The fear led to more thoughts and those thoughts led to more fear. My mind wandered in a terrified haze, hoping to stumble across something that would make sense of this thing so the fear would go away. But how on earth do you make sense of something like death? The answer, as I would find out, is that you don’t. You turn to heaven, or you accept it as nonsense.
Ten-year-old me couldn’t figure out how anyone could choose the latter, but growing up in a Catholic home meant that I wouldn’t have to. Salvation from death is one of the central tenets of our religion and so I was driven by fear to faith. Of course, even before these questions came up I was going through all the motions — church, daily prayers, a few good deeds, etc. — but I began to be actively invested in them. It seemed that the fate of my soul relied on them.
I don’t think these feelings are uncommon. Many people turn to religion when faced with their own mortality. When the threat is closer, the need for religion becomes more urgent. Famous war correspondent Ernie Pyle captured this sentiment nicely when he famously said, “there are no atheists in the foxholes.”
Still, after belief is embraced, that fear does not go away. It simply takes on another form: hell. There are stories about the spike in church attendance after the Exorcist rattled secular and religious imaginations alike back in 1973. If that’s true, we might conclude our fidelity to God is largely a result of our desire to stay out of the old soul smoker. It’s a crude oversimplification and hopefully it’s not the only reason we believe, but it’s something to think about.
Late last month, the Pope did something to dissipate that fear. During a homily, he said that Catholics do not have exclusive access to Heaven; that moral atheists do as well.
As someone who was once scared into belief — who encountered religion not out of love or chance but out of necessity — I think that Pope Francis did an important thing. Atheists and firm believers alike will remain unmoved by his comment, but those on unsteady middle ground may now have a better chance of finding a more honest road to faith.
Too many, including myself, have been herded down a path to religion by that famous line of Pascalian reasoning: ‘better believe now than be sorry later.’
Soon after the Pope’s remark, the Vatican issued a clarifying statement which basically nullified the comment. Perhaps you saw the National Post headline: “Vatican Clarification: Yes, we still think atheists are going to Hell.”
(Bronca, 21, recently graduated in journalism from Carleton University in Ottawa.)