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. 

Hellowe'en

Hellowe'en 

by Melancholicus

Melancholicus is not sure which day he despises most—St. Patrick’s day (March 17, and a holy day of obligation in the dioceses of Ireland), or today, Hallowe’en.

Both days are—at least in their origins—religious festivals of unimpeachable character. But their celebration today has been robbed of all recognisably Christian content, whereat they are perverted to the level of bacchanalia in a spectacle of which words such as ‘orgiastic’, ‘frenzy’ and ‘excess’ would not be an unfitting description.

The feast of St. Patrick, the apostle of Ireland c. 500 A.D., is today an occasion for inebriation of a kind to which even the drunken Irish are unaccustomed. The so-called “St. Patrick’s Day Parade” held in Dublin (and mimicked elsewhere throughout the country) has nothing to do with St. Patrick, or with the coming to Ireland of the light of the Christian faith, but is an unedifying spectacle reminiscent of Mardi Gras and (public nudity excepted) with a similar degree of wild abandon. The only remaining religious aspect of the day is the Mass, but even this has been infiltrated by the same kind of trivialising frivolity that has given us enormities such as green beer in the pubs and green milkshakes at McDonalds. Melancholicus has even seen the liturgical abuse of green vestments being worn during the celebration of the saint’s Mass.

But enough of poor St. Patrick, and the degradation to which celebration of his feast has sunk, for today is your blogger’s other most hated day.

The name Halloween (more properly Hallowe’en) is a contraction of All Hallows’ Even, namely the vigil of the feast of All Saints (1 November). Melancholicus traditionally celebrates Hallowe’en by reciting First Vespers of All Saints, after which he pours himself a double gin and tonic, then enjoys his dinner and—external factors permitting—relaxes by the fire. He has no time for the neo-pagan mummery now associated with Hallowe’en, or for the glut of horror films typically shown on the television, nor for the pagan apologetics and sympathetic publicizing in the media of hazards like wicca, and he has absolutely no time whatever for the frenzied youths that run wild, shoving matchboxes filled with excrement through people’s letterboxes, or inserting fireworks up the exhaust pipes of parked cars (or even in the fuel pipe in an attempt to ignite the contents of the tank), or hurling explosives at those unlucky enough to be compelled by their employment to be out in public on this night.

The association of Hallowe’en with the preternatural world is in its origin Celtic, since 1 November is Samain, which begins the dark half of the year and functions as a kind of Celtic new year’s day. What makes Samain particularly auspicious (or inauspicious, as the case may be) is that it is a junture of particular importance. In the Celtic reckoning of time, it was not days and nights that were regarded as particularly important with respect to the preternatural, but the divisions between them. Boundaries between different places were invested with a similar significance for the same reason. According to this belief, one is most likely to encounter a ghost not at night, but at dusk, since dusk is the boundary between night and day. Similarly, one may meet with greatest misfortune at the boundary between this world and the síd (otherworld), rather than in either one or the other.

So the eve of Samain is a juncture of particular danger, because many different boundaries co-incide at once. Once the sun has set but before darkness has fallen completely, it is neither day nor night; we are neither in the light half nor in the dark; we are neither in the old year nor in the new. At such times the boundaries between this world and the other are blurred, the tides of chaos are loosed and preternatural forces have free play with the world of men. Hence the origin of the association of Hallowe’en with ghosts and spectres and hauntings and that sort of thing.

This night is indeed a night of horror, but not owing to Celtic superstitions; Melancholicus is far more concerned about a potential confrontation with those who walk on two legs in a living body than with the spirits of the dead. It is prudent to keep an eye on one’s car until the chaotics have gone home to bed and the nocturnal fracas has died away. If one has a household pet such as a dog or a cat, one MUST keep the animal indoors on this night; dogs, particularly, with their amplified sense of hearing, suffer great distress on being exposed to the noise of fireworks (which, incidentally, are illegal in this country, but the law is in no wise enforced). The chaotics have been known to throw smaller animals onto bonfires, deriving a sick amusement from such cruelty. Other animals have had fireworks strapped to their bodies, or inserted into their orifices. This is the busiest night of the year for the emergency services; the police, the fire brigade, the ambulance service (and doubtless the ISPCA) will be kept going all night.

