FATHER FRANK’S RANTS - Menacing Prayers

Rant Number 488        9 May 2011

‘Frank, I met this Christian who told me he does not pray. How can that be?’ ‘Dear Jawad, only one explanation: he was a badChristian...’

A snatch of conversation I had with a pious Palestinian student in Turkey. It depressed me a little. Then later in London another Muslim, an Iraqi, boasted to me: ‘I never pray. And my father never prayed, either!’ He was a Communist. So, I suppose, it figures. But it did not cheer the priest up.

The other day I told a certain lady, who says she is a Muslim: ‘I’ll pray for you’. She resented it. Expostulated. She declared people did that to intimidate her, put her down, something like that. ‘OK. I will not pray for you then’, I conceded. She was happy.

The lady, unbeknownst to her, did the priest almost a favour. Praying for people is a burden. An awesome one. Like caring for a distant child, lost in a Latin American jungle. And prayer can be...yes, a bit of a slog. I have a long list of people who asked for my prayers. Plus relatives and friends. Some are still alive, some dwell in eternity. I mention them all by name. Sometimes I feel as if reciting Phone Book pages. I take every opportunity to pop into a church I pass on the road (Catholic ones – Anglican churches are implacably shut) and do my intercession job. It can be hard work. But I have no choice. Prayer is a duty. A sacred one.

Yet I can understand the lady who disliked being prayed for. In certain quarters prayer can be used to pressurise people. Would not know about Muslims but evangelical Christians tend to do that. ‘You are unsound: we shall pray for you’ kind of thing. They mean well, of course. They care for your soul’s salvation.  They really do. But the pressure is there. Maybe it should be.

Can prayer be a menace? Yes. But to whom? Prayer menaces above all the ungodly. Those who fear, who hate God. The profane, the wicked, cannot pray. Worse, they dislike, they loathe prayer. This is magisterially conveyed in Fellini’s iconic movie,La Dolce Vita. Steiner, the hero’s friend, is a cultured man, interested in religion, even plays the organ in church. Yet Steiner cannot pray. He is an outsider looking in at the light above, like a rat peering through a sewer grating. Steiner, the prototype progressive intellectual,  deep down fears prayer. It menaces him. At last, in the film Steiner slaughters his children and commits suicide. An atrocious but fitting end. Atheism may look harmless, our culture plugs it as interesting and philosophically cuddly but it can only spell disaster for individuals and societies alike. The real, destructive menace of atheism has not been fully grasped by the fools who rule us...

Not just the card-carrying ungodly are menaced by prayer. Secularists, those who labour day and night to segregate God away, out of sight from public life, also perceive prayer as a threat. They loathe and fear prayer. Especially prayer when taken out of the churchy or ‘mosquey’ closet, in the open. I witnessed that personally.

The 40 Days for Life vigil took place daily in Bedford Square before Easter. It was a silent, prayerful, non-violent and non-intrusive act of witness opposite an abortion facility. Participants pledged themselves to being peaceful, compassionate, non-verbally abusive, unthreatening, not taking photographs, filming, the lot. Our statement of peace could have been drawn up by Mahatma Gandhi himself. But one day the pro-abortionists turned up in force. It was a learning experience.

I stood with the pro-life, devout people. We just prayed and recited our rosaries. We hardly raised our voices. We prayed for life. For the unborn. For those tempted to have an abortion. Opposite us was a crowd of our opponents. They jeered, screamed, beat drums, shouted abuse. They oozed antagonism, ugliness, fear, hatred. (Sorry, it’s uncharitable, I know ,but they really were an ugly lot!) We did not menace them. A pussy-cat would not have been scared by us. None of us postured violently. Why then did they fear us? We were only there to pray...

There is something in prayer which is menacing, yes. That people may dare to offer invocations, petitions to the Creator, the Sustainer and the Redeemer of the world, it must be truly frightening, unbearable. How dare we? This is the age of scientism, of hedonism, of consumerism, of free love. Reality...all there is to it is matter in motions, atoms, molecules, brutish drives, instinct. Men are only animals, aren’t they? Beasts, basically. ‘It is the economy, stupid’, that dumb slogan again. In a nutshell, materialism. What fills your belly. Everything else, ideals, spirit, love, God, prayer – only fairy tales, superstition, nonsense, really, isn’t it?

But, if it is like that, why are the ungodly so bothered by prayer? Why are they so shocked by others praying? Why does prayer threaten them, if they are so sure we are alone in an empty, uncaring universe? No one out there to hear our prayers. If prayer has no efficacy then...why? What are they afraid of, eh?

In some parts of Europe, local rules forbid to pray prayers in the open. I guess Salat, Muslim prayers, are being targeted but soon it will be extended to prayers in the name of Christ, I bet. Maybe a blessing in disguise. Public prayer threatens our phoney powers that be. The catacombs...are they coming back, perhaps? No, praying in public is the thing. A hard slap in the face of the impious, the godless, the unbelievers, the Ed Millibands of our time. (The jinx-faced Labour leader says he is an atheist: shame on him!) Prayer is provocative – good!

Prayer of course does not menace the good, the righteous, the godly. Prayer pours out from those who love God as breath comes out of living beings. Steiner, the tragic intellectual, destroyed himself and his innocent children, as prayer was impossible for him. Fellini, the great master, put it in superb cinematic truth: atheism is death but prayer brings life. In this world and in the next.

Fear us, o ungodly ones! We are praying.

Revd Frank Julian Gelli