The burning question - has sport replaced religion?

Some people conclude that sport has replaced religion because it happens to be the ‘in’ thing at the moment. Just because it is popular does not mean it has replaced religion. Shopping, travelling and going to the cinema – all of these things are popular - but they have not replaced religion. So why should sport be any different?

Sport does not speak about religion or God. It provides people with a temporary escape from the hassle and boredom of life. Religion, on the other hand, offers much more. In Matthews’s Gospel (11: 28-30) Jesus said, “Come to me, all you who labour and are overburdened, and I will give you rest. Shoulder my yoke and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.”

Sport can never replace religion because humans are dual beings with a body and a soul. Sport caters for the well-being of the body but not the soul. Humans need nourishment for the soul which only religion can provide. Religion is not grounded exclusively in this world. It focuses on the next world. It prepares people for a life with God after their earthly life has come to an end. Sport centres on this world only.

Sport will never replace religion because the needs to which religion responds to are deeper. Sport fills the void created by the gradual erosion of faith in the Western world. However, it is not a new kind of religion. For a small minority of hard-line supporters, this may in fact be the case, but for the majority of sports fans, the thought that sport is tantamount to organised religion appears somewhat farfetched. Disappointment over on-field failure is quickly eased, replaced by a renewed sense of optimism. Religion is more mystic and deeper rooted.

Sport is not a matter of life or death. It fails to touch the soul; it does not address the meaning of life and it does not answer the major questions that life poses for each human being, e.g., Why is there so much suffering in the world? What happens to us when we die? Is there an afterlife?

Religion attempts to explain what cannot be otherwise explained. Furthermore, it endeavours to offer to the world a sense or meaning. It is the dimension of human life that deals with ultimate questions. The great issues of where we come from, where we are going, and what we ought to live for comprise religion’s living heart. Sport can never achieve this.
Complex human beings

We are complex human beings. We are made of many parts: body, mind, heart, soul, imagination and memory. We also have the senses of smell, touch, taste and the ability to construct things. Sport satisfies the body. It can also satisfy some of our senses. There are several other components that it does not satisfy. For example, it does not satisfy our spiritual hungers.

Religion does. Blaise Pascal, (17th century French mathematician, philosopher and Catholic theologian) wrote: “There is a God-shaped vacuum in the heart of each person which cannot be satisfied by any created thing but only by God the Creator, made known through Jesus Christ.”

The poet, orator and Anglican priest George Herbert (1593-1633) explains why we can never rest in anything less than God. God has bestowed every blessing on us (beauty, wisdom, honour and pleasure) except the gift of rest. Why did God not give the gift of rest? He was afraid that human beings “would adore his gifts instead of him and rest in Nature, not the God of Nature: so, both should losers be.” (The Pulley – from the Temple, was published posthumously in the collection: The Temple (1633). The moral of the poem is that nothing short of union with God can satisfy our deepest desires – not even sport!
In a famous passage from St. Augustine’s Confessions the saint wrote, “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee.” (Lib 1,1-2,2.5, 5: CSEL 33, 1-5). 

Karl Rahner (20th century German priest and theologian) dismissed all admiration when he said that “In the torment of the insufficiency of everything attainable we come to understand that here, in this life, all symphonies remain unfinished.” Even the symphony of sport!

Religion exceeds events and circumstances
Religion exceeds the events and circumstances of material life in the pursuit of spiritual goals and eternal life, while sport focuses on material issues, such as victories and the reward they bring in this life. Religion emphasises a spirit of service and love of others, while sport emphasises a spirit of personal achievement and defeat of others.

Even when we achieve something special (like winning an All-Ireland medal), we still feel restless and dissatisfied. In the Book of Psalms, the Psalmist struggled with the same human reality: Where do I find fulfilment of my longings and deep desires? Ultimately, he concluded: “O God, you are my God, for you I long, for you my soul is thirsting. My body pines for you like a dry, weary land without water.” (Psalm 62). Lasting fulfilment is found in God and not in all that is good and beautiful in this world.

The realisation that no person or no thing (not even sport) can ultimately satisfy our deepest longings, can be a sobering thought. Everything in this life ultimately ‘betrays’ us to one degree or another, in the sense that – be they possessions, prestige or sport – they can never deliver completely what they seem to promise.

In Jeremiah (2:13), God levels two charges against his people, “My people have committed two sins: They have forsaken me, the spring of living water, and have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water.” The first charge is that the people have forsaken God. But the metaphor is worth noting: God is a spring of living water. He is a constant source of life-giving, pure, satisfying refreshment.

A replacement
The second charge is that the people have sought to find a replacement (for many people today it is sport) for the life that God offers by digging cisterns that are leaky. Cisterns are designed to hold water and they are not in themselves a source of water, certainly not fresh water, but water that grows increasingly stale. The point in Jeremiah is that human beings are created so that they can have a relationship with God. They are designed to be thirsty for him and if they no longer have access to the living water, their thirst will drive them to find some other means to try to satisfy that thirst. (Rodney Buchanan, United Methodist Pastor, Broken Cisterns, 2000).

For many people in our culture, sport has become the means of trying to fill the vacuum left by the flight from God. It is an opiate for the masses, and only credible as a focus for meaning in a context when no higher purpose, no higher cause presents itself as the organising principle of a life.

Some people find it difficult to distinguish between passing pleasure, short-lived satisfaction and deep lasting joy. Sport provides athletes and spectators with intense excitement and momentary satisfaction. When the performance is over, the words of the well-known lyric spring to mind: “Is that all there is?" (Song written by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller and recorded by Peggy Lee in 1969).