The celebration of Hallowe’en was not always so lawless and fraught with peril; it used to be, as recently as Melancholicus’ childhood, a gentle evening of fun and entertainment (with mild scariness) for the benefit of children. Today it has been taken over by the yob element, whom one cannot safely ask to move on elsewhere, never mind remonstrate, for fear—literally—of being killed. I do not exaggerate.

Excess is tolerated in our society, and from some avenues even positively encouraged.

This is the fruit of social inversion.

First posted here: http://infelixego.blogspot.ie/2008/10/helloween.html 31 October 2008

Hallowe'en: Threat or Opportunity?

HALLOWE'EN: THREAT OR OPPORTUNITY?

By PEADAR LAIGHLÉIS

Sancta ergo, et salubris est cogitatio pro defunctis exorare, ut a peccatis solvantur (2 Macchabees, 12:46)

WHEN I was ten, I had to write an essay on Hallowe'en.  I went home from school, researched the customs and background of the festival and was commended for my work by the vice-principal.  Which was ironic as he had imposed this on us as a punishment.  Much later I graduated in Celtic Studies and with the passage of time observed the changing nature of Hallowe'en.

Hallowe'en is a phenomenon.  In the United States, it is second in commercial value only to Christmas.  It surpasses Easter, the distinctly American feasts of Thanksgiving and Independence Day and all the other holidays and commemoration days in the calendar.  This explains how Hallowe'en is encroaching rapidly upon countries and cultures where it is not traditional.  It is no exaggeration to say it has taken the German-speaking world by storm.  From being almost unknown in Germany in the mid-1990s, it is now marked even in small towns and villages all over the country.

Powers of Darkness

It is also the case that Hallowe'en is changing.  Traditionally, Hallowe'en was primarily focussed on children and, in Ireland at least, adults indulged in some innocent amusements.  But in recent years, Hallowe'en has taken a distinctly adult character.  This stems from the United States and is mainly an exploitation of the festival's market value.  And this has become a very successful export, as the profitable new Hallowe'en becomes universal.

It is more than fair to say Hallowe'en presents a threat.  Hallowe'en, as currently understood, gives us every reason for concern.  This does not relate to Hallowe'en in itself or any of the folk customs I understood to be part of Hallowe'en when I wrote my fifth-class penalty essay.  Hallowe'en is almost exclusively associated with the powers of darkness.  The post-Christian West denies these powers' existence, but increasingly pays annual tribute to them on October 31.  The witch movement keeps this date as its most important sabbath.

New Ageism in general appeals to the four principal Celtic festivals.  These festivals, which the witch movement has more or less taken as "sabbaths", mark the turning of the seasons in the British Isles.  Samain, on 1 November, was the most important of these; and all feature in so-called Celtic spirituality.  For its part, the Satanist/Luciferian movement also keeps Hallowe'en as a feast.  Though this is very much a fringe movement, this is the direction in which the ubiquitous shop window displays point.

How much do we know about the original Hallowe'en?  The Celtic feast of Samain was kept around the beginning of November.  This was a new year celebration, which also represented a harvest thanksgiving.  This new year differed from ours.  We are accustomed to go immediately from the old year to the new.  Samain was a three-day feast between the end of one year and the beginning of the next.  This "out of time" quality of Samain led the Celts to believe the dead were free to walk the earth again and that they would visit their old homes.  For this reason, the Celts were particularly mindful of dead relatives and friends around this time.

.But there is really very little evidence in source material as to how Samain was celebrated.  I have read many secondary accounts about some gruesome practices the Celts indulged in at Samain.  While I have no trouble believing the Celts to have been thoroughly barbarous as heathens (despite what Celtic Spirituality devotees may believe), I have seen no evidence for most of the claims made by occultists about Samain.  Much of this is the product of overactive imaginations.

 The Celts dominated Europe before the Roman Empire took shape.  It is impossible to reckon the extent to which Samain was observed in Europe, but it is certain it was still strong among the Gauls when they were evangelized.  The Church recognised the significance of Samain.  So two great feasts were initiated at the time - All Saints (All Hallows) on November 1 and All Souls on November 2.

Samain was providential

So was the Church culturally imperialistic or opportunistic?  Did the Church attempt to suppress Samain or use it as an instrument for conversion?  Let us say Samain, whatever it might have been in heathendom, was providential.  It served two purposes; for the Celts in helping them assimilate Christianity and for the Church, in compelling her to clarify the doctrine of the Communion of Saints.

