Topic 3.6 Religion in contemporary Ireland
Losing our religion?
Magill Magazine of March 2007 carried an article entitled ‘Losing our religion?’ offering a different and unusual perspective on the level of religious devotion in Ireland over the last century in contrast to the research presented by many other commentators and indeed oral tradition. What follows is a summary of some of the key points raised by Malachi
O’ Doherty in his article and certainly forces us to think realistically about religious faith and practice in Ireland over the last century or so.
The common perception of Ireland around the mid twentieth century is one where religious faith was fervent and unquestioned and religious practice was very much the norm. Religion was perceived to be the dominant value in society and in Catholic Ireland.
Gay Byrne has been attributed with pioneering much cultural change in Ireland in the second half of the twentieth century, particularly through his discussion show on RTÉ
‘The Late Late Show’. Recently Mr. Byrne read a letter on Lyric FM from a student who was writing a master’s thesis about him. The student was asking for communication with Mr. Byrne about the ‘dark days in Ireland and the role of his broadcasts in signalling the changes in Irish culture’ (O’ Doherty p 14). Mr. Byrne explained that the so-called
‘dark days’ were in fact not so dark and miserable as the student seemed to think. Much of modern literature on the topic of secularisation acknowledges the contribution of Gay
Byrne and the ‘Late Late Show’ to this trend. Mary Kenny’s book ‘Goodbye to Catholic
Ireland’ presents Gay Byrne as the threshold between the old and the new Ireland.
While Ireland could be perceived at that time as being ‘obsessively religious and puritanical’ (O’ Doherty, p15) one could also balance this interpretation of Irish culture at that time. O’ Doherty poses the question: ‘what if Ireland was not really as religious as we remember it?’ Gay Byrne seems to suggest that it was never as simple as the common perception of people that Ireland was in transition from a culture of religion and censorship to a modern, secular culture. Recent history recalls how the Catholic Church exercised a powerful influence over government in Ireland. Evidence of this can be found in incidents such as Archbishop Mc Quaid’s ‘interference’ in the Mother and Child
Bill and when Hubert Butler lost his job because he had offended the Papal Nuncio.
Figures for regular Mass attendance were massive. From the outside it looked as if
Ireland was indeed very religious.
John Whyte recognised this dichotomy in religion in Ireland in his book ‘Church and
State in Modern Ireland (1971). Evidence suggested that the Irish were obviously devout. In fact ‘they exceeded in their behaviour the basic requirements the Church made of them’ (O’ Doherty, p15). The Church requirement was to attend Mass once a week but many people attended daily. The Church requirement was to attend the sacrament of confession and receive communion once a year but many people did so every week. From this perspective Ireland certainly looked devout. On the other hand, there is evidence to suggest that the Irish were ‘not particularly keen on religion’ (O’

Doherty, p15). Emigration was at its highest throughout the economic hardships of the
1950s and continued for a couple of decades. Once they had emigrated many people gave up their religious observance. O’ Doherty therefore concludes that ‘it can’t have been important to them personally, then’ (p15). He suggests that the lonely emigrant who is truly religious would in fact express his religious convictions more ardently when in need of support, but this did not happen. Whyte (1971) suggests that the Irish religious conviction was strong, widespread and deep. O’ Doherty (15) wonders what might
Whyte say now in relation to why many of these apparently devout people have since quite lightly dispensed with their sense of religious obligation. It appears to him that it is easier to fall out with God than with a lover.
O’ Doherty wonders too why we failed to enter into a cultural and moral trauma once
‘religion went into decline’ - when seminaries closed, priests grew old and many religious sisters and brothers left religious life and married. He suggests that ‘maybe we weren’t very religious at all’ (p15).
He goes on to explain the phenomenon of zealous mass attendance. He believes that people did not take their guidance from the strict Cod of Canon Law which stipulated weekly attendance at Mass was an obligation on all Catholics. Instead, people were influenced by their neighbours. Different commentators perceive the influence of the
Church to have been ‘both morally enriching and morally enfeebling’ (p15). One author,
Paul Blanchard, in his book ‘The Irish and Catholic Power’ (1954) claimed that the Irish had become moral infants because of the influence of the Church and that they had no clear sense of right or wrong. He cites an example of Southern Catholics and Northern
Protestants in a cinema. They had been loaned 3D glasses. Many of the Southern
Catholics took the glasses home with them while the Northern Protestants dutifully returned what was not rightfully theirs.
