The packaging of spirituality

When I was a youngster back in the 1950s, it was made abundantly clear to me by my parents, catechism teachers and parish priests that while I could have Anglican, Methodist, and even Dutch Reformed kids as friends, I was under no circumstances ever to set foot in their churches. his was impressed upon me with such vigour that for years I expected a bolt of lightening to burn me to a crisp every time I rode my bicycle past our local Presbyterian church.

The dire consequences of entering into a non-Catholic place of worship fell roughly into the same category of doing anything more than holding hands with a girl until after the wedding, or taking part in a séance.

It has always bothered me that in those days Catholics considered themselves God’s first class citizens, and that everyone else was decidedly second class, if not outright pagans.

So it was with great delight that I found myself in the company recently of a Jewish rabbi, an Anglican parson, two Muslim clerics, a representative of Baha’i and a brace of Catholic priests. The catechism teacher of my class of 1953 would have done her nut.

I had been invited to give a talk on stereotyping to a group of South Africa’s religious broadcasters who meet from time to time to discuss matters of common interest. The first thing that struck me just listening to the various debates, was that they were all speaking with one voice in spite of using a lot of different accents. It was a privilege indeed to be part of such a constructive group conversation where differences were few and common ground plentiful.

Islam, Judaism, Protestant, Catholic and Hindu all sought the same thing: to use their broadcast media to promote virtue. The representative from Islam TV called it “sensationalising” virtue, a progressive Jewish Rabbi called it “marketing” virtue, but everyone present agreed that whatever it was called was unimportant as long as the emphasis remained on that word “virtue”.

But for me, the most interesting aspect of that meeting was when a representative of the SABC, who was in charge of religious broadcasting, made a fascinating appeal.

Pointing out that each religion was allocated a certain amount of time on the SABC’s religious broadcasting schedule, he said that he looked forward to the day when each religion would “give up a bit of their allocation” to talk generally about spiritual matters and not specifically about a particular religion. He argued that radio listeners who were devout members of a particular religion would attend church services or mosques or synagogues. Which meant that listeners to the religious broadcasts on SABC were probably more interested in spiritual rather than religious messages.

Interestingly enough, a few weeks later I listened at Sunday Mass to a sermon on religion and spirituality.

To use a rather crass but nonetheless cryptic analogy, most products come in some sort of packaging and while that packaging is important in terms of protecting the product from damage and becoming spoiled or soiled, there is no question that the most important thing is the product itself.

So, according to the sermon to which I listened with great interest, one has religion which is the packaging that protects spirituality from damage and at the same time highlights its many virtues. This homily coupled with my experience in the company of the religious broadcasters, certainly made sense to me.

Since the Second Vatican Council, the hierarchy has given clear direction in terms of relationships the Catholic Church should build with other religions. Embracing them, working with them and talking to them instead of that holier than thou attitude of years gone by.

I also believe that there is an enormous amount of room for cooperation among religious media. That man from the SABC was quite right, in my opinion, about reducing the amount of packaging and increasing the amount of spirituality in terms of religious programmes aired by our national broadcaster.

It has also been extremely interesting to me that just in the past few weeks I have had requests from an Anglican priest and a Dutch Reformed pastor for regular copies of The Southern Cross. So hopefully, as this wonderful newspaper continues its inroads into the digital world with a now modern and dynamic website and soon an e-mail newsletter, mobile offerings and other products that will increase our reach and readership, The Southern Cross will become much more than just an exclusive Catholic newspaper: a user of diverse Catholic-centred media to promote spirituality for the benefit of anyone who wishes to embrace the spiritual.