I WAS 12 years old when I made my only visit to Lourdes, taken there on "pilgrimage" by a religion-obsessed aunt, all of whose holidays were "pilgrimages" of one kind or another. Lourdes horrified me, even at that age: the vast concrete park around the ugly statues where the Virgin is believed by Catholics to have appeared to St Bernadette, filled each evening with the sick and maimed, their faces full of desperate hope for a "miraculous" cure, and brainwashed into believing that even if their probably inevitable death happened within days, the money spent in visiting that ugly, man-made shrine would have been well spent through the receipt of special spiritual grace.
And outside the park, selling of a different kind was happening; the entire town was a retail industry of revolting proportions, summed up by empty bottles in the shape of the Virgin being sold at exorbitant prices to be filled with water from the "miraculous spring".
I bought, I remember, a Rosary guaranteed as pure silver filigree; it turned brown within days.
But at least I wasn't conned into one of those little plastic boxes with chips or shreds of cloth in them, labelled first, second and third class "relics" that conferred special grace, and which were guaranteed to have touched a holy corpse, or to be a bit of bone from it, or have been taken from its grave, and which, if fingered while saying a prayer, would provide extra first, second or third class spiritual grace.
My aunt always wore a couple of them round her neck; one, I recall, was a relic of the "True Cross" for which she had paid some enormous sum in the Vatican, and which was "certified" as a splinter from the cross on which Christ was crucified.
And they're still at it.
In England, the Catholic Church has a special "merchandising website" for the forthcoming visit there of Pope Benedict.
The "papal product lines" include baseball caps, sweat shirts, hoodies and fridge magnets, as well as a load of stuff, including mugs, commemorating John Henry Cardinal Newman who will be beatified during the Pope's visit to Britain.
There's so much stuff that if you bought everything that's available, it would set you back more than stg£500.
But apparently the only "line" that's sold out is a T-shirt manufactured for the National Secular Society with the slogan 'Pope Nope'.
That one is going for a reprint.
And now Ireland is getting into that sordid business. Failte Ireland has been investigating, and indeed running, a pilot programme, for "spiritual tourism".
The information was revealed by Sister Maureen Lally from the 'Croagh Patrick Heritage Trail' organisation.
She is based in Swinford in Mayo, and was interviewed last week by John Murray on Morning Ireland.
They were developing an "integrated approach", concentrating specifically on the west and north-west, she said proudly, and aimed at attracting three different levels of "spiritual tourists".
The first is the "sacred tourist" -- the true pilgrim interested in penitential services attached to one or other specific shrine. (Although it was implied that if you really wanted to get off on a good penitential high, you could "do" several of them as a package. At a price, one presumes.)
And if you think about it, that's a really terrific option for an organiser: just pile on the penitential practices by keeping them hungry, giving them lousy beds, and withholding decent washing facilities.
It'll cost you sod all, making for a nifty profit while the "pilgrim" effortlessly recreates the lifestyle of a medieval hermit or anchorite with all its attendant mentally unhealthy deprivations.
Then there's "cultural spirituality" where it's all a bit less rigorous, and you can combine a bit of what Sister Maureen called "culture" with your spiritual endeavours.
Presumably there'd be less spiritual reward at that level, with St Peter peering down from the pearly gates counting the hunger pangs and the blistered knees, or lack of them, and entering them in a heavenly ledger.
Mind you, never having "done" Lough Derg (though a friend once mischievously suggested it as light relief after I'd complained of the torture of standing for an hour and a half through a particularly tedious "cultural experience" while wearing sitting-down shoes), I'm not sure how much culture is actually available in the environs of the Holy Island.
At the third level, there's spiritual and heritage tourism, which apparently, Sister Maureen's own organisation, the Croagh Patrick Heritage Trail, represents. As well as your penitential visit (or in that case, climb) there's a whole vista of tours and programmes connected to landscape and heritage. I'd say St Peter would be pursing his lips over that one: a rap on the knuckles rather than a gold star the order of the day there.
But having done its investigations and come up with the three proposed levels of spiritual tourism, Bord Failte, according to Sister Maureen, is looking at ways of selling them as entities.
"So you're looking at it as an industry in itself?" asked a slightly incredulous-sounding John Murray.
Apparently yes, all the "stakeholders" (that is, the religious organisations) in the spiritual "industry" have been engaged in this pilot, and ways are being sought of "packaging" it as a hard sell and moneymaker.
But, suggested Murray, did she not think that many people who actually did have spiritual sensibilities would be aghast (the word he used) at this approach to a matter of personal sanctity?
"Of course," Sister Maureen replied jovially. Such people were very much concerned to "keep intact" the integrity of the spiritual location and experience. Such people, she explained, were really "into prayer and reflection". And nowadays, there was a "deep search for meaning in life".
So all aboard the holy marketing train to search for meaning, and buy your way to holiness. Wave your flags for Jesus (only €10 each.) Presumably, given the involvement of Failte Ireland, there'll be a new logo, maybe a cross atop a shamrock.
I keep thinking that our country has shocked and shamed us as much as it is possible for it to do.
The Church in Ireland has always been down and dirty when it comes to money-grubbing (think of the vast income it earned from the slave labour of children in its care), but it seems incredible that it is now openly touting spirituality as a money-spinner.
And that the State, in the persons of its government tourism agency, is aiding and abetting this distasteful exploitation of one of the most personal elements of people's lives is truly nauseating.
Our spirituality and our sex lives were supposed to be the last bastions of privacy.
Will we now move on to sex tourism as well?
SIC: II