COVID-19 has enriched our understanding of what religion is about

It is held together by love with no exclusions, it has recognisable cultural but non-exclusive characteristics, and it is based on love.

What has happened, is happening, since our pandemic began, is that very many people have become very ill, very many people have died, very many people live neither ill nor dying but very frightened.

The educated among us recognise that we have so ill-treated our earth that this situation was inevitable. Children especially have realised this, and knowing that the earth they will inherit is in dire straits they have made lots of noise and actions towards returning it, and us, to viability.

While it is true that never within memory has such a widespread calamity visited us, never have so many people either individually or as organizations so clubbed together to lessen the pain and suffering it is causing.

Heroism is almost the badge of our tribe today. Yes, we have to contend with the very rich and very selfish and very politically minded social leaders, we also recognise that even among them there are glimmers of genuine compassion.

And believe it or not (!) that's genuine religion at work. Religion has been glutted with pious practices, all sorts of liturgies, chants, readings, clothing, pilgrimages, and so on and on.

All very good, yes: but the purpose they serve is the bonding of the group together. In other words: an intensification of mutual love. And where there is love, there is God. More specifically: that IS God. Love is God.

The bad news is, often such practices alienate, they distance adherents following that series of activities from others who follow a different – or no – series. What distances people from one another is by definition bad news. Where love is diminished there is the beginning of both fear and hostility. Bad.

So: we have been misled, all of us, by believing that our religious practices enrich us. What they do is they bond us a little more together. And that's healthy.

But the long prayers and super-human suppositions, that there is a listening God who will work a miracle if we all pray this way and not that way, that this is what God promises, that this is the foundation of my religion, etc etc. All false. A religion not founded on mutual love is already spurious.

Religion is this: our culture promotes a particular way of acknowledging God. 'God' can be variously translated.

Religion may of course be cultural, but never alienating

That particular way, note, is local, tinged no doubt with the culture – nationality, place, language, age, convictions, relationships, habits and so on – of whoever was originally inspired to spread this particular message, usually a genuinely holy person. But the core is love.

An inspiration strikes a person about the ultimate meaning of life, an inspiration so strong she/he inflames others about it. Soon a group is on fire with it, and structures to share and enthuse others about it emerge.The group grows. Gradually however it is the structures that assume importance, and "the centre cannot hold."

It is De Mello's story of the Sufi's cat. (En bref, when the revered Sufi went to pray his cat sat with him. When after his death his followers organised prayer they insisted on having a cat present, which often entailed much strife.)

People continue to regard their structures as their religion, in spite of the occasional efforts of some to enlighten them.

So instead of a being an opening to love, peace, celebration and unity it sickens into a keep-out set-up of us versus them and even us versus everyone else. And now you have virulent politics.

The central curse of all this is of course the death of love as a basis for progress, and the sanctification of hate as a justifiable stand on issues, but also the end of the thing as what a religion is supposed to be about – a way of expressing relationship with the one we usually call God, experienced in that first inspiration.

The religion has now become a club, a Manchester United, a Boston Redsox, where the shirt colour is important.To switch clubs in this (religious) area is more serious, and you hear words like sin and prosletysm and excommunication and even treason pronounced very carefully. Who hasn't heard in school studies, "To the stake with her/him"?

So then: COVID-19 has helped us realise the appalling stupidity of this, and the evil of political moves towards building upon it. (A newspaper where I live today announces that henceforth religious conversion is forbidden by law.)

Religion may of course be cultural, but never alienating. COVID-19 has enriched our understanding of what religion is about.

It's a free centre, it is held together by love with no exclusions, it has recognisable cultural but non-exclusive characteristics, and it is based on love. Only love. Beyond that, it is merely politics, and of the worst sort.

God bless.

Brendan MacCarthaigh is a Christian Brother from Dublin working in India for over 50 years, mostly in Value Education with senior classes and teachers.