The South American Way of Death

Oh what a circus, oh what a show! Argentina has gone to town over the death of an actress called Eva Perón. We've all gone crazy, mourning all day and mourning all night, falling over ourselves to get all of the misery right.

But who is this Santa Evita? Why all this howling, hysterical sorrow? What kind of goddess has lived among us? How will we ever get by without her? *

You can visit the Duarte family tomb, in which Evita's remains officially rest, in Buenos Aires's Recoleta cemetery - so exclusive that it's said to be cheaper to live the life of a king than to die and be buried there. One tomb has recently changed hands (one wonders about the circumstances of the sale) for 250,000 US dollars. The Duartes' resting place (left) is a shiny confection in black marble and wrought iron, through which pilgrims' offerings of plastic flowers are permanently entwined. I say pilgrims, for it is indeed a shrine of sorts, where Argentinians worship the woman who, during her lifetime, was officially and secularly canonised as "the spiritual leader of the nation". (Her tomb, together with my opening quotation from Evita, reminds me a little of the public reaction to the death of Princess Diana in 1997. One commentator wrote that the gates of Kensington Palace in the days before her funeral were "like a Marian shrine". Like Diana's, little seems to be known about Mrs Perón's own religious faith.)

Both Recoleta, near the city centre, and La Chacarita, the much larger and less expensive cemetery in a distant and dusty suburb, are as far from the English idea of a final resting place as it's possible to get in the Christian world. They are veritable cities of the dead, who occupy their own homes in their own streets - some of which are quite large enough for entire families of Evita's descamisados to live in comfortably. 

Indeed, some of the mausolea are grandiose to the point of pomposity, in the form of chapels complete with altar, candlesticks and prie-dieux, as if waiting for a priest to say mass in them, perhaps in imitation of early Christians celebrating on the tombs of saints. The coffins of the dead are beneath the altar and in chambers under the floor, sometimes running to several stories. Others bear huge statues of the family head or founder, and of patron saints and guardian angels.  Some are not much bigger than phone kiosks, resembling large stone cupboards; yet even the most modest can be assumed to have cost a small fortune to build and endow. The best are beautifully swept and polished, flowers clearly regularly renewed, their locks, steps and glass doors gleaming. Others are virtually derelict, unvisited and forgotten, the photos of the dead faded almost to invisibility, little temples of dust, memorials of and to decay. Walking these silent streets of the long departed, I was oddly reminded of Pompeii.

Death, one realises quite quickly, is big down here. Visitors to tombs touch them for luck as they might the statue of a saint in a church, as if to connect physically to the dead and to perhaps to share somehow in their assumed felicity. Roman Catholicism in South America seems more recondite than in the northern hemisphere; an age-old whiff of animism and folk-religion hangs in the air and is subtly - and probably necessarily - accommodated. One suspects that the ancestors are being prayed to, as well as (or even rather than) for. 

In La Chacarita is the tomb of Carlos Gardel, the French-Argentine singer, songwriter and "King of Tango" who died in a plane crash in 1935 at the height of his fame, and who has tragic superhero status across Latin America. Its walls of pale marble are covered with beaten and burnished metal plaques from well-wishers, thanking him (not God) for his life and his magical gift that enhanced the lives of so many. Some barely stop short of asking him for spiritual favours. The leading foot of his life-size verdigris'd statue (presenting him in the "Oxford" bags and double breasted and lapelled waistcoat of his day) gleams brassy gold from the hands that touch it daily.

I wrote recently that our life beyond the grave is but the next stage of our life here. For the Christian there is only one life, and it is eternal, provided and sustained by and for God. I sense that this notion of continuum, which can seem radical to western Christians, is pretty much unquestioned by South Americans. They seem to make no bones about, indeed positively engage with, the physical reality of death. They do not internalise, privatise or over-etherealise it as we perhaps do. It is just the door between the house and the street.