After the institution of the two feasts, Samain became Hallowe'en, taking the name Eve of All Hallows or Halloweven, later Hallowe'en.  Thus the three day festival of Samain was maintained in the Celtic world, but with a distinctly Christian ethos.  It may well be that many of the Hallowe'en practices have their origins in pagan times.  Or it may not.  Folk traditions only last as long as they are supported by the prevailing culture and they rarely survive indefinitely without alteration.

In the case of the Irish Hallowe'en, the public practice of All Saints and All Souls was suppressed in Penal Times, but Hallowe'en continued.  Over time, the celebration apparently lost its intimate connection with the Church feasts.  It is difficult to say.  For a few generations, wake practices in Ireland were held to be in direct continuity with pagan practices.  Then some scholar suggested some were invented in Penal Times to conceal the presence of a priest illegally performing the necessary ministrations.

If I apply Occam's Razor to Hallowe'en - unbroken continuity with pagan Samain or an attempt to keep a suppressed feast alive - which is the more probable?  I am mindful of the coincidence of Hallowe'en/All Saints and Guy Fawkes' Night on November 5.  That a distinctly anti-Catholic holiday should be instituted in England to commemorate the foiling of one of the many highly dubious Catholic conspiracies in Tudor and Stuart times is very interesting indeed.  I don't believe Guy Fawkes' Night would have emerged had All Hallows not been strong in previously Catholic England.

Distorted notion of fun

So I believe that instead of reconstructing a lost heathen new year, one should compare Hallowe'en with the outlandish folk festivals associated with Catholic feasts in Mediterranean Europe. Such festivals are even more bizzare in the Orthodox world and anyone steeped in a Calvinist anthropology would shout “paganism”.

Hallowe'en was brought to the United States by Irish immigrants in the 1800s. This Hallowe'en had long lost its close ties with All Saints and All Souls. Any older significance was long forgotten. But it took many generations to take its present horrific form. It is easy to see how an apparently non-religious festival could be so attractive in a society in the process of advanced secularization. It is also easy to see how Hallowe'en could become a horror Fest once the Catholic understanding of the next world has been extracted.  Following that, it is not too difficult to see how competing groups - New Ageists, Occultists, Luciferians - could impose their own meaning on Hallowe'en.  And in the process, the commercial value increases.  Especially in a world in which adults have a distorted notion of what constitutes fun.  The terrifying new Hallowe'en is now a successful American export - even to countries in which Hallowe'en is traditional.

Television is to blame.  When I was a child, we used to go from house to house asking for apples and nuts.  More advanced children would ask for help for the Hallowe'en party.  Now it is almost universal for children to say "trick or treat" in the American manner.  One wonders about the educational value of allowing impressionable children to get what they want by threatening people with tricks.

It is a long established custom in Ireland to tell ghost stories around Hallowe'en.  These stories are told as true stories and are of a local nature the audience will identify with.  Though many may be scary, the purpose is not to frighten people.  In fact, some reflect the Catholic belief that the souls in Purgatory need our prayers and the ghosts are there to alert our attention to this fact.  Film and television does not present us with this type of ghost story.  Instead, it transmits plain and simple horror, just for the sake of shocking the viewers.  But this is all part of the Hallowe'en industry and it builds up the Hallowe'en various neo-pagan and satanist elements wish to impose upon the general public.  They have made great strides in this direction.

The Mystical Body

So what do we do about Hallowe'en?  There is very little we can do in the short term, as it is impossible to immunize oneself from the dominants culturee.  So Hallowe'en has to be put back in the context of All Saints/All Souls.  If there are to be fruit and nut collections and fun and games, this should be done as a harvest thanksgiving and in preparation for the great feasts.  In Ireland, a minor fast is kept in November to assist the souls in Purgatory.  The celebration of Hallowe'en may point in this direction.

The first step towar a new understanding of Hallowe'en is a new understanding of the relationship between the Church Militant, the Church Triumphant and the Church Suffering.  The Church - in Heaven, on Earth and in Purgatory - is the Mystical Body of Christ.  Hallowe'en should ultimately mark the launch of a festival to restate our belief in these realities and especially for charitable works towards the relief of the sould in Purgatory.  And those who think Hallowe'en too flamboyant to precede a fast ought to recall Mardi Gras and Fasching are very colourful ways of marking the beginning of Lent.

