The Irish - The Lost Tribe?

THE IRISH - THE LOST TRIBE?

By PEADAR LAIGHLÉIS

Vos autem genus electum, regale sacerdotium, gens sancta, populus acquisitionis - 1 St Peter, 2:9

A combination of material wealth and religious poverty is invariably followed by on of those immense 

catastrophes, which write themselves forever on the memory of man.  - Donoso Cortez 

MY FAVOURITE NOVEL in Irish is Monsignor Breandán Ó Doibhlin's Néal Maidine agus Tine Oíche.*  The title "Morning Cloud and Night Fire"is based on Exodus 40:36.  In fact the novel closely follows the delivery of the enslaved Hebrews from Egypt andd their subsequent journey town the promised land.  But the book is written about the Irish, and it is made difficult for the average Irish reader by his frequent references to an older form of the Irish tongue.

Mgr Ó  Doibhlin was not the first.  When I read the book for the second time a number of years ago, I wondered how much the author knew about the fascination of the early Irish monks with ancient Israel and also how shocked those monks would be with modern scholarly attitudes.

Biblical influence crucial

The literature of early mediaeval Ireland has to date been analysed in a strictly Aryan construct.  Parallels are forever sought within the overall Indo-European (indo-germanisch) context.  This can be fruitful. For, example, Cormac mac Airt is suckled by a wolf in infancy.  We could safely assume this to be a direct borrowing from the story of Romulus and Remus, were it not for the fact that a similar tale is told of Cyrus the Persian and the same theme emerges in Greek and Germanic lore.  Though valuable, the Indo-European view is not the last word on the matter.

The early Irish monks had little interest in India or Persia.  Their only interest in Germany was to convert the place.  In general, their only interest in an alleged Caucasian heritage was a belief that were are all descended from Noah's son Japheth.  The early Irish monks were more interested in Israel than in India.

Most of the writings now seen as mythological can be read as a retelling of a distinctly Irish folklore, subject to biblical influence.  So the puny Lug Lám Fata slays Balor of the evil eye with a sling shot.

But the monastic scribes went a lot further than that.  Lebor Gabála (The Book of Invasions) describes the primaeval history of Ireland.  It shows the influence of St Isidore of Seville and St Augustine in its view of history.  But it is interesting to see the lengths to which the monks went to parallel the Irish experience with that of the Hebrews.  In ways quite reminiscent of the Boers in South Africa or the Mormons, the first Irish Christians appear to have latched on to the conviction that they were a unique people, to whom God had allotted a special destiny.

Egyptian link

The common ancestor of the Gael was a Scythian.  (Here - and only here - would mediaeval and modern scholar find consensus.)  The lawyer and linguist, Fénius Farsaid, finds his way to Egypt where he founds a school of law.  His son married the Pharaoh's duaghter, that the father names  the language he invents after her son, Góedel, so we have Gaelic.  It is strongly hinted that young Góedel had Moses for a foster brother and Fénius taught both of them law.

Anyway, the time comes when it is now longer politic for Fénius and his kin to remain in Egypt, so they embark on a journey which brings them through the North African desert over 40 years and than through Spain, before they come to rest in Ireland.  Of course, they have to displace the peoples who were there before them, which they have no problem in doing.

 Place of natural law

A nice story, but the monks had to back it up.  They appealed to St Paul, who in Romans 2:14-15, implies a Natural Law written into creation by God.  The Irish were quite diligent in there observance of natural law (recht aicnid), according to the scribes.  Natural law was seen as a very important judicial concept; aand one presumes it remained so until Chief Justice Hamilton enlightened us on the the topic in the judgement on the constitutionality of the Abortion Information Act a few years ago.  Wherever they could point out a coincidence with the Law of Moses (recht litre - written law, they did; the most striking example being in relation to heiresses.

In the fullness of time, the Irish received the Law of Moses and with it, the Prophets and the New Testament.  This would naturally single St Patrick out as somewhat special.  The monks depicted him as a Moses-Elias figure.  Whereas the St Patrick of the Confessio and the Epistola is a simple and zealous missionary (methinks he doth protest too much - both writings are a lot more sophisticated than they appear to the naked eye), the various biographers of the saint give us the picture of either of the greatest figures of the Old Testament.

 Not merely hagiographical

Again and again, incidents are related which are similar to the lives of Moses and Elias.  In his various confrontations with the druids, we see retellings of the stand-off between Moses and Pharoah's magicians or between Elias and the priests of Baal.

