More Fascinating Questions about Godlessness – 3 Years Later!
Podcast of the book launch of Saved by a Woman, the new book in the acclaimed memoir series Losing Religion, Finding Myself by Joe Armstrong, author of the Joe the Human Substack. Humanist celebrant Eamon Murphy, interviews the author, Joe reads extracts from his second memoir, there is live music and recorded songs co-written by Andrea Patron, The Rayne and Joe Armstrong.
Recorded on 3 March 2024 at a live Zoom event. The podcast includes the first ever public performance of their new, yet-to-be-released song ‘So Glad I Married You’, which packs an emotional punch while telescoping a lifetime’s journey into two poignant verses.
Joe Armstrong reads from the 11th episode of Saved by a Woman in which he made his life-changing decision not to return to his priestly path. It’s some 30 years since the events recounted in the book happened, making it easier for the author to share with raw honesty and vulnerability.
One of the joys of writing a memoir is reconnecting with people from your past whom you’ve lost touch with. The book reignites old friendships and brings people together again.
Joe shares about the joy of writing, the buzz he got in his early 20s in 1985 hearing his ‘romantic fiction’ performed by professional actor Dan Riordan on the Gay Byrne Show on RTE Radio One, Ireland’s national broadcaster. He talks about never understanding why anyone would take vows of celibacy, obedience and poverty in order to be a teacher, given that there was no shortage of lay teachers to do the job.
He shares his process of writing his memoirs: reading his journals of the period, identifying key themes and turning points, building a structure for the book, writing it, rewriting it and handing it to his Editor and Chief, his wife, Ruth.
We listen to Every Moment co-written by Andrea Patron, The Rayne and Joe Armstrong. Joe wrote the basic lyrics and melody for this song more than 30 years ago, ten days after he proposed to Ruth. It’s a catchy love song and a marriage engagement song, sung beautifully by The Rayne, with Andrea Patron performing his magic on trumpet.
Joe introduces his second reading from Saved by a Woman, which celebrates his second meeting with Ruth, his attraction to her and his best ever birthday gift, received on his 30th birthday, of a chocolate biscuit, given to him by Ruth.
Eamon asks Joe about his lack of faith in himself to sustain a relationship and wonders where it came from. Joe feels it might have come from his dysfunctional family of origin, explored in his first memoir In My Gut, I Don’t Believe; and his parents’ unhappy marriage, which didn’t inspire him to believe that marriages could be happy.
Audience member Dara Hogan asks if theology faculties should be closed down in universities. Joe disagrees. He is glad he has a degree in theology. It informed his atheism, giving him the intellectual basis for informed unbelief.
PJ Conneely asks Joe about the Irish idea of the priest having his ‘mother’s vocation’. Joe says that was not the case with him. He doesn’t believe anyone has a priestly vocation. In rejecting his own ‘priestly vocation’, he judged all religions were made up and founded on a Big Lie. He contends that professional religious believers who believe, believe in a Big Lie.
Joe shares about his mother’s unquestioning religious faith. As an infant and child, you believe everything your parents tell you. Joe knows men ten or 20 years older than him for whom it was a matter of their mother’s vocation. Some have contacted him since the publication of his first memoir, saying how ogre-like their mother became when they abandoned their priestly vocation, and the public shame they felt at being, as it was then considered, a ‘spoilt priest’.
Eamon Murphy remembers a letter sent to Joe by his mother, reproduced in Saved by a Woman, in which Joe’s mother did not come across as embittered by his leaving. Joe confirms that she took his departure very well, congratulating him for his courage in doing so. In contrast, some of his confrères in the Marist Fathers had not been kind hearing about his decision to leave, while others were very generous in their response.
John O’Sullivan, who read Saved by a Woman and features in it, praises Joe’s courage, honesty and vulnerability in writing about his sexuality, and how relatively few people are 100 percent heterosexual or homosexual. John feels there is much there that is relevant and could be helpful to young people today. He questions the choice of title, suggesting that denigrates Joe’s self-salvation, attributing his salvation to his wife.
