A new book examines Irish Catholicism from its apogee in the 1950s to its present chastened position. Brendan Ó Cathaoir has been reading it.
The past is certainly another country when it comes to Catholic Ireland. In the 1950s, for instance, staff members of the Irish Independent used to recite the rosary in front of a statue of the Virgin Mary at midnight. Devotional literature included such titles as What Not to Do on a Date. It was an age of faith, innocence and all-pervasive Catholic ethos. As we now know, the edifice had a dark underbelly.
Would events have been different had a civil war not accompanied the birth of the State? In opposing the Treaty by violence, the republican movement discredited itself and cleared the way for a paternalistic church to exercise untrammelled power. Uniting Catholic, Protestant and Dissenter became a meaningless mantra as bourgeois Ireland divided the spoils.
This maimed the nascent state and infected the church with a hubris. A thought-provoking study of southern Catholic society prompted those reflections.* Dr Fuller has written a balanced, scholarly and important book.
Triumphalism prevailed in the 1950s. A compliant state was eager to protect the Irish Catholic tradition by means of legislation and censorship. church control of education, hard won in the 19th century, was jealously guarded; for nine out of 10 people, however, primary school was their only educational experience.
Society was conditioned by an episcopal horror of communism and suspicion of sexuality. Lenten pastorals lamented "over-indulgence in the modern craze for amusement". (After the second Vatican Council, Archbishop McQuaid deplored the "modern craze for aggiornamento".) The concept of social justice did not come to the fore in Irish church thinking until Vatican II defined the church as "the people of God".
The mother and child controversy of 1951 marked a watershed in Irish Catholic culture. It was the first tentative challenge to episcopal power in post-independent Ireland. Direct state intervention conflicted with Catholic teaching on the rights of the family.
When the bishops persisted in their objections to Noel Browne's proposal and he refused to accede to their demands, the government abandoned his scheme.
The Taoiseach, John A. Costello, proclaimed in the Daíl: "I as a Catholic, obey my church authorities and will continue to do so, in spite of The Irish Times or anything else." Seán O'Faoláin commented in The Bell: "In practice the hierarchy does much more than 'comment' or 'advise'. It 'commands'."
Bishop O'Neill of Limerick said the hierarchy was trying "to protect the people from dangers and evils that may arise in the future".
Not all bishops were opposed to state intervention in the economy, however. In 1957 Bishop William Philbin wrote in Studies: "Our greatest failure of all - the capital sin of our young Irish state - is our failure to provide for our people an acceptable alternative to emigration."
Moreover, there was a growing feeling among some clergy that renewal was necessary. Dr Fuller pays tribute to the founders of the Furrow and Doctrine and Life, who realised that the Irish church model was neither desirable nor durable. They sensed that mere numbers were not in themselves an index to the spiritual health of a church.
The 1960s ushered in a different kind of world. Three landmarks only can be mentioned here. Pope John XXIII's opening address to the second Vatican Council signalled his rejection of the siege mentality which had characterised the church in the post-Tridentine era. He stressed the importance of engaging with the modern world. This would require a policy of aggiornamento, or updating of the church's structures and teaching.
His encyclicals Mater et Magistra and Pacem in Terris inaugurated a new humanism: the church had a duty to help build a better world based on truth and justice.
While these fundamental changes in church thinking caused cultural shock in Ireland, the arrival of Telefís Éireann had a profound effect on public consciousness. In the television era, the rigid censorship policy upheld by governments and seen as crucial by ecclesiastical authorities for the maintenance of a Catholic ethos was no longer sustainable.
Thirdly, the paternalistic approach was challenged increasingly after the Humanae Vitae birth-control crisis.
Returning to Ireland in 1969, the long-serving papal nuncio Dr Gaetano Alibrandi said he was glad to be back in "the most Christian country in the world". On leaving 20 years later, he admitted "there are areas of concern in the church in Ireland. A growing materialism and secularism are having an effect on Christian values, on family life and on the natural generosity of the Irish people."
Dr Fuller concludes that Irish Catholicism had changed fundamentally by the time Pope John Paul II visited in 1979. The nature of the change since then has been even more dramatic, as the author shows in her survey of the last two decades. Her remit does not extend to the North, where many Catholics and Protestants worked selflessly for peace.
The bishops moved to the left after Vatican II and formed several excellent agencies, notably Trócaire. They fought a rearguard action against the permissive society but lost the campaign when the seismic revelations, in particular the scandal of paedophilia, ruptured the moral authority of the clericalised church.
Obviously there has been a diminution of faith and commitment. Our indulgent society has grown coarse. On the other hand, jettisoning the dead weights of fear, authoritarianism and hypocrisy was overdue.
In an age of dualistic theology, the church had been preoccupied with "saving souls". This made it a pillar of the status quo and of a harsh society.
The Benedictine John Main affirmed that insofar as the church exists for others, ultimately the Other, it is invulnerable. His Christian meditation movement has taken root during "the undoing of a culture".
Bishop Willie Walsh said he prefers serving in a church divested of power and prestige. There is a growing consciousness of the need for gender equality, creative lay involvement and active ecumenism.
* Irish Catholicism since 1950: The Undoing of a Culture. By Louise Fuller (Gill and Macmillan)
Brendan Ó Cathaoir is a historian and an Irish Times journalist