Yes, Hallowe'en is a threat; it is a battleground upon which the forces of darkness appear invincible.  Our Lord Himself reminds us the children of this world are wiser than the children of light.  But Hallowe'en is also an opportunity - for the children of light to prepare for a reaffirmation of the Communion of Saints and to do something for the souls in Purgatory.  In the early years of the Church, Samain was taken from real pagans to become All Saints and All Souls, upon which Hallowe'en depended.  Taking Hallowe'en back from neo-pagans should be less of a challenge.

The Brandsma Review, Issue 74, September-October 2004

Has St Brigid Gone the Way of the Enneagram?

HAS ST BRIGID GONE THE WAY OF THE ENNEAGRAM?
By FATHER DÁITHÍ Ó MURCHÚ

From one point of view, the Enneagram can be seen as a set of nine distinct personality types, with each number on the Enneagram denoting one type. It is common to find a little of yourself in all nine of the types, although one of them should stand out as being closest to yourself. This is your basic personality type.—The Enneagram Institute, 2004

I REMEMBER in the seminary having to sit through a workshop on the Enneagram as described above; that a Catholic Seminary would engage in an exercise that finds its source in ancient Sufi mysticism is alarming indeed.

That this was seen as beneficial, normal even, is very telling. In the years since I am astounded how so many Catholic Retreat Houses, Convents, Religious Houses and Parish Centres offer not only the Enneagram but a myriad of events that are completely out of sync with and injurious towards Catholic teaching.

Now what has all this to do with Saint Brigid? Let me begin by quoting an article by Brian Wright (2010) in History Ireland:

Brigid, goddess and saint, the second most important Irish saint after Patrick, is well known not only in Ireland but also in many other parts of the world. Thousands of books and articles have been written about this influential figure since the first by Cogitosus c. AD 650. Yet some historians have claimed she did not even exist! Brigid is unique in still being venerated not only as a saint but also as a goddess.

So where does the idea of Brigid as goddess and saint come from? There are both ancient and modern reasons, and the two are interlinked. The ancient reasons date back to the Celtic Feast of Imbolg. The Bath Chronicle (2007) in a features article put it very well:

Our ancestors welcomed Imbolg as the reawakening of life. As the first crocus pushed through the earth, it was seen as the first sign that winter was stirring from her sleep. It is a time to look to the future.

It was common practice for the Christian church to Christianise pagan feasts on the conversion of the populace in a region. This canny piece of marketing and evangelisation meant that the people did not lose their important calendar dates, but had their god/ gods/ idols replaced with the one true God. It also meant that the previous feast days would not be left in situ to tempt the people to return to them. Three classic examples of this would be the Feasts of Christmas, the Annunciation and Saint John the Baptist taking place around the dates of the winter and summer solstice and the spring equinox.
Canny evangelisation
In the case of St Brigid, the Feast of Imbolg became her feast day. It was an inspired choice to Christianise the pagan feast of spring for the woman who would become Ireland’s secondary patron, and to have it as a prelude to the Feast of Candlemas. The life of Brigid was marked by Paschal joy, the fire lit at her monastery in Kildare exemplifying this. She, with Saint Patrick and Colmcille, would become figureheads for the fervour with which the Irish people embraced Christianity and brought it to the ends of the earth. As Irish children the stories of her life that we learnt were indeed the stuff of miracles, from her birth in Faughart, County Louth to Dubhtach a chieftain and Brocca the former slave, her mother, who was baptised by Saint Patrick, to the conversion of the pagan chieftain by picking up the rushes on the floor and weaving them into a cross to tell him the story of Christ and His death on the cross.

We made the crosses every year in school, and brought them home as a beautiful reminder of our nation’s heritage and the ever present power of the cross. We learnt about the principal foundation, mentioned above, of Brigid at Kildare or Cill Dara, the Church of the Oak. This latter event is the basis for my own personal favourite story where Brigid asked the local chieftain for the land and he refused. Eventually she asked him for as much land as her cloak would cover, and, laughing at the supposed ludicrous nature of such a request, he agreed, only to witness Brigid’s cloak spreading and growing, eventually covering the area she desired. We saw St. Brigid’s crosses over doorways, heard of them in rafters of houses, and how, on the eve of St. Brigid’s Day, if you hung the cross over the door of the byre Brigid would bless your land and cattle. There was also the belief that hanging a cloth outside on the eve of the feast would allow Brigid to touch it, and so give it curative powers.

