Tracing the Cultural Legacy of Irish Catholicism

The Irish Catholic Church has long played an important role in the lives of Irish citizens and their communities. As British colonial powers sought to oppress the Roman Catholic citizenry in Ireland in various ways, the Church became an important site and resource for spiritual and political resistance. The Church was also very involved in various nationalist movements in the 19th century. As the Republic of Ireland emerged and developed, the Irish Roman Catholic Church remained closely tied to the state, allowing the Church to have massive political and social power. More recently, the power and influence of the Irish Roman Catholic Church in Ireland has notably diminished.

A new collection of essays edited by Eamon Maher and Eugene O’Brien, Tracing the Cultural Legacy of Irish Catholicism, seeks to explore the possible reasons for this shift. The immediate timeframe represented in this collection is relatively short, ranging from the highs of Pope John Paul II’s 1979 visit to Galway to host a mass for young people to the lows represented by the resignation of John Magee, Bishop of Cloyne, after the publishing of a damning report on abuses in the diocese of Cloyne in 2011. As the editors note, “It is this fall from grace of the Church as a cultural phenomenon in Irish society that will be the focus of this book” (5). They further state, “Our main objective is to map how the early monolithic connections of Irishness and Catholicism evolved into the more pluralistic public sphere in which we now live” (15). The editors have assembled an impressive multidisciplinary roster of experts from both within and outside the Irish Catholic Church to discuss the past strengths and failures of the Church in Ireland. Many of these authors also comment on what the Church might yet become as it moves through a time of great shame and diminishing power to a new era of possible renewal in what might be called a “post-Catholic culture” (15) in Ireland.

The essays presented in this collection address a broad range of important topics and interesting views. For the purposes of this review, I want to focus on a few themes: the role of media in Ireland, the impact of Vatican II on the Irish church, and the role of the arts in Ireland. The role of the media in Ireland is traced through several essays in various ways. The arrival of television in Ireland, with its very limited programming and access in the early days of the 1960s, has become a much more influential aspect of Ireland’s media landscape today. Even in its earliest iterations, television allowed for a greater diversity of public discussion and thought than had been previously part of Irish society. In the 1980s and 1990s, it would be television reporters who would break the stories of the scandals of church abuse that had been hidden by both church and state in Ireland for so long.

These television reports, along with some important print journalism, represent the growing power of the media in Ireland. Related developments in Ireland included the arrival of the Internet and cell phones, which have further encouraged both diversity of opinion and diversity of expression in national and international forums. Reality television, celebrating “anti-empathetic forms of Social Darwinism” (165), is singled out for critique. While the church has been very wary and reluctant to engage with and employ new media resources as a rule, one path forward for the church cited by several authors is a focused engagement with the various tools of television and the Internet to re-engage the culture.

Several authors discuss the impact of Vatican II upon the church in Ireland, with the general consensus being that Irish Catholics and their leaders were ill-prepared for the changes instituted by Vatican II. This is complicated further by the conservative reactions of both Pope John Paul II and Benedict XVI to the Council’s recommendations. One essay highlights the controversial career of Irish Catholic priest Tony Flannery, who was greatly inspired by Vatican II and who has since faced rebuke and silencing by the Roman Catholic leadership in Rome. Flannery’s political activism, along with his appeal to earlier forms of Irish Catholic practices, highlights the unique situation presented by Irish Christianity from its earliest days. Several authors in the collection suggest that a return to the spirit and emphasis of Vatican II represents a possible way forward for the Irish church.

In addition, there are also numerous references in the collection to the power of the arts in Ireland. Irish authors like James Joyce, Seamus Heaney, and Brian Friel represent a voice of critique towards the church that has often been silenced and ignored. Several authors in the collection suggest that a more direct engagement between the Irish church and the work of various Irish writers, poets, playwrights, and photographers would do much to rebuild a sense of the church’s empathy towards human struggles. In a related vein, Irish Catholic “writer-priests” and their work is highlighted, though these “writer-priests” have much less freedom to express dissent than their secular counterparts. 

This collection of essays has much to offer to interested scholars of various disciplines, including those working in Irish studies, religious studies, Catholic studies, media studies, women’s studies, lived religion, and political science. While uneven, there is reference in some chapters to the work of theorists including Louis Althusser, Charles Taylor, Pierre Bourdieu, Jean-François Lyotard, Jacques Lacan, Theodor Adorno, and Ferdinand Tönnies. The future role of the Catholic Church in Ireland is uncertain, but it is also one that has potential to influence and shape Ireland in important ways for many years to come. As Irish historian Michael Cronin writes, “As Ireland comes out of the most severe politico-economic crisis in its post-Independence history, it is worth asking what kind of emancipation we might strive for and what the role of religion and critical thinking might be in a new project of human flourishing” (164).  This collection helps to suggest some of these new possibilities for the church in a “post-Catholic” Ireland.

Michael Gillingham is a doctoral candidate in religious studies at the University of Alberta.

Michael Gillingham

Date Of Review:

August 3, 2021