Joe refers to the phrase ‘saved by a woman’ in Ray LaMontagne’s song Trouble and how much Joe loves that song. And to his, Joe’s, sense of humour and his usurping the Christian mythology about Eve, supposedly bringing in all our woe; and Mary giving her ‘fiat’, which allowed ‘God’ to be born. While acknowledging John’s point that he, Joe, should acknowledge his self-salvation (and he does), Joe feels he couldn’t be as integrated, fulfilled and happy as he is without Ruth.
Joe introduces the second song of the night, never before heard in public. Andrea Patron came up with a magnificent melody and, together with The Rayne, all three wrote this powerful, poignant song together. Joe hopes he won’t be in tears at the end listening to it!
So Glad I Married You, is played in public for the first time ever, sung by The Rayne. Written by Andrea Patron, The Rayne and Joe Armstrong.
After hearing it, Eamon asks Joe how he’s feeling. Joe felt emotional and pays tribute to Andrea Patron and The Rayne.
Eamon says: You’ve long been a creator. Your radio documentary, books, articles, ceremonies. The music is relatively recent. How satisfying is it hearing this song and Every Moment. Is it the same buzz you got when you heard the professional actor reading your words on RTE’s Gay Byrne Show?
Yes, says Joe. Listening to The Rayne singing that song moves him. He adds that Saved by a Woman is a love story. Only while researching the second memoir did he rediscover the original Every Moment which he wrote 30 years ago.
‘If I hadn’t been religious, I think I would have spent my life in music. Music can do what religion is meant to do. What’s still beautiful about religion is often the music.’
Eamon observes that you don’t have to be religious to appreciate Handal’s Messiah.
Eithne Dempsey comments on the Church’s negative attitudes and teachings about sex. We originate from sex. She wonders how any religion could say that sex is wrong or that the pleasure of sex is wrong, as many religions do.
Berna McColgan, a practising Catholic, thanks Joe for making Ruth so happy but she feels sad that Joe no longer believes in God. She felt that he did believe in God deep down.
Joe thanks Berna and mentions that Paul Toomey, recently deceased, whom he regarded as his foster father, cried in recent years, hoping Joe would return to the faith, adding: I don’t believe in God. I don’t feel any need to believe in God.’
Berna points to belief in God stretching back through history but Joe responds they also believed the Earth was flat. He adds that those who believed in a sun god made a lot more sense than a lot of other religions because at least the sun exists!
Adrian Stannard, in the audience, suggested parallels between James Joyce and Joe Armstrong, especially Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, the impact of a woman on helping awaken Joyce’s perspective, and asks if Joe was influenced by Joyce.
Joe confirms the parallels. ‘Utterly. There are scenes in that story which have happened in my life. There’s a passage in my first memoir where I’m living in CUS. Physically, I’m still there. But emotionally and intellectually I’ve already left. I’m walking near Leeson St and two priests, pristine in clerical clothes, are walking in one direction and I’m walking in the other direction. It was a metaphor for what was going on in my life. There’s a very similar scene in A Portrait of the Artist where a troop of Christian Brothers are walking across the bridge to Dollymount. And the protagonist is going the opposite way and saying ‘I will forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated consciousness of my race.’ He’s leaving faith, family and fatherland behind.
Patricia Lynam comments that she understands that Ruth helped Joe to save himself: ‘I get your relationship, a wonderful relationship. I understand what you mean by the title and I believe it’s the perfect name for the book. Wonderful books. Congrats.’
PJ Conneely asks about a quotation by Leo Buscaglia favoured by Joe. Joe responds: ‘A lot of my life I chose safety. It seemed safer in the Marists than out there in the big world. I had a university professor in history, Dr Michael Richter, who said to me: “Take your chance in the world.” I was afraid to take my chance but his exhortation struck. I was so often a procrastinator on the fence, so often returning to my habitual field but not being satisfied with it. And then I’m back up on the fence. My worry was, it might hurt. There might be barbed wire in the long grass. That’s why I love that quotation. It resonates with my taking a calculated risk, abandoning safety. And jumping into life.’