* From Evita, by Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber

Re Remembrance

Every time Christians celebrate the Eucharist - their principal act of worship because ordained by the Lord himself - they engage in an act of remembrance. The Eucharistic Prayer, the prayer of consecration, sometimes called the Great Prayer of Thanksgiving, includes these words: 

		And so, Father, calling to mind his death on the cross,
		his perfect sacrifice made once for the sins of the whole world;
		rejoicing in his mighty resurrection and glorious ascension,
		and looking for his coming in glory,
		we celebrate this memorial of our redemption.*

This passage is what's technically called the anamnesis. It's related to the word amnesia - loss of memory - except it means the opposite: it means the very act of remembering. "Calling to mind" that Jesus died, rose again and ascended to his Father. Why do we call to mind, remember, this almost every time we worship?  Because it defines us, reminds us of who we are, who God has called us to be.  We need to hear it over and over again, particularly every time we do what he told us to do, lest we forget why, and so forget who we are.  This is our story, this is our song.  We retell it, re-sing it, relive it.  We are a people for whom remembrance is a defining act.  Do this in remembrance of me.

There are those who believe we should stop remembering the dead of the last century, especially those of the two world wars. They say that our remembering glorifies war. They say it's time to stop it.  We don't actively remember the dead of Agincourt, Waterloo or the Boer War: why, after so long, do we need to remember the dead of Passchendaele or the Battle of Britain?  I suggest because the two world wars and some of those that have followed them finally brought home to us the true cost of war.  Unlike those which preceded them, these were not wars that solely concerned individuals fighting in faraway places in pursuit of honour, territory and glory.  These were wars that directly affected every person on this island: rich and poor, male and female, young and old.  They were wars that formed us - defined us, if you like - in some sense made us who we are. My father fought the Japanese in the jungle swamps of Burma; my mother's family home in east London was destroyed in the Blitz. They, I, we are different people from those we would have been if those conflicts had not taken place. You and I need to remember who we are, where we have come from, and how we got to where we are now. 

Among the condolence cards I've received in the last couple of weeks is one from a priest friend, and on the front of it is a picture I would guess painted in about 1920, in the aftermath of the First World War. It shows a priest celebrating the Eucharist in the traditional way: at the high altar with six candles, his back to the people, the deacon at his right hand (both in black vestments), a server kneeling on the altar step, the subdeacon and thurifer at the side, and a cloud of incense above them all. (Well, this was close to the apogee of Anglo-Catholicism.) But, in the picture, above the living, are the recently dead. Alongside the statues of the warrior saints, like St George, can be seen the spirits of the war-dead: soldiers, sailors, nurses, even clergy.  Nearly all young and all in uniform. They are both obscured and revealed by the incense, their ethereal forms taking on the neutral colour of the church wall, ghost-like. But they are there.  That is the point.  They too stand before the altar of God, and worship as we do.  In Holy Communion we draw as close to Him, and to them, as it's possible to get in this life.

We Christians are never cut off from the departed: they are the Church Above, as we are the Church Below.  Though separated by the narrow stream of death, we worship as one. One Church, one faith, one Lord.  On this day especially we honour them because without their sacrifice we would not have our freedom.  Our freedom to live and love and worship as we do now.  Their deaths helped to form us, helped make us the people we are before God.  And because we are Christians, we are bound to remember them.

* Common Worship: Eucharistic Prayer B

"The Place of Meeting (at Holy Communion)" by Thomas Noyes-Lewis (1862-1946)

(c) The Martlet Bookbinding www.martletbookbinding.co.uk

Waterloo Sunset

Some concern has been expressed about a service held in an Anglican church in London which included Muslim prayers. You can read about it here.

I am not outraged by this, partly perhaps because I am not a "conservative evangelical" out of sympathy with my "liberal catholic" diocesan bishop and those who share his ecclesiological outlook; but also because I accept that it was done with the nicest possible (and thoroughly Christian) motives, including hospitality, reconciliation and love of neighbour.  Yet the outcome is yet another occasion on which the Church has made itself look rather silly, not least because it does not appear to have occurred to the vicar of the church in question that the service would be seen as in any sense controversial (if I did not dislike the expression so much, I would be tempted to exclaim, softly but patronisingly: "Ah, bless!")

