I MENTIONED recently the tradition by which newspaper unions are organised into "chapels", each overseen by a father or a mother. This is just a vestige of the early days of printing, and readers will be glad to know that most modern journalists do not regard themselves as high priests, or even altar boys, writes Frank McNally.
But I read a charming story this week that gives a new twist to the theme.
It appears that in India (where else?), they now have a temple dedicated to newspapers. The Gandhi temple in Chattisgarh is named, confusingly, after the great leader who was assassinated 60 years ago. But worshippers who gather in it daily express their devotion by bowing before a large pile of newspapers. And the flattering connection between the media and the Mahatma is that both are regarded, albeit to differing degrees, as apostles of truth.
The temple's high priest explains it thus (as quoted by the Hindustan Times): "Newspapers are eye-openers, create awareness, remain watchful of the evils and crimes in society, inculcate human values and prevent people from committing wrongs." At any rate, he allows the papers to accumulate until, every few months, they are wrapped in red cloth and immersed, reverently, in a nearby river.
Religion in India takes many forms. Some of you will have seen documentary footage of a famous Rajasthan temple in which rats are revered as vehicles for the souls of the departed. Up to 20,000 of them roam the building freely, fed by visitors who leave their shoes outside and enter barefoot, before sitting happily on the floor while the rats scurry around them.
Among the thousands of brown rodents in the temple, there are a handful of white ones, which are particularly revered. But if even an ordinary rat runs over your foot, it is regarded as good luck.
The more extreme media critics in these islands may see a connection between the two Indian sects. Thirty years ago, Nicholas Tomalin described the qualities a journalist needed as "rat-like cunning, a plausible manner, and a little literary ability". And whatever about plausibility and literacy, the rodent-like image has stuck, with the sewer-rat now a particularly popular metaphor for certain exponents of our trade.
In sharp contrast to the Indian sect, many people in this part of the world consider it the height of bad luck if a journalist runs over your foot, or touches any other part of you. Some even hire PR companies to deal with the pest problem when it arises.
But there is a hierarchy even among rodents. At the risk of sounding snobbish, I like to think some of us belong to a higher sub-species than Rattus Redtopus, the aggressive tabloid variety which is believed to have arrived here on ships from England and is more likely to carry fleas. Unfortunately, the Gandhi temple does not discriminate, honouring all newspapers equally, regardless of size, shape, or language.
Still, as someone with a vested interest in the health of the industry, I am reassured to know that we have worshippers, even if they are in India. It's true that, in Eason's and other Dublin shops, you will daily see people bowing over piles of newsprint, until an assistant shouts "no reading the papers, please". Whereupon they leave without buying a copy, which hardly qualifies as homage.
IF IT had happened in India, you wouldn't doubt its sincerity. But the timing of a new wave of spiritualism in Holland - also reported this week - looks suspicious. It centres on the so-called Only and Universal Smokers' Church of God, established several years ago, whose members honour their divinity by ceremonies that all involve smoking.
The odd thing is that applications to join the sect have surged recently. And the new-found interest appears to be strongly linked to a ban on smoking in Dutch workplaces, which took effect on July 1st.
Members of the church may be exempt from the ban under laws guaranteeing religious freedom. But the founder insists he will not take applications from opportunistic café-owners, however deep a spiritual crisis they may be having. He protests that his church is serious about its devotion to smoking. "We follow our faith very strictly," he told the Telegraaf newspaper.
There is a long connection between religion and the ceremonial burning of substances - a tradition to which the old exclamation "holy smoke" testifies. The term referred originally to incense, presumably, and appeared in a 17th-century poem with completely reverent intent. Kipling was one of the first to record its use as a mild expletive in the 1890s.
But oddly enough, long before any smoking ban, there was a kind of voluntary code by which smokers never lit up in church, whether there was a service on or not. You might get a few people smoking in the doorway during Sunday Mass, or - if they were real hard chaws - inside the porch. So in that respect, the arrangement also presaged the current practice in secular doorways.
One of my childhood memories is that, in or around the local church on Sunday, smoking was confined to a group of men who used to attend a kind of "proximity Mass" - sitting on a wall across the road during the service. It was an odd but mutually respectful arrangement. Those inside the church did not have to inhale any second-hand cigarette smoke; and the smokers, I suppose, did not have to inhale the religion.