What does St Patrick’s Day mean to you? Boozy streets and sports fixtures? Parades of drummers and mock Donald Trumps? What was once a feast day commemorating the arrival of Christianity in Ireland is now almost entirely secularised.
Proper order, you might say; we’ve had enough of that clericalist nonsense. But here’s a radical thought: Why not use the occasion to reappraise both the good and the bad of the Catholic Church in Ireland?
For those of us who grew up in a Catholic milieu there is some nostalgia over fading customs: ashes to mark the start of Lent; the May processions; the sort of teenage flirting at Sunday Mass that The Saw Doctors sang about. But these are surface changes. What really matters is how we have altered within – psychologically or spiritually.
Although I am now an avowed atheist, I’m not blind to the consolations religious belief can bring. Three Christian convictions in particular come to mind:
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1. The idea that someone ‘up there’ is looking out for you
I have a hazy recollection of believing that God loves me – and it felt great. Who wouldn’t want to think Jesus was watching out for you as one of his lost sheep? Because who has got your back, if not God? People? As Nick Cave says, people just ain’t no good.
2. The idea that you will ‘get your reward in heaven’
Do we appreciate just how much how of our thinking is altered once an afterlife vanishes from the imagination? If there is nothing beyond temporal existence then all our projects become secular and worldly. And, while it’s not inevitable that your sense of self-worth becomes bound up with earthly status or material gain, a drift towards that conclusion can be hard to resist.
3. The idea that all your sins can be forgiven
Yes, God can be judgy, but God is also merciful. Confession is a psychological masterstroke. Admit your guilt, say a few Hail Marys and you can feel like a new man. What have we got instead?
“Terrible it is to be alone with the judge and avenger of one’s own law,” Friedrich Nietzsche writes.
We are trapped with what Jacques Lacan calls “the obscene superego” – a badgering, judgmental voice that relentlessly tells us how we are failing. “Were we to meet this figure socially,” the psychotherapist Adam Phillips says, “this accusatory character, this internal critic, we would think there was something wrong with him.”
God’s mercy is capable of silencing the “superego”. How otherwise can we shut it up?
A number of studies have shown a positive correlation between religious belief and mental health, although a strong faith has also been found to impede therapies. It would hypocritical of me to advocate faking belief for potential benefits. But it’s not unreasonable to ask whether declining religiosity in Irish society has contributed to rising rates of reported anxiety.
What is certain is the waning power of the Church has influenced our public discourse and particularly our moral reasoning. Catholicism belongs to the “virtue theory” school of philosophical belief systems. These decree that the good life depends on cultivating virtues like courage, compassion and humility.
Virtue theory goes back to Ancient Greece but Christianity popularised it for two millenniums in the western world. It was overtaken by the language of rights during the Enlightenment. Today, however, the concept of human rights is under fire and morality is increasingly associated with either “the rule of the strongest” or else “whatever you feel like yourself”.
In this tussle between authoritarianism and nihilism, we need a common language to bring decency and civility back to human relations. The language of virtue has this power.
It was often said that Ireland’s brand of Catholicism was slavish and unreflective. But has blind faith been replaced by lack of curiosity about what we now believe?
Some of the world’s richest men would have you believe virtue is for losers. But Pope Francis has a devastating response. He speaks not of rights, nor of grievances, but rather of the damage you are doing to yourself through vices like envy, rage and, above all, greed.
Greed is an “an idolatry that kills”, Francis says. It “opens the door, then comes in vanity – to think you’re important, to believe you’re powerful – and, in the end, pride, and from there all the vices, all of them”.
Greed is widespread today: in landlords opportunistically hiking rents; in financial “disrupters” evading social responsibilities; in politicians using public office to settle scores. But in our secular age, we don’t call it greed. We call it opportunity, ambition or “letting the market decide”. Christian teaching, or more broadly virtue theory, can help to bring us back to our senses.
In his book The Best Catholics in the World, Irish Times Berlin correspondent Derek Scally advocates creating a museum of Catholicism in Ireland that helps us to come to terms with our troubled relationship with the Church. If that is ever built, it should include a wing on Catholicism’s impact on our psychological and moral wellbeing.
It was often said that Ireland’s brand of Catholicism was slavish and unreflective. But has blind faith been replaced by lack of curiosity about what we now believe?
Asking whether we have lost something from our lapsed Catholicism is not about rushing back to the past. It’s about facing the future with greater self-awareness, emboldened by a hopeful realism.
