My Will Be Done 

“You have no idea how much money it costs to keep the Mahatma in poverty.” It was not long after Pope Francis’ death had been announced that this saying from one of Gandhi’s followers came to my mind, the cumulative effect of countless mentions of his humble lifestyle combining to give his simplicity an almost ostentatious quality. He may not have lived in the Papal Apartments, but they were, I imagine, still being cleaned and maintained…

My non-Catholicism may have won me a wife from the West of Scotland and possibly eternal damnation (a bridge we shall cross when we get there) but it has left me relatively cold to the event. The death of a twenty-something might reasonably be called a tragedy, that of an octogenarian in poor health more of an everyday fact of life, no matter how good (or not) he may have been. Those accusing me of heartlessness may wish to dust off their copy of the Daoist classic, the Zhuangzi – “At first, I wept and wailed. Then I realised how the world works, so I stopped.”

Having said that, even I was taken aback by the rapidity with which attention turned to the identity of the next Pope. Just a few hours after the Papal bedroom had been sealed and the Fisherman’s Ring smashed, media organisations were broadcasting lists of the papabili. Classy. There will, no doubt, be more, particularly after the funeral. The rule of conclaves seems to be that the appointed ritual takes so long that, by the time the doors are sealed, everyone left inside the Sistine Chapel will have been called a leading candidate by at least one media outlet.

Categorisation appearing to be an innate human need, attention turned not just to the person who might emerge, but to the type of person. Would it be a European or would the new Pope come from the Third World? Would he be young or old? Would he be a conservative or a progressive?

Debate on the latter question seemed to reflect those participating in it. To conservatives, the new Pope had to be a conservative, to progressives a progressive. To women, he had to be focused on extending the role of women in the church, to the gay community, he had to be dedicated to changing the church’s teaching on homosexuality. Few people on TV said who they thought the new Pope would be, everyone seemed happy to say who he should be – the man who was going to give them what they wanted. Anything else would lead to the end of the church. That previous papacies had failed to bring the desired blessings about was a sign that it was wrong and needed to change its ideas, never that the interviewee was wrong and needed to change their ideas.

The Pope died on Easter Monday, during the period in which the BBC attempts to meet its religious programming mandate by screening Pilgrimage – a group of random (and potentially cash-strapped) celebs of all faiths and none are sent for a long walk on the license-fee payers’ dime. They talk, they share, everyone “grows”. At one point during this year’s series, the Muslim participant said something along the lines that, while she did not live a traditionally Muslim life and did not follow many of the dictates of the faith, no-one could tell her that she wasn’t a Muslim because, inside, she knew she was. If Allah didn’t like her behaviour, she wasn’t sure she wanted to believe in Him. Her Catholic walking buddy admitted that he took a similar approach to his own faith.

Man being the measure of all things is a perfectly respectably position for an atheist to take. It is rather less defensible for the religious. God, Allah, Zoroaster or whatever other divinity one may care to believe in gets the final say. They have laid down their rules, it is up to humanity to follow them. The benefits of doing so are clear, as are the costs of not doing so. Or perhaps not. Perhaps, in this case, the omniscient, omnipotent deity really has got it wrong, and the twenty-something gameshow contestant has got it right.

It is not just the young and foolish who believe that the world and God must conform to their wishes. The clergy seemed to get in on the act too. “The Holy Father is with the Heavenly Father” may be desirable and it may even be true, but saying so seems to abrogate the role of St Peter (acting on instruction, of course), automatic papal translation to the heavenly realm not being assured. Machiavelli, after all, preferred its toastier counterpart because there “I shall enjoy the company of Popes, Kings and Princes”. Whether this plan survived first contact with a diabolical minion wielding a red-hot poker is, by necessity, unrecorded…

Whatever his current location, Francis lived long enough not just to see a final Easter, but to see the judgement issued by the UK Supreme Court on gender identification. There may well have been celebration in the Vatican over the decision that a woman is a biological woman as there was elsewhere (“No victory is ever final” might caution Churchill…), but there is less between trans-rights campaigners and many arguing that the next Pope must be this or must do this that either side would care to admit. For at its heart, the legal battle was over the extent to which people can be forced to conform to the beliefs of others. Insisting that those who believe that sex is biological have an obligation to treat transwomen as women is no different to suggesting that traditionalist clergy be forced to bless gay marriages because gay Catholics believe it is right. To both sides, the epistemic and moral high ground is theirs. And theirs alone.

“You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, it doesn’t exist,” said Nietzsche, not, to be fair, one of Christianity’s bigger fans. Famous for having decided that “God is dead”, he is less famous for fearing what would come after. Writing at a time when, to most, God’s way was the right way, he foresaw our time when, even to many believers, it appears this is only true if it is also our way, the need to enforce conformity merely the latest expression of his Will to Power. Trans campaigners are right, so society must do what they want; progressive Catholics are right, so the Church must do what they want.

But despite his reputation as a luxuriantly moustachioed harbinger of Fascism, to Nietzsche, there would have been something base about this. To him, nobility lay, not in dominating others, but in dominating oneself and particularly one’s need to dominate the world. Success lay not in forcing the world to do what one wished, but in no longer needing the world to do what one wished. His Superman may have been of the world, but he was only in it when he chose.

He was not alone. Across traditions, the highest form of devotion has been surrender and contemplation. Whether it be Christian contemplatives, Sufi mystics, or Daoist sages, progress has come from turning inward and letting the world do what the world does even, or perhaps particularly, if that brings with it the realisation one may have been wrong.

As Zhuangzi said, “The wise man knows it is better to sit on the banks of a remote mountain stream than to be Emperor of the world.”

Stewart Slater works in Finance. He invites you to join him at his website.

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