Éire-Ireland

Donnelly, James S.
Opposing the "Modern World": The Cult of the Virgin Mary in Ireland, 1965-85
Éire-Ireland - Volume 40:1&2, Earrach/Samhradh / Spring/Summer 2005, pp. 183-245

Irish-American Cultural Institute

James S. Donnelly - Opposing the "Modern World": The Cult of the Virgin Mary in Ireland, 1965-85 - Éire-Ireland 40:1&2 Éire-Ireland 40.1&2 (2005) 183-245 Opposing the "Modern World": The Cult of the Virgin Mary in Ireland, 1965-85 James S. Donnelly, Jr The material, cultural, and religious change that began to sweep through Ireland in the 1960s dethroned Marianism from its central place in Irish Catholic popular devotion. The remarkably strong economic expansion that commenced in the late 1950s inevitably quickened the acquisitive instincts of a society that had long known widespread poverty and lagged far behind the performance of the more robust European economies. At last materialism in the sense of valuing the consumption of an increasing range of consumer goods was taking firm hold of the Irish popular consciousness. At the same time, the country, for good and ill, was opening up to the outside world to an unprecedented degree, not only economically but culturally as well -- in popular music, in reading matter, through the cinema and now especially television, and soon enough to foreign notions or standards of appropriate sexual conduct. In this major alteration of ideas and (eventually) behavior, television played a role that is difficult to exaggerate. Where religion was concerned, both the speed and the force of its impact far exceeded that of the cinema and the radio earlier. The wider world on which television opened such a big window for...