Joe concludes the book launch saying that love is all around us, even when we don’t feel it: ‘I’m feeling the love tonight. Thank you for your love.’
The memoir series Losing Religion, Finding Myself explores one man’s journey from his nine-year path towards the Catholic priesthood to happy atheism.
Saved by a Woman, the second book in the series, looks at the six years after he took leave of absence from his priestly studies, his definitive decision not to return to the Marist Fathers, a Catholic congregation of priests; his explorations of his sexuality; his search for his vocation in life, which is to write; and his quest for personal meaning, while outgrowing belief in the Church, God and an afterlife.
It explores, often with clever humour, his time teaching English and Religious Education at St Bonaventure’s Catholic Comprehensive School in the East End of London, and his desire to become a writer. It’s a love story, showing the author’s adventures in love, lovemaking and his eventually finding Ruth, the love of his life; their marriage in England and the birth of their firstborn son; and the biggest and best decision they made together about their future after the birth of their son. The inner dynamics of their good marriage is shared with raw honesty.
Saved by a Woman is published following the critically acclaimed first book in the memoir series In My Gut, I Don’t Believe, which explored the author’s childhood in the Catholic Ireland of the 1960s and 1970s and his nine years as a seminarian in Dublin, Ireland, in the 1980s. Joe Armstrong’s memoirs in his series Leaving Religion, Finding Myself are available on Amazon, in Kindle, Paperback, Hardback and Audible editions.
When Gill Met Joe Part 2
The second part of guest appearance by Joe the Human Substack author, Joe Armstrong, at North West Humanists, Sligo, Ireland, on 3 March 2024, invited by Gill Bell, Convenor, Humanist Celebrant and Biodynamic Psychotherapist. Relaxed interview format, with readings from the second book, Saved by a Woman, in the memoir series Losing Religion, Finding Myself, by Joe Armstrong. Available in Kindle, Paperback and Hardback editions. This is a slightly edited version of the second half of the public event. Both the first half and second half, and the full event, can be seen in three separate videos on YouTube. As well as readings from the second memoir, the Q&A session led to interesting discussions about the indoctrination of children into religion and how hard it is to rewire one’s brain after indoctrination. A member of the audience had himself been a student for the Catholic priesthood in the early 1960s, and his experience was difficult; as was the experience of seminarians of that vintage who didn’t get ordained. Their was a feeling of shame and embarrassment in the era of the so-called ‘spoilt priest’ (someone who left before ordination). There was also an interesting discussion on the word spirituality and its ambiguity; how it is meaningful if applied to feelings or moods of the human spirit but meaningless if applied to a so-called ‘Holy Spirit’ or supposed ‘spirits’.
Joe Armstrong Reads from Both Memoirs in Sligo
First Part of Gill meets Joe interview. Joe Armstrong, author of the memoir series Losing Religion, Finding Myself (https://www.amazon.com/-/en/dp/B0C71Q2XK7?binding=paperback&qid=1617184162&sr=8-1&ref=dbs_dp_rwt_sb_pc_tpbk) is interviewed by Humanist Celebrant and Biodynamic Psychotherapist Gill Bell (humanistgb@gmail.com), Convenor North West Humanists (Ireland), in Sligo, Ireland, on 3 March 2024, four days before the launch of his second memoir, Saved By A Woman (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0954661028?ref_=dbs_m_mng_rwt_calw_tpbk_1&storeType=ebooks&qid=1617184162&sr=8-1), in the series, Losing Religion, Finding Myself. In this, the first half of the interview, Joe reads from and discusses the first book in the series In My Gut, I Don’t Belief (https://www.amazon.de/gp/product/095466101X?ref_=dbs_m_mng_rwt_calw_tpbk_0&storeType=ebooks&qid=1617184162&sr=8-1), exploring how Joe Armstrong transitioned from committed believer studying for the Roman Catholic priesthood to outgrowing all religious beliefs. No longer a believer in any God, he is convinced that this is our one and only life; and that life is even more wonderful freed from supernatural beliefs and superstitions.
