Padraig McIntyre, musical director of the Catholic Diocese of Kerry, is introducing a ban on inappropriate carols during carol services. Good. But might he not be equally well-advised to introduce a ban on congregations that don't sing any carols at all, inappropriate or not writes Kevin Myers?
The pathological Irish incapacity to wrap the tonsils around emerging religious semiquavers has long been one of the great deficiencies of this country. The plumber who says Monday 9 a.m sharp, when he actually means next autumn twelve months, the clergyman who thunders for a change in property laws for all land save that owned by the church, the county planner whose dream is a vast bungalow in every field - why, these are minor and passing peccadilloes compared with the inability of Irish congregations to sing.
Of course, I am referring to Irish Catholic congregations. Irish Protestants are cut from robuster vocal cloth. Go sleuthing down the humbler byways of the main street of any Midland town, and you might find a little Methodist or Wesleyan or even Baptist chapel - though if it is Sunday and a service is being held, you will not need any particular detective powers. The vocal din will be overpowering; the roar will sound like a Saturn launch, where God has placed his hand on the nose-cone to prevent take-off.
You would accordingly assume that the Reformation proved strangely popular in this part of the world - and with cotton-wool wads crammed down your ears, you tentatively push open the chapel door, expecting to see a teeming throng of lusty non-conformists, their muscular throats flexing like the biceps of Olympian weight-lifters. Inside, however, there are just Gladys Babcock and her sister Mabel, plus their cousin Primrose, visiting from Bournemouth. Prim is sign-singing the hymns - she lost her vocal chords to a V1 in 1944 - but jolly stirring her signs are too. The entire service is given a perfectly splendid accompaniment by 87-year-old Ermintrude Blenkinsop on the harmonium, which she is playing with her chin after breaking both hands in a fall.
The service has had to proceed - alas! - without Clive Witherspoon, the clergyman: his parish consists of seven counties, and today he is 200 miles away, having driven overnight through the snow in his 1958 Triumph Herald with no heater to deliver divine service to a hamlet in Tipperary, unaware that his entire congregation - 98-year-old Prudence Witherbottom - has passed away the night before
Yet, from her coffin, our Prudence could sing better than the entire archdiocese of Dublin papes - and throw in the dioceses of Galway, Cork, Cloyne and Ross as well. Irish Catholics, as Catholics, don't sing. They clear their throats, stare at the floor and mumble. You can wring a better tune out of a frozen tin of sardines left over from Captain Scott's Antarctic base camp than from a packed cathedral of warm Irish Catholics with pumping lungs and with heartbeats that are clearly audible in the crypt-like silence of their hymn-singing.
Why is this? The mute simpletons who mumble like cretins even when singing a carol they know well, such as Silent Night, begin to sound like the Red Army Choir when asked to sing The Fields of Athenry or Amhrán na bhFiann at Lansdowne Road. Then, it is as if John Wesley is conducting a mission, and the entire crowd has renounced Rome, smells and bells.
Now this is not the first time this column has referred to the wretched inability of Irish Catholics to sing in formal settings. I believe the last time was after I had attended the Day of National Commemoration. This is when the nation remembers those killed during the Easter Rising, the War of Independence, the Civil War, the world wars and on UN service. In other words, in terms of state ceremonial, the most important day of the year.
The gathering was about 90 per cent Catholic; we know this because that was the proportion that stood there with their mouths clammed shut, as if they had just woken up and found themselves in the middle of a prayer meeting in Mecca, with Mr al-Zarqawi patrolling with one hand to an ear, listening out for any bum notes. Meanwhile, all the Sams, Ernies, Wesleys, Myrtles and Rosemarys were unashamedly bawling their reformed hearts out. But if you're not going to sing at such an occasion, why did you not stay at home?
Padraig McIntyre as much as admitted the primacy of Prods in musical matters when he acknowledged the debt of Kerry Catholics to that fine Church of Ireland clergyman, Brian Lougheed, who, I'm sorry to hear, is now retired. Probably gone to join his cousin in America, making planes. We must bring him home, and unleash him on all those Catholics who stand in carol services at this time of year with their mouths clammed shut, like trout during an angling competition.
Catholic carol services should start with official warnings: only those who sing may stay. Why on earth should churches all over the country go to such trouble organising these affairs when so many indolent, craven Catholics merely want to hear other people singing?
Alas, the criminally inadequate state of the law does not allow for the public physical chastisement of the non-singing sector of the congregation. That being the case, forcible expulsion of Indolent, Craven Catholics by Protestant Prefects who are word perfect in the Book of Common Prayer is the only answer. Maybe there's something to be said for Henry VIII after all.