It is all too simple to dismiss the Lives of St Patrick in the light of his own literary legacy.  Too simple, and based on an uncritical reading of both.  It should be remembered that St Patrick must have been a very impressive figure to silence the whole court of the High King and pave the way for the Christianisation of the entire country.

One of the Lives contains a very frank details: though the saint makes a great impression of King Lóegaire Ua Néill, the king remains a heathen.  This would hardly appear in a text which was merely hagiographical.

As Moses and Elias (foreshadowing Our Lord) fast 40 days and nights, so does St Patrick.  Finally, as the 12 Apostles are given the authority to judge the 12 Tribes of Israel, (St Matthew 19:28), Muirchú's Life assigns the same task to St Patrick, as he had been an apostle to us.  This is as close as the monks came to claiming status as a lost tribe.

 Judgement for sins

One could go into great detail about other efforts to associate Early Ireland with the peoples of the Old and New Testament, whether in lawa or customs, in origins ( though Japheth was the father of the Europeans, most Irish genealogies were traced through Shem), or personal contact.  (At least one Irish jurist went the wrong way on leaving Egypt and wandered with the Israelites for 40 years, receiving the Law from Moses.  And three Irish nobles were said to have become Christian before St Patrick came - Conchobar mac Nessa and Cormac mac Airt are the best known.)

The matter did not rest there.  At a much later time, during Plantations and Penal Laws, Irish writers and scholars returned to the same theme.  This time the literati were largely in exile on the continent, especially in Louvain.  The Elizabethan and Cromwellian terrors were fresh memories and it seemed one anti-Catholic pogrom followed another.  The writers went back to the Old Testament view of the Babylonian captivity and the conquest of the Promised Land by the Gentiles.  It was the judgement of God on Ireland for the sins of the Irish.

 Slavery and idols

Mgr Ó Doibhlin returns to the same theme this century.  Behind all the allusion to Exodus and Lebor Gabála, despite how archaic and remote all the characters and themes appear, one cannot help but believe he is referring to our own day.  Slavery and idols, though they come in different shapes and sizes, are still present; and little is so destructive as the slavery or seductive comforts, especially after enduring the more obvious slavery for so long.

Ireland has changed a lot since the 1960s, and the delusion of the Celtic Tiger within a new European superstate suggests that our present affluence may be a new form of enslavement.  If I draw my own parallel with the Old Testament in 1 Macchabees 1:11-16, we see the description of the apostasy of the Jews.

It is a depressing portrait of a race who throw off their distinctive beliefs and customs, given them by the true God, for the peace and prosperity of a pagan empire: an apostasy before the coming of Christ, which prefigures the apostasy before His Second Coming: Quo vadis, Hibernia?

There are many similarities between the Irish and the Jews, and the comparison is a lot more instructive than ideas about common links between Ireland and India (links which do exist but are buried in the mists of prehistory).  Unfortunately this resemblance is not a matter for self-congratulation; it is, rather, a cross to be carried.

Nations, like individuals, have their own vocations, their own specific missions.  Has Ireland, insula sanctorum et scholarum, made good use of the graces God has conferred on her?  And does she continue to do so in our own day?

* Breandán Ó Doibhlin, Néal Maidine agus Tine Oíche, Foilseacháin Náisiúnta Teoranta, 1964

 The Brandsma Review, Issue 39, October-November 1998 

Anamchara: Soul's Friend or Foe?

ANAMCHARA:SOUL'S FRIEND OR FOE?

by PEADAR LAIGHLÉIS

 Videmus nunc per speculum in aenigmate: tunc autem facie ad faciem - 1 Corinthians XIII, 12

JOSEPH SHERIDAN LE FANU has a lot to answer for.  As a writer of ghost stories, he incorporated many themes from Irish folklore into his tales and was widely read in the Victorian great house.  His best known story is the novella Carmilla which appears in his collection In a Glass Darkly.

Carmilla is a chilling vampire story and was among the models Le Fanu's compatriot Bram Stoker used for Dracula.  Those who like to talk of Ireland's literary tradition should know that no Irish written work has made quite the impact on the world as Dracula.

Carmilla - which I find scarier than Dracula - is set in Carinthia ( an Austrian province where Jörg Haider is currently governor), but Le Fanu draws on Irish tradition here too.  The female vampire Carmilla is like a banshee insofar as she is attached to certain families and draws her victims from among their daughters.