Athletes tend to experience an inner emptiness after the performance. The euphoria of winning does not take long to evaporate. Religion has the capacity to bring lasting joy and inner peace and fulfilment to those who embrace it.

Church Attendance:
Mass attendance has decreased significantly in recent years. However, hopeful signs are emerging. The number of pilgrims at both Knock Shrine and Lough Derg are up on previous years. Fr Lar Flynn of Lough Derg said, “we held firm with our numbers from last year and actually increased by a few score”. It was a similar situation at Knock where Fr Richard Gibbons confirmed that “at this stage the numbers are up from last year. The numbers were also excellent on August 15 (Feast of the Assumption) – the best we’ve had in few years, the Mass at 3pm was jammed”.

He described the family day of the novena as “massively uplifting”. Just over 1.5 million people visited Knock Shrine in 2019”. Meanwhile, more than 1,000 young people attended the annual Youth 2000 summer festival in Co. Kildare. (Chai Brady, The Irish Catholic, August 22, 2019).

The annual packed flights to Fatima or Lourdes clearly show that Ireland remains one of the best countries in Europe for religious practice. It is estimated that 2,500 young people from all over the world attended the final Mass at the World Youth Day held in Krakow in 2016. It outnumbered many big sporting events.

The World Meeting of Families took place in Ireland in August 2018. Pope Francis led the ‘Festival of Faith.’ The first day of his visit concluded with a crowd of about 82,500 attending the ‘Festival of Families’ at Croke Park where various entertainers performed. The attendance at other events was good. The event received much coverage from the media.

Sport has become extremely popular because of the saturation coverage it receives from television and the print media. In 1979 the media gave massive coverage to the visit of Pope John Paul II to Ireland. As a result, thousands of people flocked to various places all over the country to see him. Many of those who travelled were lapsed Catholics; others were lukewarm about their faith. Would they have gone if the visit had not received widespread coverage by R.T.E. and the national media? I doubt it. Even those who did not travel watched it on television for three days.

When the Twin Towers (at the World Trade Centre) came tumbling down on September 11, 2001, and so many lives were lost, people turned to the Church and to God for comfort and hope. They didn’t turn to sport. In doing so they may well have been making a statement: sport is important, but it has not replaced religion.

Conclusion:
The Church has been through difficult times over the last one hundred years, but it survived. It has weathered many storms. The task facing the Church now is how best to modernise for the new, dynamic cultural surroundings in which it finds itself so as to attract new members.

Diocesan Pastoral Plan:
The Archdiocese of Cashel and Emly has already commenced that task. Very soon a Diocesan Pastoral Plan will be launched by Archbishop Kieran O’Reilly. This plan was drawn up by the priests and people from the forty-six parishes all over the archdiocese. It’s all about putting structures in place to ensure that the faith will be handed on to future generations. Clergy and laity will in future work closely together to implement the plan. By virtue of our baptism, we are all co-responsible for handing on the faith.

Future Church:
What should it look like?
If the Church is to survive the faith of the next generation needs to be nurtured more. It must begin to adopt a “hands on” approach like the major sporting organisations have been doing in recent years. Sport is flourishing because the talents and gifts of young people are being nurtured on a weekly basis by good coaches.

Over the last fifteen years various sports organisations have invested substantial sums of money and a large number of personnel into promoting sport and many young people attend weekly coaching sessions where the focus is on nurturing their talents and gifts. The Church needs to adopt a similar approach.

The institutional Church needs to connect more with the local community. Most sporting organisations have an excellent record when it comes to engaging with the community. They seem to be able to connect with all age groups. The Church (just like sports organisations) needs to be more visible and active in the community. It needs to find a way into the homes and hearts of people on a more regular basis.

The Church needs to be more inclusive – like sport. It should be a place where people feel they belong. Pope Francis (Vatican City, June 2019) said, “The Church should be a house of welcome for all”. It must never be only for the “pure” and “worthy”. Pope John Paul11 stated that the church should be the “village fountain to which all would have recourse in their thirst” (Christifideles Laici, 1988). The Church of the future should be a varied membership, including the wounded and the damaged, the imperfect and the inadequate, the sinner and the failure, as well as people with different perspectives. The emphasis must be on inclusiveness rather than exclusion, on ensuring that all feel welcome, no matter what their situation, and that all would sense that they belong.

The Church should be like a welcoming family home. Robert Frost in his poem (The Death of the Hired Man) says, ‘Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in. I should have called it something you somehow haven’t to deserve. Home is where the person always belongs, where there is always a place at the table, where belonging does not have to be earned”. Sports organisations are very good at doing this.

The story of the Prodigal Son could be taken as an image for the Church of the future. Hospitality, arms open in anticipation because, quite simply, this is one of our own coming home. The elder son in the story represents another image of the Church. He said to his father, “But, for this son of yours, when he comes back after swallowing up your property- he and his women- you kill the calf we had been fattening (Luke 15:30)”

Everything is defined by the past and a price will be exacted before there is entry. This story represents a choice. Which Church do we want? Which Church do we believe in? We are being presented with a choice between what is and what is not Gospel. The mindset of the welcoming (inclusive) Church of the future must ally itself firmly with the father in this story.
Fr Tom Fogarty is PP of Moycarkey Borris parish and a former Manager of the Tipp senior, minor, u21 and Offaly senior hurling teams.