As children we used all the games known to man to get through long and boring sermons: counting the number of times the preacher went ‘um’, noting words beginning with consecutive letters of the alphabet (surprisingly difficult, that), and all the rest.

Now there is a game to help people get through crushingly boring meetings. It is a variant of Bingo. It is actually called  ........ Bingo. The eight dots represent a word beginning with the same letter as ‘bingo’, which cannot be reproduced in a quality Newsletter. Priests are often accused of talking it. If you do not know the word in question, you are blessed in your innocence.

In this game you make out a bingo card containing common clichés and amuse yourself during dull meetings waiting for these phrases to be said. If you get a ‘full house’ you can call out ‘bingo’ (preferably only mentally, although at one important financial meeting someone apparently got so carried away they shouted the word out loud, to general consternation).

We all know the sort of phrases that will be on the card: "at this moment in time", "owning the policy", "level playing field". "moving the goalposts", "going pear-shaped", and a host of others. I cringe as I think of the number of times I have heard these — and then wonder if I have used them too. In case you think clerical meetings are exempt from this kind of thing, I assure you they are not. Church clichés are just as rampant as secular ones. Indeed things are worse, because we use the corny phrases of the world as well as the corny phrases of the church.

Examples of the latter include "people of God", "priesthood of the laity", "table of the Lord", "option for the poor", and, last but not least, "community". Indeed, if anybody gets through a meeting (or sermon) without using the c ------  word they are taken for a fraud. Now all of these phrases had a good origin and a good intention. They have just, like other clichés, become (a) overused and (b) divorced from reality. Pious exhortations without results are just hot air. This is true, of course, of the whole Gospel. So many Gospel phrases have passed into ordinary speech: "salt of the earth", "good Samaritan", "lost sheep", "turn the other cheek", etc., that they can become quite meaningless. In fact, the whole Gospel can become a cliché, if spoken but not lived. In that case when the priest says "This is the Gospel of the Lord", everybody should, perhaps, reply:

"BINGO!"