RITE AND REASON:In today's Ireland to speak openly about God or spiritual convictions can elicit a bemused or even mocking response, writes Éamon Maher.
ONE OF the most remarkable developments of the past few decades has been the steady erosion of the majority Christian denomination in Ireland. Where once the Catholic Church played a vital (some might say unhealthy) role in the public and private lives of most of the population, we have now reached the stage where, for example, levels of practice in parts of Dublin are well below 10 per cent.
The dearth of vocations to the priesthood and the ageing profile of most clergy have led to serious difficulties in running certain parishes. In addition, the emergence of an aggressive brand of secularism that is intolerant of opinions that do not coincide with the "liberal agenda" has led to the marginalisation of those who hold on to deep religious beliefs.
To speak openly about God or one's spiritual convictions will quite often elicit a bemused or even mocking response. There is no longer any social capital to be gained from being perceived to be a "good Catholic".
Since the grossly inept (mis)handling of the revelations of child sexual abuse by a small number of priests in this country, the hierarchy seem demoralised and incapable of offering the type of prophetic witness that is needed to win back lost ground.
In his latest book, Global Ireland: Same Difference, Tom Inglis argues that the Irish have become the same as their western counterparts in their fascination with the material world, their pursuit of pleasure and their obsession with self: "They [ the Irish] have moved from being quiet, poor Catholic Church mice, embodying a discourse and practice of piety and humility, to becoming busy, productive self-indulgent rats searching for the next stimulation."
The Irish have definitely changed, and not only in their attitude to religion. We are more self-confident (brash?), prosperous, cosmopolitan, liberal than we were a few decades ago. But in our blind pursuit of the pleasures of this world is there not a danger that we have lost sight of some of the positive aspects of religion?
Think of the wonderful work done in the past by the Catholic Church in the realms of education, health and the arts. The church is also one of the few interest groups to champion the social justice agenda.
Nobody in his or her right mind could argue that it is a perfect institution, but what has emerged to replace elements of the vital role it played?
The absence of any balanced debate about these issues is what prompted John Littleton and myself to edit a collection of essays that tease out in a critical and detached manner the state of contemporary Irish Catholicism.
Patsy McGarry (Of Scribes and Pharisees) supplies a moving and at times impassioned account of how certain female members of his family fell foul of the hypocritical and Pharisaic attitudes prevalent in the Ireland of the recent past.
Catherine Maignant (The New Prophets: Voices from the Margins) believes that genuine Christian witness and spiritual vibrancy in Ireland are most often situated among marginal figures such as Sr Stanislaus Kennedy and Fr Peter McVerry.
John F Deane (The Jesus Body, The Jesus Bones) provides a poetic interpretation of his personal experience of Catholicism while Colum Kenny (Reporting Religion) examines the proper business of writing or making programmes about religion.
John Littleton (Being a Catholic in Ireland Today) expresses an insider's view of the debasing of certain religious practices and sacraments in contemporary Ireland. Larry McCaffrey (From Devotion to Dissent: Irish-American Catholicism, 1945-2006) draws some extremely interesting parallels between the problems besetting Irish-American Catholicism and those visible on the other side of the pond.
There are also chapters on education, art and popular culture, church-state relations, as well as on literary figures such as Dermot Bolger, Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin and the French priest-novelist Jean Sulivan, whose poignant memoir is compared to that of the late John McGahern.
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Dr Éamon Maher is director of the National Centre for Franco-Irish Studies at IT Tallaght. He is co-editor with John Littleton of Contemporary Catholicism in Ireland: A Critical Appraisal(Columba Press; €16.99)