Carol Coulter asks if "tiptoeing back to the church" or otherwise embracing religious practice ameliorate the problems of rampant consumerism and the growth in anti-social behaviour now so frequently deplored by pundits, columnists and letter-writers?
It is noticeable that these issues are largely the preoccupations of those for whom consumerism is an option, and seem to reflect a wider malaise within the new middle class. The million-euro-plus house, the two- (or three) car household, the holiday home in the country or abroad, the designer-labelled clothes and the expensive wine in the wine-rack or cellar, just don't seem to bring the sense of fulfilment they should any more.
Meanwhile teenage children, indulged with all the holidays and electronic gizmos they desire, have embraced hedonism to an alarming degree, and there are concerns about their vulnerability to alcohol-related accidents, pregnancy and venereal disease. So their parents are open to the suggestion that things have gone too far, and that there was something to be said for the stern reverend mother and the parish priest who wielded a bit of moral authority, and might have been able to sort out young Emma or Luke.
Reading some recent newspaper columns, I was reminded of an experience I had when travelling back from Paris a few months ago. A group of women who had been on a buying spree was on the bus, and one of them had left her suitcase in the hotel. She phoned its description to the person arranging its transfer. "It's got stickers and medals from Medjugordje in it," she kept repeating down the phone.
The notion that religious practice is an antidote to consumerism and hedonism is a fallacy. A life lived according to sincere religious principles is likely not to be dominated by consumerism and excess, but that is equally true of a life lived according to any other set of philosophical beliefs that go beyond crude materialism. However, if we look at societies where religious faith and practice are officially exalted, we see little sign of restraint.
The Saudi Arabian royal family rules over the most restrictive form of Islam in the world. The Wahhabite Islamic sect is intimately linked with the Saudi family, and its tenets have become official state doctrine, taught in all schools and strictly observed at every level in society. Yet the vast Saudi ruling class, its members linked by blood or money to the royal family, is a by-word for consumerism throughout the world. There is no contradiction there between religion and the excesses of western consumerism.
Nor is religious observance necessarily associated with family stability. Numerous studies show that divorce rates in the US are higher among born-again Christians and where religious observance is socially, if not legally, an imperative than among atheists and agnostics, and in reputedly "liberal" states. There is little evidence of asceticism in the lives of the Bush twins, born-again Christians like their father.
This is not to denigrate those with sincere religious commitment, many of whom are inspired by their religion to engage actively with the world around them and seek to improve it.
One does not have to be religious to be disgusted by the excesses of consumerism, and the indifference to the growth in inequality that goes with it. But we need to look deeper than at the fall in religious observance to understand what has happened. We made a number of choices in recent decades, and now we must either live with them, or make different choices.
These choices included the toleration of widespread tax evasion, the promotion of the idea that low taxation combined with tax breaks for speculative investment, was an unqualified virtue, and the abandonment of commitment to high-quality and universal public services. They included economic policies that produced a housing boom in which 40 per cent of the houses were second homes, while young families were priced out of the housing market, to mention only a few. Such policies were not challenged by any religious leader, and there is no reason to think that they, or any of their now vocal adherents, had any problem with them.
The advent of universal and free secondary education, along with economic growth, helped lessen the authority of the Catholic Church and other centres of authority. What we failed to do at this time, however, was develop instead any unifying sense of citizenship and social solidarity that transcended religious adherence. In the meantime we are no longer religiously homogenous. Even if all its lapsed adherents returned to the Catholic Church, many people would be left outside. A return to the faith of our fathers will not restore a lost social homogeneity.
What we need to do now is start a discussion on what values can be shared by all citizens, whatever their religious or non-religious beliefs, what responsibilities we owe to each other as fellow-citizens, what restraints society should impose on personal and corporate behaviour, and what values we should impart our children. It will be harder than turning up at Mass now and then. But the results might last longer.