Praise for the Celtic Tiger is rare nowadays. So it is noteworthy when praise comes from Jesuit priest, sociologist and former Army officer Micheál Mac Gréil, who says the Celtic Tiger’s benefits greatly outweigh its deficiencies.
He chastises some journalists for continually emphasising the negative without pointing out the positive – for example, the huge infrastructural improvements.
At the same time, Mac Gréil challenges the dominance of economic values in Ireland over the past 50 years. If there is a golden thread running through his book The Ongoing Present, in which he reflects on his life and the world around him since the 1930s, it is to question this dominance.
He believes that from the time of the Investment in Education report in 1965 the education system has been directed mainly towards meeting the needs of the economy.
Mac Gréil argues that the priority placed on economic growth as the supreme national goal has resulted in a nation where individualism is valued at the expense of family, community, volunteerism and religion.
Those who disagree with this might argue that without a concentration on the economic there would be a bleak future of emigration and unemployment for families and communities.
But, for sure, economic growth has not come without costs.
Mac Gréil was born in 1931 in Co Laois. His father, who was from Mayo, worked for a Scottish timber company. His mother, who was from Galway, had worked as a nurse.
In 1936 the family moved to Mayo and a decade later bought two smallholdings.
By standards of the time the family was not badly off. His father had a car. All six children had secondary education. Two became priests, one a nun and one a lawyer. A relative was a doctor.
On leaving school he worked for a motor firm and in 1970 entered the Army Cadet School where he spent seven years as an officer in the Third Infantry.
In the Army he went to daily Mass and continued to abstain from alcohol as he continues to this day as a member of the Pioneer Total Abstinence Association. He joined An Réalt, the Irish-speaking branch of the Legion of Mary.
Mac Gréil reminds us that in 1954, the Marian year, Fine Gael minister for defence the legendary Seán Mac Eoin declared Our Lady patroness of the Defence Forces.
Vatican
In reference to more recent events he describes the decision, later reversed, by a Fine Gael-led Government to close Ireland’s embassy in the Vatican, as “an unnecessary insult” to a majority of the Irish people.
Having discussed his vocation with Ath Diarmaid Ó Laoghaire, SJ, Mac Gréil joined the Jesuits in September 1959. By the mid-1960s, following study in Ireland and Leuven, he was enrolled for a master’s degree in sociology and anthropology at Kent State University in Ohio.
At Kent State Mac Gréil’s mind was “blown open” to the nasty side of society where many black people lived in unspeakable ghettos. He resolved to study to the best of his ability the “destructive power of social prejudice”.
Back in Ireland Mac Gréil was ordained priest on July 31st, 1969. He celebrated his first Mass in Westport and then went to Kilkenny to celebrate Mass for Travellers.
In the early 1970s he undertook the first of three surveys of prejudice and tolerance in Ireland. Together they spanned a period of 35 years. For the first study, which showed quite a high degree of racial prejudice, he was awarded the Ewart-Biggs prize jointly with ATQ Stewart. Subsequent studies showed an increase in social tolerance but unacceptable levels of intolerance remained, for example towards Travellers and Muslims.
In the past few years Mac Gréil has undertaken studies of pastoral needs in the dioceses of Meath and Tuam. The title of the Tuam report is Quo Vadimus? Ca bhFuil Ar dTriall? – Where Are We Going? Applying the question to Ireland, Mac Gréil would probably hope for more emphasis on the central Gospel tenet of service of neighbour and less on GDP.
Finola Kennedy is an economist and author of Cottage to Creche: Family Change in Ireland