It is very easy to see the fantastical in the above tales, also the rubrics of pagan ritual and Celtic culture. Fire, one of the elements, is an ancient ritualistic symbol predating Christianity. Miraculous events and magical powers are seen in the cloak story, and the invocation of protection on crops, land, houses and livestock garners another facet of the same. The St. Brigid’s cloth has an echo of the clootie tree, which Lyndsay McEwen (2009) describes: In different parts of Britain, Ireland and northern Europe, there is a tradition of fastening a piece of cloth to trees (usually hawthorn) near holy wells. After taking the water people tie a piece of their clothing to the tree. The tree is a symbol of long life and health. In Scotland these are known as clootie (cloth) trees.

These then are the ancient reasons for how Brigid as goddess and saint came to be. We can see the ingredients of both and how they came to be interlinked. We see ultimately how the two were not uncomfortable bedfellows, and how, in the telling, the story of the Christian Brigid was not uncomfortable with the blurring of the demarcation line, but embraced it, Christianised it and cleverly used it to bring a newly converted people along holding ribbons of their past ideology to give them comfort in embracing the new beliefs.

When it comes to the modern reasons, what has happened in the last fifty years is a lot of the old certainties have crumbled, and the structures of Catholicism have been shaken, as the Post-Conciliar Church has sought to engage with the modern world, and examine new ways to live the life of faith. The misinterpretation of this concept has been a fiasco for the church, as the baby has often been thrown out with the bathwater, and the dialogue has led, in many instances, to an abandonment of traditional rituals and an embracing of new points of reference which are not only not compatible with Catholicism but sow confusion and a distrust of all that went before. In the midst of this we have the results of the new moral order which put down roots at the very time of the Second Vatican Council, the permissive society of the 1960s with its promotion of free love and an enthusiasm for eastern philosophies.
Brigid the goddess
Brigid has been a victim of this confusion particularly since, in the last twenty years, there has been a renewed interest in Celtic belief systems, and so we now, tragically, have Brigid, not as Muire na nGael or Mary of the Irish, but Brigid the feminist, the goddess, the Brigid who may not even have existed, the Brigid who the cruel church debased of her Celtic powers and fabricated into a coy and demure nun, rather the same as they are purported to have done with Mary Magdalene in Dan Brown’s infamous novel, The Da Vinci Code. The old tale of St. Mel ordaining Brigid a bishop has surfaced as an argument for the ordination of women, and as proof of a Pre-Roman influenced Celtic church free from ultramontane oppression. In short, Brigid has been stripped of her Christian elements and become a cause célèbre of the confused mentality and belief systems of our time.

In conclusion then, can we say, as we set out to at the beginning, that she has gone the way of the Enneagram? It would certainly seem so. The brassy madam presented to the world today bears no resemblance to the Brigid I learnt about in school who found her strength in the power that came from God alone. This imposter would seem more comfortable consulting her crystals than the Blessed Sacrament. Therein, however, may be the answer or at least the consolation. This Brigid is exactly that, an imposter, wearing the cloak of modernity rather than the cloak of Christ. We need to reclaim her to what she was before this silliness. The Church needs to rescue her and present her anew to a world that needs her gifts now more than ever, particularly her giftedness in confronting a pagan world, not unlike our own in its barbarity, with the truth in Christ, the truth in love.

Brigid, Muire na nGael, pray for us.

Bibliography
McEwen, Lyndsay. Clootie Tree? What is it? (2009)Available: http://www.clootietree.co /whats_a_clootie_tree.htm. Last accessed 15th Nov 2013.

Pontifical Council for Culture/Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue (2003). Jesus Christ the Bearer of the Water of Life: A Christian reflection on the “New Age”. Available: http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_councils/interelg/documents/rc_pc_interelg_doc_20030203_new-age_en.htmlhttp://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_councils/interelg/documents/rc_pc_interelg_doc_20030203_new-age_en.html.. Last accessed 13th November 2013.

The Bath Chronicle. (2007). Light candles for the coming year. The Bath Chronicle. 247 (30), 22.

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Wright, Brian. (2010). “Did St Brigid visit Glastonbury?” History Ireland. 18 (1), p14-17.

An tAthair Dáithí Ó Murchú is a priest of the Galway, Kilmacduagh and Kilfenora Diocese currently on loan to the Wrexham Diocese in Wales.

The Brandsma Review, Issue 130, January-February 2014