The pictures were in all the papers - Sinead O'Connor with a dog collar and a big chunky cross around her neck, looking very excited about the effect she was going to have at the themed "tarts 'n' vicars" party. But hey, wait a minute, this was no fancy dress; this was the real thing and, in Sinead O'Connor's mind at least, Sinead O'Connor is now a priest, Mother Bernadette Mary.
Along with most of the reasonable population, I have long since given up trying to work out why the artist formerly known as Sinead O'Connor does anything, and like most of the reasonable population, I said to myself, "that Sinead O'Connor is as mad as a brush". Still, I pored over all the coverage - in this paper, in the tabloids, on the Marian Finucane radio show - eager for quotes from Sinead about why she did this thing and from people such as Tridentine bishop, Pat Buckley about why she shouldn't have done it. Everybody was questioning everything - her motives, her actual status, whether it was an act of simony, what simony was and what for that matter a Tridentine priest was - everything, that is except why we are giving this woman so many column inches and so much airtime in the first place.
It all reminded me just a little too much of another beautiful young woman who was thrust into the public eye and started a tempestuous relationship with the media. Journalists and photographers shouted when she was being good and shouted even louder when she was being bad. And when she started doing things normally considered worrying or even unbalanced like phoning a married man several times a day, it was all reported faithfully. Then she died, pursued by the self-same paparazzi, hounded to death by the media.
Except that Diana, Princess of Wales, was no innocent victim of media obsession. She needed and used media attention as much as it needed and used her; one sensed that things didn't really happen for her unless the tabloids had a picture of it. Which all sounds a little too much like a certain Tridentine bishop . . . Still, a need for publicity does not really mean that we should be queuing up to ooh and aah at her problems like Victorians lining up to look at the exhibits in Bedlam asylum.
However, it's probably a little too easy to write O'Connor off as being as mad as a brush, given that an article in the Education & Living supplement of this newspaper on Tuesday informed us that there were dozens of Internet sites offering instant ordination. Apparently you can become anything from a saint to a monk by email, as long as you have a credit card and a signed affidavit that you have never opened a theology book in your life. This would seem to suggest that, media addict or not, Sinead is not alone in wanting to become a priest, with or without the Catholic Church's permission.
The question that kept on popping into my mind was why? Why on earth would you choose to become a priest? Of course, this is not the first time this question has occurred to me - after my teenage induction into the joys of drinking, swearing and snogging boys, I used to wonder with great regularity why on earth one would give up these pleasures unless it was because your mother was in the car outside waiting to take you home. Now I'm not quite so innocent, sorry, ignorant, and despite the awful actions of many representatives of the Catholic Church, I can see the importance of religion for some if not for myself. But it does seem a little odd that, while the number of vocations is dropping rapidly to the extent that seminaries are closing down, these ordination sites are thriving. The answer, if you ask me, is in the rise and rise of the New Age mentality.
Crystals, auras, chakras, centred-ness, the inner child - the lingo has left the realm of tofu-toting vegans and entered the mainstream. My friends, and indeed myself, all bandy about notions of leaving things to higher forces, getting our heads together and needing charms to get through things. A perfectly sane girl I met recently came out with the statement: "I've learnt to talk to my sexuality", and not one person that was listening, apart from myself, so much as cracked a smile.
In years to come, I think the whole belief in woolly, comforting, New Age philosophies and mantras will define the 1990s in the same way that free love and acid are identified with the 1960s, and shoulder pads and big hair with the 1980s. But the really interesting thing about New Age-ism is its curiously competitive and mutating nature.
People tend to run through the enlightening theories, taking a little bit of what they fancy from each, with astonishing rapidity. While the unifying thread for most of the New Age philosophies is finding inner peace in some shape or form, there also seems to be the need to have the most up-to-date and out-there philosophy of all. So after taking the road less travelled, sleeping under a pyramid and pouring hot oil onto your third eye, what could be more outrageous than joining a church? And, if you're used to buying all the accoutrements and getting "really into" your chosen belief, what could be more natural than getting ordained as a priest rather than just saying a few prayers?
Call me cynical but I can't help feeling that O'Connor's ordination is really just a statement that she is really, really together now, totally sorted in fact, because she's found this like, amazing source of inner strength, you know, man? For a time anyway, she should be happy, because not only has she got all the media coverage she could desire, but she has trumped all the other New Age searchers out there into the bargain.