Long before doom-scrolling became an internet contagion, the primary school hymns of a Catholic childhood were preparing me for a lifetime on the edge of the abyss.

The one that gave me the fear more than all the others was the hymn to St Joseph (“pure and gentle”) and its apocalyptic chorus “When the death-shades round us gather teach, oh teach us how to die.” There you were, not even 10 years old, and you were already being told to prepare for death.

Another hymn to the Holy Souls biding in the twilight zone of Purgatory was equally bleak. This was basically a warning not to get too complacent about the afterlife. You might not be bad enough to be thrown into the fires of hell, but years of agony in Purgatory still awaited you unless sufficient numbers of your still living family and friends could shorten your sentence with their prayers.

They are waiting for our petitions silent and calm.

Their lips no prayer can utter, no suppliant psalm.

We have made them all too weary with long delay.

For the souls in their still agony, good Christian pray.

Now, it seems that the secular world is catching up with us. All you who’ve sallied through life unburdened by a belief in the Almighty and the terrors of the afterlife are getting a taste of what my lot have been living with since we started getting the sacraments. And it’s giving me a perverse sense of satisfaction.

We’ve spent most of our lives peeping round corners for the thundering hooves of the four horsemen of that apocalypse. To atheists, Conquest, War, Famine and Death were, well … just Conquest, War, Famine and Death. Nothing........

© Herald Scotland