Off on a tangent

Rev John O'Donoghue has also drawn on Irish folklore, among other sources, to write an international bestseller: Anamchara: Spiritual Wisdom from the Celtic World.  (Please excuse my typography: Father O'Donoghue puts a dot above the c in anamchara rather than using a ch.  That is dreadfully pretensious).  Some years ago, one Sunday Independent journalist described it as one of the creepiest books she knew, though Father O'Donoghue did not intend it as such.

An anamchara is literally a soul-friend, and in early Irish monasticism was a confessor, who was the fore runner of the modern spiritual director.  Perhaps the старец (elder) in the Russian monastic tradition provides a counterpart; both ultimately derive from the same source.  But Father O'Donoghue's Anamchara does not tap into any type of recognisable Irish spiritual tradition.  It goes off on its own distinct tangent.  Before one even starts the book, nothing draws attention to Father O'Donoghue's status as a priest of the Galway & Kilmacduagh diocese.  His photograph, in mufti, appears on the jacket cover which lists his academic achievements and publications.  These are considerable, though one would question the wisdom of his then bishop in sending him to do a doctorate in philosophical theology in Tübingen, home of Rev Professor Hans Küng.  Long before Father Küng, the Catholic Theological Faculty there (Tübingen is the international academic centre of the Lutheran Churches, but nevertheless had a Catholic theological faculty there for two centuries) had a history of blazing trails.  Anamchara, however, does not blaze any trails.

'Wonderful', 'lovely'...

Anamchara is written in a very readable style.  So readableI would describe it as positively patronising.  He punctuates the work with quotations and references to literature, art, philosophy and to Irish folklore, normally qualifying either the phrase or the writer with adjectives such as "beautiful", "wonderful" or "lovely".  For example:

A beautiful example is Berninis's Teresa in Ecstasy 

The wonderful Polish poet Tadeusz Rozewicz describes the difficulty of writing good poetry

 There is the lovely story of Oisín who was one of the Fianna, the band of Celtic warriors.

This can sometimes be more than a little ridiculous, e.g.:

The phrase from Edith Piaf, Je ne regrette rien, is wonderful in its free and wild acceptance.

Sometimes, Father O'Donoghue totally misses the mark:

There is nothing as near as the eternal.  This is captured in the lovely Celtic phrase: tá tír na n-óg ar chul an tí - tír álainn trina chéile, i.e. the land of eternal youth is behind the house, a beautiful land fluent within itself.  (sic).

What he is in fact quoting here is the opening line of a very modern poem written by Seán Ó Ríordáin (1917-1977).  Ó Ríordáin suffered from tuberculosis, and for part of his life lived in isolation in a pre-fabricated building at the back of the family home in Ballyvourney, Co Cork.  This was tír na n-óg ar chúl an tí, the land of youth at the back of the house, so-called because the resident was fated to live a short life.  It is a terrifying thought, really; though in the context of what Father O'Donoghue has to say about death, I think he would see beauty in it.

The book goes through six chapters on friendship, the senses, solitude, work, ageing and death.  Father O'Donoghue writes authoritatively on each of those subjects, almost as if he has direct personal experience of each.  Well, Father is not yet aged, nor has he worked in the work environment he describes - except perhaps briefly - nor has he ever died.  And I find how he writes about conjugal love and sex very disconcerting.  Had he been a married man of his age (he is still very young), I would have been incredulous; for a priest to write of marriage, I would expect decades of pastoral experience, which was certainly not acquired in the academic groves of Tübingen.  As for sex, the question of experience or lack of it is immaterial; it is quite disedifying to see a priest writing about sexuality as Father O'Donoghue does in this book.  In this context, one might wonder whether Anamchara would have had such a roaring success if the author were identified as a priest.

Living dog and dead lion

As for solitude, he has never lived an eremetical lifestyle.  Though I can identify with a lot of what he has to say about the workplace, there seems to be something very cynical in the way it is put.  (Just as in the way he describes marriage and sex).  And I will believe his sincerity about this liberating force of death, if he is able to confirm it to me after he has in fact died.  I thought of the phrase in Ecclesiastes 9,4: melior est canis vivus leone mortuo (a living dog is better than a dead lion).  This was a reaction to Father O'Donoghue's peculiar treatment of death and the hereafter, rather than my actual view on the subject of both.

