Page "belles_lettres" Paragraph 233

`` Well, really there is none at all.

I have no religious feeling.

Once I had a religious emotion.

It was at my first Communion.

No more.

My mother was deeply religious.

So was my brother.

He knelt down at his bed as long as he could kneel.

My father had none.

The family was Protestant, but for me it was only irksome and I let it go.

My brother and mother got no value from their religion when they died.

At the moment of crisis it had no more depth than an old school tie.

Irish Catholicism is not attractive, but it is deeper.

When you pass a church on an Irish bus, all the hands flurry in the sign of the cross.

One day the dogs of Ireland will do that too and perhaps also the pigs ''.