But the Church is now rather an old hand at making itself look silly; and there are perhaps deeper reasons why this service (at which I should emphasise I was not present) should not have taken place.  These do not turn on its alleged illegality (so often the first port of call for outraged Anglo-Presbyterians) nor even of a possible - I would say more worrying if nonetheless commonplace - technical breach of canonical oaths. They refer to the principle that nothing must be proclaimed or preached within one of our churches which the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church does not believe to be True.  The claim that the Quran is the literal word of God whose last prophet is Mohammed is one which I understand and respect. But I do not believe it to be true, and neither does the Church.  The Church's belief ("uniquely revealed in Holy Scripture and set forth in the Catholic Creeds") is that Jesus Christ is the incarnate God who died for our sins, rose from the dead, sits at the right hand of the Father to intercede for us, and will come again as our Judge.  This is the Absolute Truth as far as it is concerned, and nothing that is incompatible with that can with integrity be proclaimed by or in it.

Another point, which I know has been made many times before, is this. While I have no doubt that the Muslims who attended the service were both grateful for and touched by it, I suspect such sentiment is fleeting.  A true and lasting meeting of hearts and minds takes place when those of (sometimes profoundly) differing creeds find brotherhood without needing to dilute or mingle their beliefs. Seriously religious human beings can look their differences in the eye without loss of integrity or (please God) love.

Back on the agenda: Doing God

I was told yesterday an amusing anecdote relating to Robert Runcie, the last-but-three Archbishop of Canterbury.  Following a Lenten service somewhere or other, he asked people in the congregation what they had given up for Lent.  He was met in the main with predictable responses about alcohol and chocolate.  One man, however, said he couldn’t reveal what he had given up.  “You needn’t be shy”, said Archbishop Robert, kindly, “I’m a priest.”  “Well”, said the man, hesitantly, “to be candid, I’ve given up masturbation.”  Runcie paused momentarily, then smiled.  “In which case”, he replied, “Easter is going to be fun!”

But my favourite quote is this (which I heard him say in a TV interview): “We preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to the Jews, foolishness to the Greeks, and a source of perpetual embarrassment to the English.”  Perhaps the reason I remember this adaptation of St Paul’s words to the Church in Corinth (1 Cor 1:23) is that it captures something of how the English relate to the Gospel, and their supposed tendency to suppress its less comfortable aspects.

I am reminded of this in the context of David Cameron’s speech at the Downing Street Easter reception, in which he revealed something of his own relationship with Christianity.  This has caused some to sneer, partly because they read in his words a crude attempt to curry electoral favour with Christians (which frankly strikes me as rather improbable); but mainly because of their slightly anodyne character.  He speaks warmly about the Church’s social and pastoral work; he praises its priests and its schools, and he reveals something of his own (rather infrequent) religious practice.  He does not mention Christ’s agony on the cross and its meaning.  Not once.

His critics were quickly out of the blocks.  In the red corner, no less a personage than the Reverend Giles Fraser; and in the blue, Tim Stanley, Telegraph journalist and blogger.  Their contributions make some important points and are worth reading.  Their gist is that Christianity isn’t just about being nice or “moral”, about helping people, about warm words.  It’s about something horribly raw, something life-changing, something overwhelmingly, beautifully true.  Of course I agree with them, and am myself impatient of the prissy bloodlessness that sometimes sanitises worship and dilutes witness in the interests of good taste.  True Christian faith has dark as well as light, fast as well as feast, sorrow as well as joy – all of which must be faced and entered into by those who would follow Jesus.

And yet I suspect there are many for whom Cameron’s words will have struck a chord.  Many who have an associational rather than participative relationship with the Church - who are not opposed to it, who in fact are quite supportive of it, but who are nervous of its perceived certainties, silly internal arguments and what Cameron calls (in a subsequent Church Times article) “doctrinal purity”.   These are they who are grateful for the Church’s presence in times of grief and joy, for its benevolent presence in the community, and for the peace to be found, when necessary, in Larkin’s “serious house on serious earth”.  I can see that these might well find the meaning of the Cross difficult to grasp.  It is quite a journey.

Five years ago this month, I was present in St Paul’s cathedral when the Bishop of London hosted a panel discussion in the “margins” of the G20 conference.  On the panel were Gordon Brown (then PM of course) and Kevin Rudd, at that time PM of Australia.  Someone asked Mr Rudd to say something about his own faith.  Describing himself as a “common or garden Christian”, he gave a simple yet eloquent account of the way in which the Gospel informed his own life and work.  When Gordon Brown was asked the same question, he pointedly (and characteristically) avoided it, but referred approvingly to the so-called Golden Rule (do unto others as you would have them do unto you).  This is, of course, not a uniquely Christian precept; but it was the nearest he could get to an expression of personal belief.  I do not believe this was because he had bought into his predecessor’s idea of religion being toxic in a political context.  I wondered, rather, if he had no conventional religious faith, or one that was weak and variable - but was just too hideously embarrassed to say anything that might reveal this.

