Please God, Forgive Me For This Post

Like most Irish people, I am a lapsed Catholic.

Don't go to church. Never pray. Break a good majority of the commandments. Am quite often uncharitable and just plain unchristian. But, nonetheless, would still consider it bad form if God stopped me getting into heaven. After all, I am Irish - and sure didn't we pretty much invent the religion?

Also, like most people - not just Irish people - I know for a fact that I am going to die in plane crash. This is the most likely way for anybody to die, followed by a close-second 'natural causes'.

Now, I'm not uncomfortable with this - I've accepted my fate. And in fact I've figured out a way to stop a plane from crashing... even if you're not flying it. You simply squeeze the armrests really hard during any turbulence and, naturally enough, this stops anything bad happening as the plane won't crash while someone is holding on to a part of it so steadfastly. It's a science thing.

Anyway, I digress. What I'm getting at with the whole death-in-the-skies and bad Catholic thing is this: my Catholic upbringing (and it wasn't really religious at all, with the exception of religion class and making your fucking Communion and so on) has put the fear of God into me with regards to death without a clear conscience. Basically, I'm afraid that I'll die not having repented my sinful ways and that God will use that as an excuse to keep me out of the promised land. And I'm determined not to give that cunt any excuse to do so.

However, I'm between a rock and a hard place. I'm currently traveling, and as such have to catch many flights on my way. Thus, it's more-than-likely that I will die in a Boeing-manufactured fireball within the next few months. And I will not have had time to go to confession and thus enact the loophole that is divine forgiveness.

Now, far be it for me to say that the church is behind the times, but surely in the day and age of cyberspace and Web 2.0 (or 3.0, or whatever-the-fuck it's supposed to be now) they'd have set up some sort of an interactive website that you can simply upload your sins and get a receipt giving you the all clear? They could even have further Facebook and iPhone applications providing a similar service.

Now, getting real for a minute - I know it's fairly un-fucking-likely that the whole Catholic conception of heaven and hell and God and St-Peter-pricking-around-at-the-gate-like-some-divine-concierge thing is actually true.

However, I suppose there's a slight chance that anything can happen (for example, there's a slight chance that I will discover that I have a Rubik's cube growing out of my back, however unlikely that is), and thus it's a possibility that the entire Catholic thing is on the fucking button! How scary is that! That bad-assed mofo God who likes asking people to sacrifice their kids, who thinks nothing of killing off the entire population of the fucking world, save one boat, and who basically likes to put on his shit-kickers and kick some shit... actually exists!

So, you die and you don't know what's going to happen. And then... you arrive at the pearly gates! You're thinking, "what the fuck?", when over marches St Peter with a smug look on his face and says, "I know what you're thinking - you thought it was all bollox, didn't you? Bet you wish you hadn't talked your girlfriend into anal now!".

And, having been raised to know that all your sins are in some fucking book that this cunt has in his possession, you start sweating like middle-eastern in JFK International. It's like you're 17 again and trying to get into that nightclub with the fake ID, you just know that he's gona stop you out of everyone! And you're right! Cause the fucker has this mischievous look in his eye when you get up, like he's been fast-tracking the rest - "Mr Wayne Gacy, go on through... Himmler, nice to see you... Hindley, catch you for a drink later, girl!" - just so he can get to you and sew it the fuck in.

And then you sneak a look at the book and it's broken down into categories. First one: swear words. 'Thank fuck', you think, 'this'll last a while'.

All I can say is that, despite the fact I think he's a boring, smug, self-opinionated (I can talk!), tantrum-throwing man-child, I'm sincerely rooting for Richard Dawkins to be right on this. I pray to God that he is.