Irish and Catholic? Towards an Understanding of Identity (review)

The Republic of Ireland has changed in almost every aspect of its life during the last ten years. The country is newly rich, newly diverse due to massive immigration from various eastern European countries, as well as from China and Africa, and, as a further consequence, newly secular. Until recently an overwhelmingly Catholic country, it is now characterized by religious indifference and even hostility toward the church as an institution, though attendance at religious services remains strikingly high by European standards. It is the latter change that the essays in Irish and Catholic? Towards an Understanding of Identity chiefly address. All of the writers here—most of them connected with Catholic institutions of higher learning, a couple of them clergy—decry the excessive power of the church hierarchy in the immediate past, and strongly denounce the sexual abuse of minors that was glossed over for so long and that has seriously alienated otherwise committed churchgoers and about which the authorities still seem inadequately repentant. But, in the end, the contributors remain engaged with matters spiritual. Paula Murphy quotes a critic on Dermot Bolger's plays: "God is absent . . . but the need for some transcendence cannot be avoided."

The collection traces the trajectory of Catholicism in Ireland from its heyday in the 1960s downward to its bleak present. An important stage on the path of decline was the lay revolt over Humanae Vitae in 1968. The sweeping change in the status of women led to a steep decrease in the number of clerical vocations. Now, priestly ordinations are extremely rare, and the average age of diocesan clergy is sixty-three. Still, according to some of the contributors, there is promise in a newer and humbler Catholicism that "keeps out of the bedroom" and concerns itself instead with giving purpose and meaning to life.

The general tone of the essays is liberal. Colum Kenny, for example, does not accept that the media is to be blamed for the church's plight. According to him, the level of theological debate is "rudimentary" and he fears that an economic setback might revive a "reactionary Catholicism." Meanwhile, Kenny and others contend that the church does need to engage with contemporary issues—contraception, divorce, abortion, and homosexuality, in particular. Although many authors critique the "a la carte" Catholicism now prevalent, at least one author is unhappy with the latter description and sees the "faithful" as more driven by conscience than many clergy will allow. From the other side, there is the traditional reminder that "the Church will continue until the end of history" and that all religions are not the same.

The selection of essays devoted to literature and religion make clear that "no totally post-Vatican II Catholic novelist" has yet appeared. We also learn that Brendan Kennelly is angry at the religion of his childhood, as is Frank McGuinness at the church's repressive stand on homosexuality, while dear Roddy Doyle is an atheist with a soft spot for papal blessings. Surprisingly, there is no essay on Seamus Heaney, surely a sympathetic representative of the loss of faith in the way that many thoughtful and untraumatized Irish people have experienced that shift.

Patrick Claffey, a missionary priest born in 1951 who has spent most of his life in West Africa, describes his original desire to do such work as inspired by faith, humanitarianism, and frustration with the benighted Ireland of his day. He was disappointed that, unlike France, his country did not have a "counter-cultural Catholicism." Returning to a post-Catholic Ireland, Claffey now identifies himself with Brian Friel's disillusioned Father Jack in Dancing at Lughnasa. But the France that Claffey refers to has long since departed and is without any discernable replacement, counter-cultural Catholic or otherwise. In fact, it is not at all certain that Catholicism can come up with the new apologetic it needs if it is to survive intellectually in...