We Must Reject Secular Culture’s Nihilism and Its Terror of Life’s Mysterious Alchemy of Love and Pain, by Katherine Bennett

“Unfortunately, our mother left us some time ago,” said my atheist brother to a crowd of geriatrics assembled to celebrate another year in the life of my father. “Through death,” I clarified, lest they thought she ran off with the milkman.

The occasion of my father’s 90th birthday threw up some interesting observations. “Come on,” Dad said, standing by my mother’s grave where his own plot awaits. “Let’s get a picture so that you can do a before and after.” We are a family of Irish Catholics. Laughing and crying together over death is very much our milieu, except, that is, for my brother. His rejection of the faith of his forefathers brought with it a sense of unease around suffering and death, and the abandonment of ritual has left him, like all atheists, grappling for ways to deal with the apparent meaninglessness of it all. …