Relics of St Thérèse of Lisieux put me in a quandary

On the one hand were the priests and bishop, telling me about the undoubted holiness of the bones in the casket and the merits of making the pilgrimage to York Minster.

On the other was my 21st Century rational brain refusing to be taken in by medieval superstition and reminding me how the monasteries and Church dignitaries made fortunes out of dubious relics and enough splinters of the True Cross to build a cathedral.

What should I do when the casket arrived at York Minster?

May I say right away that no priest has seen this copy before it went into print, indeed, if the Bishop is reading it, I may find myself quietly taken aside after Mass on Sunday and given an urgent revision course in approved Catholic dogma.

Yes, I did go to York Minster, telling myself I was going as a journalist covering an event in my area, and blinked in amazement at the long queue of people waiting to go in. Suddenly, it no longer felt like a modern day re-enactment of a mediaeval tradition, such as York knows very well.

The queuers wanted to see St Thérèse and be a part of the visit. This was a modern pilgrimage. What did it mean? In Duncombe Place, a tourist from the Far East was asking a man a man in a black jacket with a white shirt and a clerical collar what was going on.

“I’ve only just arrived myself,” he said and when she asked who he was, added “I am a bishop, the Bishop of Middlesbrough.”

The Catholic bishop for York didn’t mention that the next day he would welcome the relics of St Thérèse into his own cathedral with full ceremony dressed in ornate episcopal robes. Religious ritual is something we Catholics are very good at – we’ve had nearly 2,000 years of practice. But that evening near the Minster, the bishop was just another pilgrim. I also spotted a couple of local parish priests in mufti without their collars making their way towards the queue, again just pilgrims.

I decided to wait until the crowds had died down and came back the next morning on my way to work. A steady stream of people had had the same idea and all night long, modern pilgrims had been quietly walking in and out of the Minster without fuss or panoply because St Thérèse’s visit mattered to them. Why? You can’t touch or see spirituality, but you know when it’s present and it was certainly present that morning in the Minster. There was a stillness that spoke of prayer and holiness.

More than 10,000 people shared in that stillness during the visit, seeking something they couldn’t find in our credit-crunch society where money is the be-all and end-all and appearances matter above substance, where surgeons have to take photographs during surgery in case someone sues them later, where we are bombarded with performance targets, political spin, business speak and best practice and where a tower clock can’t be wound up because health and safety officers declare that climbing an eight-foot ladder is risky. What the pilgrims found was a nun who cared nothing for value for money and the like.

She acted out of friendship for her fellow beings, the same friendship that leads parents to ferry other people’s children to football matches, the kind of friendship that political correctness would subject to a criminal records bureau check.

Without such friendship, the very best practice and the highest value for money wouldn’t, for example, enable a sports club to get to its matches.

If the visit of St Thérèse’s relics persuades just one person to take a good hard look at today’s secular dogma and to stop acting out of fear of what others may think of us or our organisation and act out of humanity instead, she will have worked a little miracle.