But I have met many atheists and no one who does not believe in abstract ideas. But as soon as you try to decide which beliefs are necessary for a religion, you run into difficulties Not even a belief in God is required. Buddhism, for example, can be a completely atheistic religion, but it can also involve an entire heavenly bureaucracy. Monotheism everywhere grows saints like a rock grows barnacles; quite often the underlying rock disappears at once.

The point of this story is not that Catholicism and sex are closely entwined, but that it is often necessary to go abroad to discover just how strangely mixed are the bundles of beliefs and attitudes that we call religions This is actually a very serious difficulty. That was in Finland, where the woman from one of the Helsinki papers leaned over to me at a cathedral service, and said: “I have put on stockings and a garter belt for the first time in protest against his attitude to women Feel!”She had, too. If the answer to that question is “prayer”, it is an activity I cannot observe from the outside, any more than I could report a chess world championship from the point of the players. I might record the moves accurately, but I could have little idea of why they were played. Fortunately, a lot of the work of religions does not involve prayer. I have seen the Dalai Lama expounding the finer points of Tibetan theology – and revealing far more of himself than ever when he was talking English on subjects that I understood. Of course, with religion the difficulties are multiplied by asking what exactly the work of the religious is.

This is especially true when there are only the two of you present, because that almost always takes place in the context of an interview, which is usually a transaction with a stranger that belongs in short-stay hotel rooms.Much better, if you want to sympathise with people, is to watch them at work; and this is something a news journalist hardly ever does. It may be thought a privilege to dash around meeting spiritual leaders but, as a journalist, you almost invariably meet people at their most banal and unimpressive. I had been really looking forward to meeting Mother Teresa, and when we were finally introduced, she took my hand, looked me straight in the eye and said: “Tell your readers that contraception murders love.” Well, I thought: she’s wrong about that; why should she be right about anything else? Of course she might have found something less ridiculous to say had she not known that I was a journalist. Happily, those who acquiesce in His wisdom display the choice fruits of the Spirit, love, joy, patience, peace, etc.”Make sure Jesus is the gardener of your soul, then one day he will transplant you to heaven!”Another obstacle to belief is meeting saints. This morning my local East Anglia paper included the following reflections, from the Rev David Jebson: “Gardeners appear cruel, especially when they’re pruning and so God is sometimes misunderstood, especially when He allows suffering.