, he said it in German, though, but good old Encylopedia Brittanica has him down as a ‘British’ philosopher. What are the Brits like? Don’t answer that: we do not have enough space here on the internet for a full list of their character defaults. He spent a while in Connemara too: should we claim him as an ‘Austrian-born peripatetically Irish’ philosopher? But Irish philosopher seems to be a bit of an oxymoron, like British Intelligence.

Maybe a word or two on attire as well, which I have neglected of late. Not neglected to wear, query boy, (too early yet in the Kerfuffle to go full Monty) neglected to mention here. Yesterday, I was resplendent in a dust-pink (is that a thing?) polo shirt and black, Italian moleskin chinos. And there is no earthly reason why I should not adopt the same uniform today as nobody saw me yesterday. Nobody I am not intimately related to (by marriage, anyway), that is, and I bet if you asked them, they would not remember what I was wearing yesterday, apart from the nine hours I spent swanning about the estate in my tatty dressing gown. I just got bored with the jeans yesterday and decided to wear some work clothes for a laugh. The fascination with Teams video meetings seems to be wearing off, thankfully, and I had no work-related appearances on the small screen to prepare for yesterday. [Yesterday was Saturday, thank God! – Ed] For research purposes, wearing the work clothes had no discernible effect on the amount of actual work work I completed yesterday, which shall remain, for legal reasons, undefined.

So then, while Down and Conor and Clogher are still the only two dioceses in Ireland to ban funeral Masses (that number ‘two’ there will get the mathematically-gifted but religiously-ignorant readers commenting in their droves), our local medicine man is apparently going to attempt his first live-streamed Mass today. I might tune in for a laugh to see how it goes, as the same boy is so tech-savvy he probably has difficulty plugging in his kettle in the morning. He has no need to plug it in anyway, as he is constantly surrounded by a squabble of middle-aged, do-gooder women who cater to his every need. Maybe one of them will put a match to his coal-fired internet for him and point the webcam in the correct direction. But, if one of the hoard of women (and they are all women; there is some obscure stipulation in Canon Law that prevents men from holding this very important office in the Church hierarchy for some reason – plain sexual discrimination if you ask me) turns up inside the chapel during the Mass to ensure the tech side of things goes smoothly, she will be disobeying the strict orders of all the Irish Catholic Bishops that Mass should be a no audience participation event for the foreseeable future. I do not think the Bishes stated exactly how long we would burn in Hellfire if we disobeyed the ban on attending Mass, nor how satisfying what was previously a weekly requirement of our religion had suddenly transubstantiated itself into a sin, but whichever wee woman wins the competition to help the local priest today should make sure she wears the recommended spiritual protective equipment, and, obviously, wash her soul before and after entering the otherwise empty chapel. If she can find any holy water, that is.

That other bishop, the Pope, was on the interwobble the other day prophesying that we would be celebrating Holy Week in a very strange way this year. I wonder what he has planned? If he is on board with the Irish Hierarchy’s campaign to give up religion for Lent, maybe it will be some sort of Satanic ritual, or a Pride Parade [the difference being? – Ed.]. But there is no guarantee that Franky Boy has signed up to that campaign. And, in case you’re wondering, the reason he has not rapped the Irish Bishes over the knuckles about it is that, in so doing, he would be undermining his own authority. According to the Church rules, each Bish is a law onto himself (and they should also collectively be ‘a people set apart’, preferably somewhere far away from us), and can do whatever the Hell he wants within his own diocese. Were el Papa to restrict in any way these wide-ranging powers, he would, by logical extension as Bishop of Rome, be restricting his own authoritarian sway. And then where would we be? In the Amazon jungle, maybe, worshiping a fertility goddess, but let’s give him his Jew and wait until the end of Lent to see. On a point of order, Lent actually ends at midnight on Holy Thursday, so those of you who gave up chocolate because you believed the ‘old’ rules still applied in the Church of the Latin Rite (one of 24 individual churches within the artist formerly known as the Catholic Church) can, with no loss of plenary indulgence, tuck into your Easter eggs first thing on Good Friday morning. But wash your hands first.

There you go, more religion than you are probably used to on a Sunday and not a mention of God about the place. QED.