Ireland Now: Tales of Change from the Global Island

Parish Life: The Job of Keeping the Faith in Changing Times

C H A P T E R 6 Parish Life: The Job of Keeping the Faith in Changing Times Bad weather is to us . . . We said prayers for fine weather at all Masses on Sunday, the seventh, and we hope, that people who do not get it, as a result, might not associate our failure with a lack of effective communication with the Almighty. (Twohig, Chronicus, September 1997) We heard, in the long ago, that angels smile when they hear people talk of “passing the time.” But is that not what everybody is up to in this day and age—hurrying time instead of holding it back by intense effort? Well, it’s New Year’s Day of next year, and be grateful for it. Once it’s gone time will, once again, have you by the throat. (Twohig, Chronicus, January 1, 2002) Flanagan 06 6/5/07 1:38 PM Page 162 163 Some time ago I was waiting at a traffic light in a city in the Midwest when a news item on the radio drew my attention. It was an interview with an Irish parish priest who had written a very detailed history on the circumstances leading up to the death of Michael Collins. I was fumbling around looking for something to write down his name with when the light changed, and that was the end of that. By the time I arrived home and unloaded the groceries, the details of the interview, including the names of the priest and the book, were gone. In May 2001 I was on my way from Limerick to Bantry and stopped inChurchtown,CountyCork,tohavealookaround.Iwasinthechurchyard and thought about going into the church, but there were voices inside shouting to be heard over the noise of a vacuum cleaner. The front door was locked, and the only open entry was at the back, but rather than startling someone (I hate it when anybody sneaks up on me when I’m vacuuming), I let it go. I dawdled long enough in front of the church, however, that the vacuuming finished and the voices emerged in the form of the parish priest and a young woman. The priest was Father Patrick Twohig, the Collins scholar interviewed on the radio. The young woman was his all-around assistant and secretary, Louise Roche. She also ran the music school attached to Churchtown and the parish, a well-knownandrespectedestablishmentinIrishmusiccirclesasitturned out. Father Twohig said he had spent some time in the United States and Flanagan 06 6/5/07 1:38 PM Page 163 been in the capital at the time of the assassination of John Kennedy. Was I the Flanagan who wrote history? No, I wasn’t. I wrote sociology and was fairly sure he had not heard of me. I recalled the radio interview to him and said I would read his book on Collins, The Dark Secret of Bealnablath (I found it in a bookstore in Bantry a few days later). Well, nice to meet you, and I went on my way after I made a few notes. As I began work on the present book, I thought of Father Twohig right away and called and asked if he would talk to me. Oh sure, people were doing that all the time, interested in the Black and Tans, the struggle for independence and the civil war times, Michael Collins. I explained thatwhatIwasinterestedinwashisexperienceasparishpriestinChurchtown , in how life was going on and changing these days in a small parish in Ireland. “Oh, I thought you were a serious scholar,” he said. After a minute he consented, without conceding the point that though my work might not be history, it could be serious all the same. I recall that in our first phone conversation I also told him I was not interested particularly in the scandals about priests and young children or in philosophical questions about the relevance of Catholicism in the current age, that sort of thing. We met at his home just before Christmas 2002. He was eighty-two, and although he stood straight and had the dignified air of a man used to respect from those around him, he moved a little more slowly and stiffly than I remembered from our spring meeting just the year before. He showed my research and recording assistant, Mary Kate, and me into a sitting room warmed by a bed of glowing coals...