No doubt full-on, full-blooded Christians will continue to look down on David Cameron’s “religion-lite” (G Fraser).  And, as unrealistic as it may be, I would rather he had said something solid about Jesus and about his own discipleship.  I would rather he went to church more often.  But he has broken a taboo.  The British Prime Minister has said something highly positive about religion, Christianity, the Church of England and his relationship to them.  He has done so publicly and without embarrassment.   We do seem to have moved on.

Reflections from a spring funeral

Last week I said goodbye to an old friend.  


We had met nearly 25 years ago while in working in the same organisation, and had both become - largely through the irrepressible social zeal of the woman who subsequently became his wife - part of an extended and infinitely extendable grouping of colleagues, friends and partners who shared boozy nights, long weekends, idyllic Umbrian holidays and Wednesdays at the Chelsea Flower Show.  Cast to the four winds as we eventually and inevitably were, the ties that bound us were, and remain, real.  Despite our differences, we were for each other known quantities, and there is a necessary comfort in that.


Those differences included matters of religion.  My friend was a convinced atheist.  He was a rationalist to his fingertips: any proposition that did not conform to principles of human reason, that could not be shown to be true, was by definition superstition and to be resisted.  He believed that religion was, in the main, a force for ill.  He thought the Church, at best, rather ridiculous. Yet he was by no means intolerant of those - including me - who saw things differently.  He was highly intelligent and humane; and as I underwent ministerial formation and ordination, he maintained a genuine interest in my progress and my life as a deacon and then a priest.


For my part, I see atheism as a logical and entirely respectable position to hold.  If you regard human reason as the ultimate arbiter of what may or may not be true; if you can conceive of the existence of nothing above or beyond it; and if you are not disposed to accept a reality that you cannot personally discern, then atheism is where you are likely to end up.  All perfectly reasonable as far as I can see. My own belief is that this form of humanism elevates us to the status of little gods, and that that really is the root of all evil.  But he and I shared, I think, an understanding of humanity's fallibility: that, however firmly held, however well thought-through, however cherished my convictions about anything - I might just be mistaken.  And we live in a post-modern, philosophically anti-realist age, in which no individual's opinion is of inherently greater value than another's.  He and I knew we differed in this matter, and it was never a source of conflict between us.


He died young, of cancer.  His funeral was to be led by a (secular) humanist minister - styled, slightly ironically it seemed to me, "celebrant" - and I was asked to speak.  I knew that my words would need to be carefully judged: this was an emphatically non-religious service, and as a matter of courtesy to him, his wife and family, there was no question of my saying anything of the kind that I would say at a Christian funeral.  I was not unduly disturbed by this: I could see that, under the circumstances, something overtly religious would have jarred, and everybody would be feeling jarred enough.


But then I got a message from his a member of his family, the burden of which was that they would prefer it if I did not wear a clerical collar at the funeral. I confess my back went up at this: not only was I not to say anything "religious" (and in fact had not planned to), I was not even to look as if I might.  They could not be expected to understand that, for a clergyperson of my tradition, a clerical collar is not a statement of my convictions, even less my occupation: it is an expression of who I am.  And so I imagine they would not have realised that they were saying that it was I, personally, who was not acceptable to them.


I did briefly and indignantly wonder if they would have said the same to a rabbi or an imam should any such have been expected to speak, then decided to - as the current argot has it - get over myself.  I wore a black suit and tie, and ended up looking like one of the undertakers.


I said my piece, which included this - which no more than hints at the possibility of a non-physical world.  I was struck afterwards by the number of mourners who asked me about it, apparently wanting me to go further.  Almost none of these were religious people in the conventional sense; but they seemed to need the assurance of a supernatural reality.  I suspect this is hard-wired in us (see this); and that to be "religious" is simply to be human.


What is being rejected by many is perhaps not religion per se, but rather dogma and revealed truth.  The challenge for the Church, I now see more clearly, is how it engages with that.