Driving rain, expanding waistline…
Extract from my 2nd memoir
I resumed my audio diary on 4 January 1994: ‘Good morning. It’s extremely late. Twenty-five past seven. Holy fuck! And I’m only coming out of New Hall! I’m fourteen bloody stone. I get married, contentment arrives, I buy a car, ditch me bike. My waist used to be thirty-two, it’s now thirty-six!’
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If you see your feelings as unacceptable, you see yourself as unacceptable
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Coping with a dysfunctional parent
Gerry Kelly, host of Late Lunch on LMFM Radio, chatted to me last Tuesday, about coping with a difficult parent, having spotted my recent article, Difficult Mothers: the last taboo?
You can listen to the interview here:
I loved the phrase ‘kindred spirits’, which a recent reader of In My Gut, I Don’t Believe used about us. He felt a connection with me because he, too, had a difficult relationship with his mother.
‘My relationship with her was the most complex relationship of my life. If anyone listening to this takes away anything that is helpful, I hope it will be that there are no unacceptable feelings or thoughts. If you feel hatred, accept it. Because if you don’t accept it, then you don’t accept yourself and you can’t grow.’
Kids pick up tensions at home
‘I grew up too close to my mother,’ I told Gerry. ‘Probably because she didn’t have a great relationship with my father or with his two sons. She probably put too much emotionally into our relationship.
‘As a kid, I was aware there were all kinds of tensions in the house. You pick it all up like a sponge. Sometimes, you could cut the atmosphere with a knife. Even up to my early twenties, I dared not mention the names of my two brothers. It would be a huge no-go area with my mother.
Most complex relationship of my life
‘My relationship with her was the most complex relationship of my life. The joy of writing a memoir, or, in my case, being middle way through writing my second one, is it’s a huge opportunity to examine myself.
‘My mother’s mother died when my mother was two. So she never had a mother to model her behaviour. She got married in her late 30s. My father had two sons from his first marriage. It was a huge shock to her system to go from being an independent woman with no responsibilities to suddenly having a husband and two little boys.
‘It didn’t work out. She didn’t’ get on with them. They had a really hard time. Far harder than me. My challenge was trying to grapple with the emotional and intellectual task of trying to disengage from whatever strong mother–child bond I had as a kid.
Exasperation of trying to talk to her
‘I found it exasperating trying to reason with my mother. My father would take me aside and say: “Joe, there is no point talking to her.”
‘Obviously, that was a very sad thing about his own relationship with his wife. I don’t know whether my mother might have had some psychological issue that was undiagnosed.
‘A huge part of my choosing not to proceed with the priesthood was trying to disentangle myself from all the messages and learnings that I picked up from my mother.
Undermining my thoughts and feelings
‘She always seemed to undermine not only my thinking but my feelings. I’d say I feel something and she’d say: “Oh you can’t feel that.” Or I’d say I think something and she’d say: “Oh, you can’t be thinking that.” Or I’d remember something and she’d say: “No, it didn’t happen like that at all.”
‘So she was constantly undermining my confidence. She was doing the opposite of what a good parent is meant to do. A parent is meant to be encouraging the child to think for themselves, to feel their feelings etc.
Admitting feelings of hate
‘I remember in my late teens going to confession and confessing to the priest the negative feelings I had towards my mother. I had this love–hate relationship with her. But it was hard to admit the hate aspect of it – that there were times when I just hated her. And my dad would be going on about the things she did, but he didn’t always tell me what things. But I knew she had done stuff that had made his life pretty miserable.
‘But that priest – and as you know I’m not a believer – he was a man of compassion and he had wisdom and he was human. And he was able to tell me that’s OK. You feel as you feel for a good reason.
