Halloween and true religion

"If I don't believe in my Catholic religion, which is the true one, how much less am I going to believe in yours!". The paradoxical phrase with which an old man is said to have responded to the Mormon couple who knocked on his door helps us understand the paradoxical success of Halloween in countries with a Catholic tradition.

Apparently, the original quote corresponds to the anticlerical Tomás Cipriano de Mosquera, Colombian president of the 19th century, against the Protestants, but popular culture has taken the idea to respond to any circumstance in which a person has to confront their traditional beliefs with new proposals, even if for them faith is no longer (or has never been) especially significant in their daily life.

It is good that from the Church we analyze what we have done wrong so that so many have abandoned the faith transmitted to them by their parents, grandparents, parishes or schools; it is good that we review the way in which we present the Gospel in word and deed to avoid the loss of the faithful; but the well-known anecdote reveals that there is also a great number of them who consciously reject God, because He is not interested in them. In spite of having (at least) intuited the truth revealed by Jesus Christ, they prefer to put themselves in profile, to live as if God did not exist, without getting wet and, of course, without acting accordingly. It is the Pharisaic double standard, but in reverse.

In this breeding ground, Halloween has quickly taken root because, after all, the pumpkin party proposes to take death, transcendence and the afterlife as a joke. It is a party to have a good time with scares that remain just that. It is more comfortable for us than having to reflect on the inevitability of death, that reality that terrifies us and fills us with uncertainty. Because having to think about what Jesus Christ told us about it and what the Church is saying about it would mean having to change our lives, to stop looking at ourselves and start looking at others as the Church teaches us. parabola of the poor Lazarus and the rich Epulon. Halloween is, at All Saints Days, like the childish reaction of covering one's ears and starting to hum a song loudly so as not to have to listen to what we are not interested in. Thus, after the first days of November, no one will remember the death until next year and: "to something else, butterfly".

Hollywood and Halloween

One more proof that unmasks the double standards of a society that says it does not believe, but that deep down knows that the message of the Gospel is very serious, comes from the Hollywood horror movies that are becoming more and more popular these days. In "scary horror" movies, there is always an old church, a nun or a priest, if possible an exorcist. It is curious, since the number of Catholics in the U.S. is still a minority, but it works at the level of audience because the general public suspects that the spiritual strength of the Church, even if some of its members are not an example of anything, has a lot of truth.

To finish bringing to light all those atheists or agnostics just for show, there is also the figure of the number of people who ask for a religious funeral for themselves or their relatives. Nine out of ten Spaniards choose a farewell "by the Church" despite the fact that only five out of ten say they are Catholics. And the fact is that, hey, when it comes to dying, it is better not to fool around, lest...

Something similar must have occurred to the iconic French actor Alain Delon, who died this summer, when he had himself buried after a Catholic funeral in the private chapel he had built on his estate, despite the fact that he was not known for his religious practice. He claimed, however, to have a passion for the Virgin Mary and to talk a lot with her - surely Mary must have given him a helping hand to reach her Son!

Finally, when the subject of the reverse Pharisees comes up - unbelievers on the outside, but believers on the inside - I always like to remember the anecdote that an old journalist friend of mine told me about the times when he was covering the Sahara war with another reporter who boasted of his atheism. One day they were caught in the middle of crossfire and had to take refuge in the underbody of a vehicle for five interminable minutes during which they saw themselves dying. "I have never heard an Our Father prayed with more faith and devotion" - my friend recalled - "as the one I heard my colleague, the one who boasted of being an atheist, pray that day".