Aside for the occasional citation, which in at least one case is quite wrong, for the most part Father O'Donoghue's case for "Celtic Spirituality" is based on hearsay evidence, which is encapsulated in a very misogynistic Irish saying which denotes gossip: Dúirt bean liom go ndúirt bean léi (a woman told me that a woman told her).  In many incidents he talks of people he knows to illustrate his point.  This is fine, but it is hardly something on which to construct a model for spirituality.

He cites many philosophers, notably Hegel, but his references to Christianity are few.  Johannes Scottus Eriugena is notable by his absence, though he is one of the few indisputably Celtic philosophers in the textbooks.  Father O'Donoghue's view of the cosmos seems to suggest pantheism: in his reaction against dualism, he comes very close to monism.

He has little time for a spiritual world apart from the material world.  So it is not surprising his approach is very post-modernistic.  Philosophers appear alongside ordinary people and superstition is juxtaposed with both science and theology without any qualification.  So he mentions alleged phenomena such as the banshee and fairies quite positively.  Personally I prefer Sheridan La Fanu's treatment of the same.

What the author seems to prove is that we only see things "through a glass in a dark manner", and he seems to provide an even darker glass through which to look at and beyond the world.

A 'feel-good' book

On the positive side, I agree totally with Father O'Donoghue on the topic of television and its effect on the world.  But the book is written for television consumers.

Essentially, it is a "feel-good" book.  The spiritual counsel offered is to do nothing, to follow your heart, to go along with your feelings.  Any effort to "improve" yourself is doomed to failure, and Father O'Donoghue insists that we were made the way we were for a purpose, that we are naturally good.  It is difficult to see where either Fall or Redemption fit in here, but that does not mean they are absent.  I wonder whether a true soulfriend would advise anyone to relax and do nothing.  In my opinion that counsel is more consistent with the behaviour of a soulfoe - I suppose an anamnamhaid.

As I have said earlier, Father O'Donoghue does not say anything new or original in this book.  There is nothing challenging in it, though it is the work of a man with a gifted mind and an ability to communicate.  It was written to be a bestseller and the author succeeded in that aim.  A pity.  Father O'Donoghue could have used his talents to advance the teaching of the Gospel and the Church.

The Brandsma Review, Issue 48, April-May 2000. 

Rebel Standun Stuck in a Rut

REBEL STANDÚN STUCK IN A RUT

by JOHN HENEGHAN

EAGLAIS NA gCATACÓMAÍ

by Pádraig Standún. Cló Iarchonnachta.  316pp.  €16.00

THIS book is an apologia pro vita sua in which the author defines the Church of the Catacombs as the Church of dissent: those who cannot accept the official Church.

The introductory chapter gives us the same definition of his role as a rebel.  However, in this regard Standún is not original - he is echoing the current intolerant criticism of the Church as evidenced in Shattered Vows by David Rice and Change and Decay: Irish Catholicism in Crisis by Brendan Hoban.

Chapter Two gives an interesting account of the author's youth in Mayo and how it pointed him in the direction of the priesthood.

Further on in the book he has rightly exposed the problems that existed in Maynooth - but he has used them as a propaganda tool to whip the entire official Church.

Tháinig scéalta chun solais i lár bliana 2002 a thugann le fios gur lú smacht arís, féinsmacht san áireamh a bhí ag Maigh Nuad sna blianta tar éis domsa é a fhágáil. (Page 182)

His clamouring for women priests despite the papal instruction that this is not a matter for discussion is a challenge to papal authority.

Tá a leithéid fireann nó baineann i ngach paróiste ar domhan.  Cén fáth mar sin a bhfuil Pobal Dé fágtha gan Eocaraist?  (Page 105)

Father Standún and his contemporaries find it difficult to accept that they are the greying generation and that their status as rebels has left them stuck in a rut.  Time and the Church have passed them by.

Surely true liberals are not threatened by Traditionalists?  (In fact they can accommodate both the Old Rite and the Novus Ordo despite its variation from parish to parish.)

In my Master's Thesis Pádraig Standún: Saol agus Saothar (unpublished, 1991) I accused Father Standún of a lack of depth in his work because of his use of literature instead of journalism as an instrument of propaganda.  Alan Titley's An tÚrscéal Gaeilge subsequently altered my perspective on this when he pointed out that there are several types of novel apart from the classical mode from Cervantes' Don Quixote.  Therefore any literary work can be described as a novel on its own terms.