If you can’t accept how you feel, you can’t accept yourself
‘And, to fast forward, after nine years in the seminary, when I went to counselling, I remember the counsellor saying: “If you feel that your negative feelings towards your mother are unacceptable, then, you feel you are unacceptable.”
‘And if anyone listening to this take away anything that is helpful, I hope it will be that there are no unacceptable feelings or thoughts. If you feel hatred, accept it. Because if you don’t accept it, then you don’t accept yourself and you can’t grow.
Dawn Chorus Meath Ireland
Dawn Chorus, Meath, Ireland 28 April 2022
I recorded the dawn chorus this morning at 5.15am using an ordinary Android phone. It’s extraordinarily rich in sound, birdsong, an occasional bellow from a cow, and a very distant and barely audible plane, drowned out by the rich variety of birdsong.
How lucky we are if we live in the countryside, surrounded by nature; and how often we take it for granted. What a gift that we can hear! And that we live in a land at peace.
No doubt birds still sing in Ukraine, suffering the invasion of puny Putin’s deluded mind and his uninformed or blinded population.
I wish for the people of Ukraine that they too will sing the song of freedom and that all of their land will be liberated from the invading army of the autocratic dictator, the pariah Putin.
International Dawn Chorus Day is the first Sunday of May each year. Don’t miss it this Sunday 1st May. Derek Mooney on RTE Radio One will be doing his usual great job, celebrating the dawn chorus. For details, click here.
Disaffection with HAI aired in Newstalk interview
IN an interview with Andrea Gilligan on Lunchtime Live on Newstalk, Wednesday 23 March, 2022, I aired my personal disaffection with the Humanist Association of Ireland.
No Church has a monopoly on Christian weddings
I said: ‘Just as, for example, within the Christian community, there are loads of different churches and denominations, and the Catholic Church isn’t going to say no the Lutheran Church can’t do a legal wedding and Baptists can’t do a legal wedding. It would be outrageous.’
No Humanist body should have a monopoly on Humanist weddings
‘And in the same way the Humanists should also welcome other Humanist groups to have the same legal authority to legalize weddings.’
‘They shouldn’t seek to have it as a monopoly for themselves because that would be really against the values of equality and inclusiveness and reason.’
‘It should be an open thing. More groups should be allowed to do it.’
‘It shouldn’t be something that’s a monopoly of the Humanist Association of Ireland. And it would be a shame for Humanism if they were to grasp and hold on to that for themselves.’
The General Register Office should recognize other Humanist bodies, since the rich tradition of Humanism stretches over continents, cultures and millennia and cannot be the exclusive right of just one registered company in Ireland.
If and when the GRO recognizes other Humanist bodies, as I hope they will, it will be good not only for Humanism but also for the Humanist Association of Ireland.
Difficulties with direction of HAI
Interviewer Andrea Gilligan asked: ‘How is business, Joe, for you?’
I said: ‘To be honest, Andrea, I’m kind of on my way out of ceremonies.’
‘I’ve been doing it a long time. I was nine years studying for the priesthood (and as long as a Humanist celebrant) and the longer you’re at it, you see different things.’
‘I feel it’s gone too commercial’
‘So, to be honest with you, I would have difficulties with the direction being taken by the Humanist Association of Ireland. I feel it’s gone too commercial.’
‘For example, if I were do a free ceremony – every so often I would do a free ceremony – and the HAI want their cut. And I just think that’s ridiculous.’
Need for other GRO-approved Humanist bodies
‘So I feel increasingly uncomfortable within the Humanist Association of Ireland, which is why I would like there to be other Humanist bodies which were authorized by the General Register Office to conduct legal marriages.’
Trust your Doubt
Speaking of my indoctrination into religion from childhood, I said that I wished that someone had said to me to ‘Trust your doubt’.
Doubt is the beginning of wisdom, not faith in an imaginary god.
Beast from the East
There has arisen in the East a brutal tyrant
There has arisen in the East a brutal tyrant. Humanity quakes – not because Putrid Putin is a great and powerful man because he is not. Far from great, he is an ogre, a cancerous growth that must be excised. Nor is he powerful since the great threat he poses to humanity has nothing to do with true human power.
