Barrtalk: Still strong support for heaven, but hell could be a goner

I must say, I did laugh at the results of a new survey which reveals that 65 percent of Irish people believe in heaven after death, yet only 16 per cent of us believe in the existence of hell.

Talk about focusing on the positive! I’d always assumed you couldn’t really have one without the other: that they were an inseparable team, like light and darkness, or good and evil.

Then again, Limbo was abolished by Pope Benedict XVI back in 2007, and people rarely mention purgatory anymore either. So maybe we can ignore hell out of existence too. To hell with hell?

One of the more worrying findings of the RIP.ie survey is that almost as many people believe in ghosts as hell, with 14 per cent of respondents accepting the presence of otherworldly spirits among us. Spooky.

The findings were in a major survey of funeral attitudes conducted for RIP.ie across 3,400 people to mark the 20th anniversary of the website.

I was glad to see that 90 percent of those surveyed agreed that family members should be allowed to deliver eulogies at funerals in churches.

And even more delighted to read that 86 per cent of those respondents believe the eulogy should be kept under ten minutes, which it absolutely should.

When anyone asks for advice on a speech of any kind, I always tell them one key thing above all others: Keep it short!

As for the existence one way or the other of hell, I’m always drawn to the infamous quote by French existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, which just might be the most bang-on four-word phrase ever written: ‘Hell is other people’.

[But then again, I suppose you could focus on the positive too and turn it around to say, ‘Heaven is other people’]

The mysterious life and times of St Patrick

How can we possibly be zooming round to another Paddy’s Day already? The earth seems to spin faster and faster, the older we get.

St Patrick’s Day is a great time of the year. For me, it always signals the official end of the winter and the seemingly endless slog of cold and dark days. Yes, it can still get cold after March 17, but we’re generally over the worst of it by then.

It is, of course, a busy time for parade organisers here in Inishowen, with dedicated and fantastic committees in Buncrana and Moville putting on superb programmes of events every year, to their eternal credit [they’ll get their reward in heaven, see above].

We all know the bare bones about St Patrick – dressed in green; was a devout shepherd; drove out the snakes and spent his life dedicated to spreading the Christian faith in Ireland – but is it all correct?

He is thought to have arrived in Ireland in the middle part of the 5th Century, and here in Moville – where this column is currently being written on a grey morning – he is credited with having poked a hole in the still-standing stone Cooley Cross [for reasons unknown].

Scientists say he didn’t kick out the snakes though, with post-Ice-Age Ireland never having had any slithery reptiles in the first place.

Patrick’s real trick, historians note, may have been his marketing skills, by using the humble shamrock to explain the mystery of the Holy Trinity.

Tradition holds that he spent 40 days fasting on Croagh Patrick, a mountain now climbed annually by pilgrims and fitness enthusiasts every year. I once reached the foot of it circa 1999, but turned back for fear of rain, instead tempted by the thought of a few pints and a game of pool in a pub in nearby Westport!

Perhaps most surprising is St Patrick’s lack of green. Early depictions show him wearing blue. The switch to green apparently came centuries later, thanks to Ireland’s nationalist movement and its green branding; much like how Santa Claus switched to red for Coca Cola in the early part of the last century.

Maybe his greatest achievement is that he’s still fondly remembered and celebrated all these centuries later.

In Moville, St Patrick has become a proud symbol of hope, unity and inclusion during the annual parade, when everyone, from war refugee to underage footballer or overage Men’s Shedder, is welcome to march arm-in-arm together.

Musicians deserted Melania like the plague

And finally this week, the list of musicians who refused to let their music be used in the recent Melania film reads like a who’s who of some of Barrtalk’s favourite musicians, including Radiohead and Prince.

A row continues to rumble over the soundtrack and which artists declined to have their music featured in the controversial documentary about US First Lady Melania Trump.

I haven’t seen the film, but by all accounts, it is THAT bad, earning a grand total of zero stars from the Guardian newspaper.

The controversy, which must be intensely embarrassing for Mr and Mrs Trump, first erupted when Jonny Greenwood of Radiohead and director Paul Thomas Anderson objected to the use of Greenwood’s music.

Now, Melania producer Marc Beckman has disclosed how other artists also refused permission, including Guns N’ Roses, Grace Jones and Prince, with the latter’s estate blocking a last-minute request, after a lawyer stated that Prince would not have wanted his music associated with Donald Trump. You don’t say.

Trump probably wouldn’t have been happy to be associated with a lowly prince anyway, given that he’s obviously a mighty king!

And there’s also talk that Mick Jagger is far from happy that the Rolling Stones’ Gimme Shelter wound its way into the opening sequence of the much-maligned movie.

The biggest laugh of the whole thing, though, might be how producer Beckman continues to assert that the documentary “is not a political film”.

Yeah right.