In fairness to Pádraig Standún one must admit he has not hesitated to highlight the social problems of the Gaeltacht.  However, while exposing the sexual problems is not a bad thing in itself, an obsession with sexual mores and their linkage with compulsory celibacy and child abuse is somewhat tiresome to the reader.  (So too was the kind of smuttiness suggested by Budawanny, the title of the film of Standún's earlier novel Súil le Breith).  Nevertheless, Standún must be given credit for raising these social issues.

However, from a literary perspective Eaglais na gCatacómaí  is weak.  As Breandán Ó Doibhlin, the eminent critic and novelist has pointed out: a novel must be assessed on its own merits: the author is irrelevant.  Father Standún's elementary mistake is to confuse literature with life.

The Brandsma Review, Issue 76, January-February 2005

Father Standun's Obsession

FATHER STANDÚN'S OBSESSION

by JOHN HENEGHAN

SOBAL SAOL. By Pádraig Standún.  Cló Iar-Chonnachta.  224pp.  €12.00

IN this novel we see more of the constant occupation of Pádraig Standún with sexual mores.  This time we are dealing with a separated couple in the Gaeltacht.  Máirtín Mac Cormaic, a writer for a soap opera, is constantly under pressure to find new themes for Béal an Chuain; if he fails he will lose his job.  Justine, his separated wife also features.  The only thing they agree on is their love for their son Cian.

The contemporary life of the Gaeltacht is contrasted with the lifestyle in times gone by, now on its last legs.  We see further evidence of Standún's obsession with the sexual theme in the description of both Máirtín - who has a one-night stand with Sinéad after a night's binge drinking - and Justine's weekend trip to Cork with James McGill.  To say the least this recurring theme is not edifying.  It is ironic that it should come from a celibate male priest who should uphold the teaching of the Church.

The pub is used as a social instrument to give a glimpse into the lives of the characters.  These are not developed, however, and function solely to perpetuate the main theme of the novel.  Máirtín manages to pick up some themes for the soap opera by buying a senile old man some drink.

The teaching of the Church is challenged, with Máirtín's mother Bríd committing suicide because of her fear of ending up in a nursing home.  So the current lifestyle in the Gaeltacht is contrasted with the old-fashioned values now only left among some old people - and evern this ebbs away with Bríd's suicide

The whole work is another variation of the writer's usual tune.

The Brandsma Review, Issue 84, May-June 2006.

Rev Pádraig Standún is a priest in good standing of the Archdiocese of Tuam.  He has written several novels in the Irish language about life in the Connemara Gaeltacht.

An Insular Look at Irish Catholicism

AN INSULAR LOOK AT IRISH CATHOLICISM

by PEADAR LAIGHLÉIS

IRISH AND CATHOLIC? Towards an understanding of identity.  Edited by Louise Fuller, John Littleton and Éamon Maher.  The Columba Press, Dublin, 2006.  256pp

A CAMEL could be a horse designed by a committee.  One would think that 16 academics might do better on the topic of Irish Catholic identity.

The phrase "Irish Catholic" rolls off the tongue easily, but neither word follows from the other.  As the universal faith, Catholicism does not mix with any particular ethnicity.  It is the very contrary of what Judaism is to the Jews or the Armenian Apostolic Church is to Armenians.  Nevertheless, Catholicism has left its mark on a great many nations, regions and peoples globally - of which Ireland is one.

This is why I find this book puzzling.  Why is France the only other model of a Catholic nation/culture with which Ireland is compared? It is probably true that most Irish Catholics, if asked to name a number of Catholic countries, would mention France, Spain, Portugal, Italy or Poland.  Though Ireland has much in common with each of these, they are not the best comparisons.  Four have long histories as sovereign Catholic states, whose Catholic communities have had to learn to live with major anti-Catholic influence since the 19th century.  The fifth was so big that none of its occupiers tried to impose another faith upon it and its 45 years of communist persecution did not come near what its neighbours suffered.
Netherlands and Quebec
The better models are less obvious.  For example, the Netherlands.  The Dutch Church was a minority that withstood centuries of persecution, to be one of the most religious societies in Europe, producing more missionaries in absolute terms than any other country.  The Dutch Church collapsed in the 1960s.  Outside Europe, Quebec was a similar example - an oasis of Catholicism in North America until the "Quiet Revolution" of the 1960s.  This saw Quebec go from being one of the most Catholic cultures on earth to being one of the most secular.

