Mike Heap's Blog

3. Blessings

Written on Sept 11, 2025

Puzzling over what is meant by a 'blessing' and what it achieves.

A while back, I was privileged to be invited by the religious education teacher at a Roman Catholic secondary school to answer pupils' questions about humanism. Several people of faith had also been invited. I arrived before the others and I sat with one of the teachers, waiting for the other speakers. The teacher mentioned that one of them was the local RC bishop and at that moment he was blessing the classrooms, something he was regularly asked to do. (I understand that this may happen at the beginning of the academic year or new term.) I have always felt unsure what it really means to bless something or someone, and I asked the teacher what blessing a classroom is all about. She replied only in the vaguest terms, and I was none the wiser. In fairness it may have been that she too was not religiously inclined.

It would have been disrespectful of me to have pursued this matter any further with her, but it set off a trail of questions in my mind. What measurable benefits were expected to accrue from the blessing? Would the pupils be happier? Would they be better behaved? Would their scholastic attainments improve? Could the benefits arise, not through God, but from a placebo effect just through the pupils and staff knowing that they had received a blessing.

OK, my skeptical antennae were quivering, but - so my thinking went - the proof of the pudding is in the eating. All the above benefits could be measured, so one could devise an experiment to test the effectiveness of the blessing, say comparing the progress of children in the periods before and after and having a control group whose classrooms were not blessed. (To militate against a placebo effect, perhaps one could devise a kind of secular blessing by a non-religious person.) I don't think any experimental design would be satisfactory (no single or double-blind is possible), but if no effects were observed, at least the bishop would be spared having to come to the school at the aforesaid times.

All this reminds me that there have been several controlled studies on the value of intercessory prayer for patients with serious illnesses, including those undergoing surgery . At first, promising results were reported but more rigorously designed studies found no significant benefit, some even suggesting potential harm when the patients knew they were being prayed for. But the purpose of my anecdote about blessing classrooms is to illustrate how my mind works. I have a very analytical thinking style, and I suspect that this is one reason why I am not religious.

Indeed, although there are no huge differences between people identifying as 'religious' and 'not religious' in the way they are inclined to think, a modest difference has been reliably reported for analytical versus intuitive cognitive style (with the non-religious being more analytic). I suspect that the difference is greater amongst those people who are most committed to their belief system.

I am not saying that the analytic style is the right way of thinking about these matters or that those who advocate practices such as the blessing of classrooms are misguided. (Indeed, most of us rely on both modes of thinking.) For the true believers, practices such as these make absolute sense and they see no reason to question them or test their validity. And they don't need people like me to interfering in their affairs. But there is nothing wrong in questioning them. The bishop who comes to the school in his or her special clothes, and with other effects such as holy water and carries out this ritual with specific prayers and incantations is making a claim to power, albeit the power to do good. And all claims to power should be challenged.

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