‘Leave room for the Holy Ghost.” These were the words with which one parish priest would separate dancing couples when, in his view, they had got too close to each other.
Some weeks ago I wrote about the Catholic bishops' opposition to private dance halls in the 1920s and 1930s.
Legislation to regulate the dance halls was passed in the mid-1930s but, as reader John Williams explains, the church was still keeping a close eye on matters in the 1950s.
“In the Hydro ballroom in Kilkee in the 1950s, the resident band (Johnny McMahon and his orchestra) were forbidden by the local parish priest to play a slow dance at the end of the night,” he writes.
“The priest also patrolled the dance floor and if he thought a couple were too close, he would put his walking stick between them and push them apart with a loud ‘Leave room for the Holy Ghost’.
“He also stood outside the door at the end of the dance and if you were lucky and ‘got the going home’ he could stop you and order the boy ‘stay there’ and ‘go on home’ to the girl. After 10 minutes or so the boy would be released and told to go home. Sometimes the girl was afraid and would go straight home, but other times a more rebellious type would wait around the corner for her fellow.”
The cinema too was seen as a threat to morals. “I remember some of the [eight-year-old] children in the class being slapped for going to the Sunday matinee.”
Side aisles
That reminds me that I saw lads being slapped in Naas for being seen in the side aisles during Mass. The side aisles were separated from the centre aisles with pillars. This separation made the side aisles places of potential anarchy in the eyes of a particularly harsh Christian Brother. If you went to the side aisles and someone ratted on you, you were for it. Threats to morals were everywhere, obviously.
There was a sad side to all this nonsense, as pointed out by reader Brian Cahill: “You reminded me of a late uncle of mine who died a bachelor in 1985. “He spoke constantly (and bitterly) about the church’s stance on ‘company keeping’ in the 1930s and their role in closing down the local privately owned dance hall.
“He blamed them for his failure to find a partner and marry, and your article confirms for me that he probably had a very valid point.”
He also recalls that a teacher who set up a private secondary school in his town in the 1940s for children whose parents could not afford the diocesan college was forced to shut it down after a year due to opposition from the bishop. Danger to morals was among the reasons given for opposing it. “Many young boys were thus denied a secondary education.”
Losing control
Reader Ed Coyle writes that control began to slip out of the hands of the bishops with the promotion of big ballrooms by people such as Albert Reynolds, and the arrival of superstar showbands like the Royal and the Clipper Carlton.
Even so, the shadow of repression still fell on the sexual sphere into the 1970s in rural Ireland. Adding to the confusion, he believes, was “the big US wave of 1960s feminism” so that “us mere provincial Ireland males were not knowing where to look or what we were supposed to be doing”.
I always found feminists more agreeable than parish priests with sticks. However, feminism got a lot more press in the 1960s and 1970s than it does today, so I can see how a chap who had never met one might be a bit nervous.
In the end, the whole Catholic Church project to hold back the 20th century collapsed. But sadly, it did leave casualties in its wake including those men and women who never married and lived to regret it.
Padraig O’Morain is a counsellor accredited by the Irish Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy. His latest book is Mindfulness for Worriers. His daily mindfulness reminder is free by email.