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PRESENT TENSE:OCCASIONALLY, SHOULD the topic arise, I will describe myself as a card-carrying atheist. It’s rubbish, of course. Not the atheist bit – I have no more belief in God than you believe you’ll wake up tomorrow on Mars – but I have no card to prove it. The only evidence I have are regular bouts of self-righteousness and the groans that form deep in my throat every time I see a picture of someone in Rathkeale praying to a tree stump, writes SHANE HEGARTY

I’m down as an atheist in the census, on some document hidden away in a filing cabinet in the Central Statistics Office. Or, at least, I’m down as having “no religion”, which is true in one sense, but untrue in another. Because in a filing cabinet in an office of the Dublin diocese, I’m down as being one of theirs. If I carry a card of any sort, then, it’s as a member of the Catholic Church. However, if I somehow turn out to be wrong in my sincerely held disbeliefs and I do end up, upon death, being greeted by a personal God with a guest list that does not include my name, I doubt it’ll act as a get-out-of-hell-free card.