This month we carry reviews of no less than four books on Irish Catholicism. James Bradshaw analyses three well known works: John Henry Whyte’s 1971: Church & State in Modern Ireland, 1923–1970, Patrick Corish’s 1981: The Catholic Community in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, and Brendan Bradshaw and Dáire Keogh’s more recent Christianity in Ireland: Revisiting the Story, published in 2002. The fourth book we review is Fintan O’Toole’s recently published: We Don’t Know Ourselves. A Personal History of Ireland since 1958; it is reviewed by Tim O’Sullivan.
I had been hoping to carry this month a review of a more recent history of Irish Catholicism, namely The Rise and Fall of Christian Ireland by Crawford Gribben (OUP, 2021). Unfortunately it will have to wait till next month. Suffice it to say for the moment that it is a very accessible and interesting overview of the history of Christianity in Ireland. And though Gribben is not a Catholic, the work treats the Catholic Church fairly, except for some strange theorising about Catholicism in the concluding chapter. But more of that next month, hopefully.
Reading these four excellent reviews has spurred me on to resolve to read more about the history of Catholicism in Ireland, (and John Henry Whyte’s famous work appears to be a good place to begin). The three works reviewed by Bradshaw are clearly scholarly works: the fruit of intense research and deep thought. They are resources that can serve to counter the grossly distorted picture of the history of Irish Catholicism that is increasingly dominating public discourse.
As Bradshaw says in his review of Christianity in Ireland: “Given the strength of anti-Catholic feeling currently – and given the manner in which radical social change in the present is being justified as a response to a clericalist past – it is incumbent on all who dissent from the progressive dogma to actually examine the past, and Christianity in Ireland offers fascinating and thought-provoking insights.”
Whyte’s famous work on the relationship between Church and State in Ireland has probably become much more relevant now than when it was initially written. It goes a long way to correct some of the “black legends” about Irish Catholicism, for instance Whyte points out that the new Irish State was not in thrall to the Church in the way the caricaturists would have us believe. Bradshaw writes: “The Irish Church was also different in its attitude to the State, as there had long been a ‘tradition of aloofness’ which continued after independence. When the Anglican church was formally disestablished, Catholicism was not established in its place, and no concordat was ever entered into. Britain’s plans for Home Rule in Ireland had involved a role for both Catholic and Anglican bishops in the proposed Irish Senate, but Irish legislators did not follow this suggestion.”
At the same time Whyte makes clear that there were dark clouds on the horizon of Catholic Ireland, in no little part due to the “authoritarian strain in Irish culture” as well as Irish Catholicism’s anti-intellectualism – factors that had significant negative implications for Irish religious life.
On the other hand, Fintan O’Toole’s recent book We Don’t Know Ourselves, appears to tend towards the caricature genre of analysis of Irish Catholic history. Tim O’Sullivan writes: “There is much to agree with here but also a sense that the theorising is too neat and the generalisations too sweeping.” His “trip down our national memory lane” is “reflective, if strongly ideological”. And as with much of the current unreflective comment on things Catholic here in Ireland, the very significant achievements of the Irish Church seem to have been airbrushed out of the public memory. O’Sullivan mentions for instance the way O’Toole fails to “properly acknowledge the courageous work done, year after year, by the Catholic Church in opposing the ‘armed struggle’ and preventing a possible slide into full-blown civil war”, or to acknowledge that cultural life in Catholic Ireland was not dormant – something shown by Brian Fallon in his An Age of Innocence (Gill and Macmillan, 1998).
These scholarly works can also help to contextualise and relativise the current difficult situation of the Church here. For instance Patrick Corish’s 1981 work shows how similar to our contemporary malaise was the plight of the Catholic Church in the Ireland of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In Bradshaw’s words, “Corish’s book shows that hardly any of today’s difficulties – hostility from the establishment, social pressure to abandon faith, the dilution of Catholicism into a meaningless social ritual and widespread religious ignorance – are unprecedented. It also shows that a community which has lost so much can recover and rebuild. It has happened before, and could happen again.” This is something purely socio-political analysis of the Church cannot possibly appreciate. Looked at solely through such a lens, Catholicism in Ireland should have died out during Penal times, or during the Elizabethan persecution, or perhaps should never have taken root in the stony soil of pagan Ireland in the first place. Judged by human standards Catholicism has reached its nadir here, handed over by abusing priests for crucifixion under Ireland’s secularist ruling elite. The vital statistics of the Irish people – think of Mass attendance, sexual mores, or vocations to priestly and religious life – point in this direction. But, as Crawford Gribben quotes Dr Vincent Twomey at the end of his work: “the Church on earth is by its very nature a Church lurching from one crisis to another”. From each crisis in its history the Church has always emerged – like the Risen Christ – alive if still bearing the marks of persecution, and in some way transfigured. The story of Ireland will in no way be different. Though the secular elites are busy installing their gods in the places previously occupied by Christianity, their hollowness becomes apparent so quickly. (In this issue Pat Hanratty analyses a remarkable talk given by Archbishop José Gomez of Los Angeles in which the archbishop show how the ideologies installed to replace or rival Christianity can usefully be spoken of as religions. Certainly these “secular” ideologies do attempt to give society a placebo creed, an “ethical” code, and eventually forms of cult.) And just as these ideologies have always been directed primarily at the young and the young are the first to fall for them, it is also from among the young that opposition to them comes most energetically. It seems to me that this process is already at work among young people here in Ireland. While older ones speak of the “fall of Christian Ireland” or “post-Christian Ireland”, it is some among the upcoming generation who see the replacement ideologies for what they are, and sometimes sadly through bitter personal experience. I meet such young people more and more. Often the Faith was never handed on to them at home and they only discovered Christ in his sacraments in their teens, and yet now they are the dissident voices in our post-modern universities, or in the workplace, and even in their own homes.
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With a certain amount of fear and trepidation I return to the topic of Covid vaccinations which I brought up in the November editorial. There I suggested that, all things considered, it was probably more civic minded to take the vaccine than not. This was not a view amenable to all Position Papers readers, but to be fair, the several objections which I received were all the height of politeness. (This goes to show that one can differ about such things, and even debate them, without falling out.) Well unfortunately Covid has reasserted itself since November, and since the theme of vaccinations is still highly relevant, it might be good to add a clarification to what I wrote last month. Whether or not to receive the Covid vaccination appears to me to be a prudential judgement, in other words each person must carefully weigh up the factors involved in making such an important decision. They need to be guided by reliable scientific data, sound moral theology, and of course common sense. I am of the opinion that these three elements clearly point in favour of receiving the Covid vaccine. However a person may quite sincerely come to the opposite conclusion on examining these factors. Either way the judgement each person arrives at concerning this matter must be respected; at the same time we must be ready to accept the possible unintended consequences of our decisions: those who opt to receive the vaccine to accept that they may at best be wasting their time, at worst endangering their own health; those who refuse the vaccine must accept that their freedom to move socially will be curtailed, and at worst that they may also be endangering their own health and that of others. Such hard decisions are the stuff of our lives.
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On that rather sombre note, all that remains for me is to wish all the readers of Position Papers a very happy and holy Christmas.