Thus a stark contrast exists between Whyte’s devout Irish who practice their religion in excess of Church requirements and Blanchard’s vision of the Irish as moral infants. It is difficult to agree a coherent version of the religious Irish, therefore. Blanchard’s view was that Irish Catholics may have seemed devout, but were not meaningfully devout or moral at all. He claims that they had allowed their responsibilities of conscience to be appropriated by the Catholic Church. He sees the Church as having interfered with the moral conduct of Catholics. He also mentions the ‘people in the sidelines mocking, refusing to take the Church seriously’. O’ Doherty writes that ‘the Irish were dominated by a Church which stripped them of all moral responsibility by dictating absurd rules to them and also that the Irish were perfectly capable of seeing through looney bishops and making up their own minds about private sexual morality’ (p15). The fact that many trainee priests left the seminaries indicates the tentative hold the Church actually had in reality on people. Most orders lost one third of their recruits – possibly because they were allowed to enter religious life and the seminary too young.
Attendance at a Sodality was a common feature of life for many men in the 1960s. The fact that many people today could not tell you what a Sodality is demonstrates that something has truly changed. Declining numbers attending religious services indicates

that fewer people are taking religion as seriously as before, in O’ Doherty’s view. He writes that many attended Sodalities, many visited Lourdes and that ‘everyone had a St.
Christopher medal hanging from the rear view mirror if they could afford a car’. He does not believe that these provide evidence of a devout, religious Irish person. Instead he wonders is it evidence that ‘we were conformist and dull’. He mentions the visit of Pope
John Paul II to Ireland in 1979 in the context of ‘heady religious devotion’. While large crowds (at least a quarter of the population) gathered to hear the words of the Pope it is arguable whether or not people took his message seriously. The Pope failed to stop the use of artificial contraceptives and had failed to bring about an end to the IRA campaign of killing in Northern Ireland. O’ Doherty believes that we would have laughed at him had he explained to us the rationale behind his opposition to contraception as he had written it down in the 1940s. The Pope had huge support because, O’ Doherty claims,
‘they thought he was a Pope appropriate to the changing times’ (p16). Hell was no longer mentioned. The Pope seemed personally attractive. The Irish liked him. O’
Doherty believes that if Pope Benedict were to visit Ireland the public would again turn out in large numbers ‘because everybody loves a spectacle’ (p16) but this would not prove that they were good Catholics.
O’ Doherty believes that if the Irish had been truly devout and religious then that should have been reflected in popular art and literature. Instead, he claims, we have a history of
Church-driven assaults on culture. He concludes that the cultural activities of ordinary people were at variance with the Church’s requirements of the Irish people. In a
‘genuinely devout’ culture such as that of India or Pakistan throw up artists who excel in the expression of the culture’s religious devotion. An example of this from Hindu culture would be the poet Rabindranath Tagore whose poems of devotion inspired W.B. Yeats.
Another example can be found in Muslim culture which celebrates the music of Nusrat
Fateh Ali Kahn and the songs of the mystic Rumi. These artists express the ‘exultant celebrations of the love of God, incorporated into popular culture and globally acknowledged as fine art’ (p16). O’ Doherty wonders where is the Irish equivalent. O’
Doherty refers to the poet Patrick Kavanagh in his poem ‘Lough Derg’ where he ‘counts himself among the genuinely devout and sneers at the mass of pilgrims who are not’
(p16). O’ Doherty describes Kavanagh as a Pharisee. He claims that literature always depicted the priest from a humanist perspective rather than as s devotee of God.
Examples cited are ‘The Sisters’ (James Joyce) where the priest was pitied for his misfortune, or ‘My Oedipus Complex’ (Frank O’ Connor) where the priest had uncharacteristic wisdom.
O’ Doherty concludes that the trend of secularisation in Irish culture was due not to Gay
Byrne, the media and the sex scandals. Despite the high levels of churchgoing the change has not been as radical as has been made out by many authors. ‘The people back then were not as preoccupied with God as an easy celebration of our contrasting modern ways implies’ (p16). His final remark is that ‘we may have been in hock to the Church, but we were no more religious, at heart, than we are now’ (p16).
Adapted from ‘Losing Our Religion?’, Malachi O’ Doherty in Magill, March 2007 pp 14-16