Puny Putin is inadequate
Like any tyrant, he is dangerous because he is so inadequate as a person. Puny Putin inflicts pain on millions only because of his inhumanity.
Hitler and Putin
Puke Putin is far from terrifying. Far more frightening is our repeated capacity as a species to allow Hitler and Putin to attain and retain political and military power.
And in the decades between the two to forget what humanity had to learn the hard way.
Humanity on trial
This story ends only with the decimation of human values and humanity or in a bunker in Moscow.
There is no room for moral ambiguity. Here, there is no neutral space between good and evil.
Hitler Youth restored
He has his Hitler Youth. He has his criminal apologists. He has his bombs. He has his deluded supporters who cannot or will not see the truth.
His legacy: death and destruction
As you read this, millions are fleeing from his tyranny, his delusions, his lies, his bombs. Women and children are dying. Lives are being wrecked, ruined, ended.
Wake up humanity!
Wake up! We are at war and humans of goodwill cannot rest in Russia or in the world until this cancer of humanity has been excised.
What are you prepared to do?
And there has arisen in the East a brutal tyrant. What are you prepared to do?
Pariah Putin
How can any Russians in the West support Putin?
We can understand that Russians in Russia are being lied to by Putin and his cronies. But what are we to make of Russians in the West who defend him?
I cannot understand it. Is it that identity clouds reason? I should know. For years I believed in Catholicism. I identified with Catholicism. I maintained that sense even when reason undermined my childish beliefs.
It took me so long to see the light of reason.
Is that how it is with national identity too? In a crazy world, do Russians cling to Putin and his mythology rather than face the unfathomable reality of the catastrophe he has unleashed on Ukraine and in the world?
How long did it take Germans to recognise the twisted logic of Hitler? Will it take Russians as long?
School Yard Bully
I used to be a teacher. I’m trying to imagine a school yard bully with such power that even teachers wouldn’t intervene to stop him beating up a smaller pupil.
That is the dilemma facing the West right now. A bully so powerful that people of reason are afraid to defend the bullied pupil. Why? Because the bully has threatened to massacre the family of any teachers who intervene to save the pupil who is being beaten to a pulp.
What can the teachers do? Nobody wants their families to be treated like this battered child is being pummelled. And we know that this psychopath would carry out his threats on the families of any and all teachers who intervened.
NATO’s cop out
NATO says: ‘You are not a member. I am not obliged to fight for you. If I fight for you, our cities will be laid waste by this madman.’
It is an understandable response. Our first duty is to protect our wives and children, our homes, preserve peace in our streets. We do not want war to spread to our homelands.
We watch the child being beaten to a pulp, almost to the point of death.
We feel impotent. We cannot make love to our wives. We are limp when we try.
We let the bully continue his unprovoked assault, his rape of the child.
But is our peaceful neighbourhood, our sanitised life, worth living, if we stand by and let this child be bullied, beaten, crushed, raped, killed?
What humanity do we preserve by saying ‘I can do no more’?
Heroic Bullied Child
We watch as the child heroically fights his aggressor, his enemy, the Arch Bully of Humanity. We watch.
Limp-organed, we do things from the sidelines. Radical things, like reducing the bully’s social welfare income. We won’t sell him sweets. We won’t play with him or let our children play with him. We ask him to stop.
But the Arch Bully, the mafia boss, the untouchable, goes on beating the life out of the pupil. The pupil begs for us to help. We say sorry. We can’t. Because if we do, he will do that to our wives and children too. And he will wreck our lovely homes and our happy lives.
The child has been pummelled almost to death. The pummelling continues. The child can barely breathe now.
‘Please, please, please help me,’ he manages, in stuttered gasps, almost inaudible now.
‘I cannot,’ says Boris the Brave. I cannot allow my brave British boys to be beaten like you are being beaten. I’m sorry, child, you must die.’
#Ukraine #NATO #Bully #Humanist #Russia #PariaPutin