Where is the contrast?  Irish Catholicism, like Dutch and Quebecois Catholicism, is a case of a persecuted people who collectively and successfully resist that persecution.  But the resistance is based on a strong community effort - and when people collectively fail, that is it.  It will be interesting, maybe terrifying, to see how Lithuania copes with western secularisation.  Further removed are Bavaria and Slovakia, where Catholicism was a strong badge of regional identity in the face of oppression (Prussia and the Czech lands respectively), but this was not sustained for such a long time in either case.

That is personal opinion - the contributors don't deal in such analysis.  So their response to the particular crisis in Irish Catholicism, or the relationship between Ireland or the Irish and Catholicism is made in isolation.  Ireland is not even properly defined.  It appears to me that most contributors use it to mean the territory of the independent Irish state, ignoring the Catholics in the North, for whom the identity as Irish Catholics is a lot more important than south of the border.
Mother and Child Scheme
In respect of the Catholics in the South, there are many question marks.  I would ask the next commentator who refers to the Mother and Child Scheme two questions:

• Why was this piece of legislation passed without substantial amendment in the administration immediately following the First Inter-party Government? (Yes, I mean the Fianna Fáil administration led by Éamon de Valera).
• Why do commentators, particularly liberal churchmen, never mention that Noel Browne had a theological advisor - Rev. Professor P. Francis Cremin?

I could add more. For example, one of the reasons de Valera lost power in 1948 was the manner in which Fianna Fáil handled the striking national teachers.  This group normally voted Fianna Fáil.  In the course of the dispute, the government ignored entreaties by John Charles McQuaid.

Similarly, the 1937 Bunreacht an hÉireann is presented as an unequivocally Catholic document.  It is nothing of the sort.  Essentially it is the application of Anglo-American constitutional tradition to Ireland.  It does contain some very theological-sounding language in its human rights clauses.  But there are secular schools of natural law which use similar language.  The American Declaration of Independence, Constitution and Bill of Rights, all of which had a huge influence on de Valera's republican movement, often used the same sort of language.

Landmark Supreme Court cases draw on American precedents in constitutional cases - not on Apostolic Signatura judgements.  Right now, the United States Supreme Court, with its Catholic majority, probably takes more from Thomism and the Irish Supreme Court probably looks more to the Enlightenment.  The Constitution in each country is what their respective Supreme Court says it is.  I officer this as a criticism of the view that the constitution is ipso facto a Catholic document.
Example to other countries
The Constitution is a deocument in which we ought to take a great deal of pride.  It is the oldest constitution in use in any state in which the human rights articles are part of the original document.  In 1949, Adenauer looked to the Irish Constitution as one of the models for the German Federal Constitution.  At roughly the same time, Nehru used it as an important model for the Constitution of India.  Somehow, I think this needs to be pointed out.

If the contributors do not see the constitution in context, neither do they see other facets of Irish and/or Catholic life in context.  More than a few contributors refer to the problems of sexual and physical abuse by priests and religious.  I deny neither that this is a major problem nor that the response of dioceses and religious congregations has been inadequate to say the least.

However, if one were to do a vox pop on the streets of major Irish cities, I would bet that many people perceive paedophilia as exclusively a problem of Catholic clergy and religious.  In fact the rate of offence is pretty consistent across all religious denominations, and offence by clergy (including rabbis, imams, bonzes, etc) is but a small percentage of the total.  This is something opinion makers should point out.

I suppose the most fatuous remark in the book comes from Dr Colum Kenny:

It is my belief that there is little evidence that the media in general was ever hostile to the Catholic Church in Ireland.  (p.98)

I cannot accept this - though I would agree with Dr Kenny's thesis that the media cannot be primarily blamed for the current crisis in the Catholic Church in Ireland.  When Mrs Margaret Heckler was stepping down as United States ambassador to Ireland in January 1989, she singled out the manner in which the Irish media dealt with the Church for special mention.  Others have repeated this: Damien Kiberd, former editor of The Sunday Business Post; and Dr Desmond Fennell come to mind.  Father Brian McKevitt OP has concerned himself with this problem for more than 20 years.

There were two Opinion pieces in The Irish Times about the Drogheda Mass [ie. Mass on Easter Sunday 2006 in the Augustinian Church in Drogheda, where the principal celebrant, Rev Iggy O'Donovan OSA invited the local Anglican rector to concelebrate with him and his two confreres] by another contributor to this book, Patsy McGarry - one after the Mass itself and then again after the apology [Fathers Iggy O'Donovan, Noel Hession and Richard Good were required by the Augustinian provincial to apologise to Cardinal Brady, in whose diocese the Mass took place, for their public breach of canon law in doing so].  This sort of partisan approach is seen across the whole media.  Views of people such as David Quinn are the exception which proves the rule.  Mr McGarry's own contribution essentially makes the point that the Catholic Church was nice and liberal until the Famine, but that then it became overly prudish and controlling.
Political correctness
What academics do to appear sophisticated is too predictable.  So when Eugene O'Brien deals with Father Ted and deconstuction, he seems to derive pleasure in repeating a four-letter word.  The comedy was discussed in this Review by Joe McCarroll, who pointed out it is was little more than a rehash of the drunken Irishman and the idiotic Irishman, but that they put on clerical collars to make it more politically correct.

There is nothing new about satirising clergy.  Even Dermot Morgan had an earlier clerical persona, Father Brian Trendy.  Some of us remember the insufferable Leave it to Mrs O'Brien, in which the central character was a priest's housekeeper.  The parish priest there was played by Pat Daly, who himself featured in Hall's Pictorial Weekly as Canon Romulus O'Dowd.

Long before the advent of electronic media, priests featured in jokes and folktales.  Not all were complimentary and some even had teeth.  But the extent to which these academics would rely on folklorists and/or anthropologists to demonstrate the evolution of Father Ted.... I would have thought deconstructionists would have an interest in this.

In relation to literary criticism, what the contributors are determined to see in a collection of second-rate writers, I am not sure.  It is true that good points are made by three of the analysed writers - John Broderick is noted as having hated the new Mass; Brian Moore wrote a novel, Catholics, about a monastery off the south-west coast continuing to use the old Mass, but the novel is a vehicle to express the disappointment of Ireland's Massgoers at the liturgical changes.  This would be a very interesting point to examine: in particular why, in spite of so much discontent, no formal traditional movement emerged in Ireland until much later.

Patsy McGarry makes a very fair point, which needs development, that the changes shook the older generations' faith.  They continued to practice out of cultural habit, but the younger people detected a shock.  I believe this was true, and I am waiting for some analysis of the monies spent on re-ordering of churches in the face of widespread objection - in spite of the fact that the Second Vatican Council provided no mandate for such changes.  I think this, rather than Humanae Vitae, ate into religious practice.  It is true that reaction to Humanae Vitae kicked in later, but not immediately.

This brings me to a third author in the survey - Dermot Bolger.  There is no doubt that Dermot Bolger is a liberal who broadly accepts the sexual revolution as a good thing.  But he also loves to shock.  In his earlier writings, he attacked Catholic icons.  Now, he uses religion to make his secular audiences uncomfortable.  But he does raise questions about the present direction of Irish society.  The only other contributor who raises this question is Father Patrick Claffey SVD.  Father Claffey gives a reminiscence of his formative years in Co Roscommon prior to joining the Divine Word Missionaries and leaving Ireland, then his experience on return.  Father Claffey gives no nostalgic account of the past, but does give a critical view of the present.
Missed opportunities
This book is filled with missed opportunities.  It is easy, and even popular, to dismiss the past.  It is a lot more important to criticise the present.  The contributors fail to do this.  They fail to address the question of Catholic identity in general and the world-wide crisis of identity  among Latin-rite Catholics.  This is because they approach Irish Catholicism in isolation.

Though it is true that the concept of Irish identity which was popular between independence and the outbreak of the Northern Ireland conflict was very narrow and even flawed, the contributors fail to criticise the absence of a common view of Irish identity ever since, or how patriotism devolved into following the triumph (or otherwise) of international sports contestants.

Northern Ireland need not exist for all the attention it gets in this volume.  And if you thought the book was directed at an educated readership, Father John Littleton gives a translation of all the Latin terms he quotes in his article.

One of the contributors adapts a line from Frank McGuinness's play Innocence, about the artist Caravaggio: "I have looked on God and found him lacking".  To paraphrase both, I read the book...and found it lacking.

The Brandsma Review, Issue 84, May-June 2006.

I have added notes in square brackets to explain the significance of the Drogheda Mass referred to above which was current when this article appeared.