WHAT with the Taoiseach being compared to Hitler, the Vatican
throwing a hissy fit and the rest of the world enthralled at little
Catholic Ireland standing up to the big boys in Rome, perhaps it's time
we asked: "What would St Patrick do?"
Not the snake-slaying,
shamrock-waving bishop of later invention, but the Patrick of humanity
and pragmatism, with all his foibles, failings, loss of faith, love of
women and bloody awful Latin.
Because, since the Taoiseach fired
the first official salvo against Rome, the Irish Church seems to have
been mobilising itself for a schismatic war.
As Catholic commentator
David Quinn noted: "It is as though we are now being asked to choose
between the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland, and the Irish Catholic
Church. Catholics in the past have had to make a similar choice. How
will we choose?"
Bishop Willie Walsh, Fr Enda McDonagh, and the
Jesuit theologian Fr Gerry O'Hanlon, among others, have advocated the
idea of an Irish synod involving clergy and laity -- and, God bless us,
women too -- to map out the future of the church.
As O'Hanlon has noted:
"It will not do any more for priests, bishops, cardinals, the Pope to
simply tell us what to think, what to do. People rightly want a say." Is
this heresy, or just a return to the church of our ancestors?
Well,
it's probably fair to say that the idea would go down like a cup of
cold sick in the Vatican.
God knows what would happen if some of those
more outspoken Irish clergy (like the ones who called the new
translation of the missal sent from Rome "elitist" and "sexist") got
together with a disillusioned, increasingly secular and very angry Irish
populace.
Ninety-five theses?
I bet they could come up with 195.
Are we
about to have our own Reformation?
Well, we weren't always good
Roman Catholics.
Though historians no more accept the idea of a unified
"Celtic Church" than they do a united Celtic people, it wasn't until the
Synod of Whitby in 664, about 150 years after the death of St Patrick
(who, if he was sent to "Romanise" us -- very doubtful, he was later
confused with Bishop Palladius who got short shrift from the Irish --
failed miserably) that the highly individual, monastic, forgiving and
relatively egalitarian Irish Church submitted somewhat to Roman law.
According
to one historian: "Irish Christianity was pure, spiritual, intensely
personal, dedicated only to the absolute word of God. Rome's was
materialistic, tightly organised, widely social in intent, intolerantly
conformist."
But after the decline of the Roman Empire, the
so-called Golden Age of Irish monasticism blossomed when we modestly
declared that our monks, abbots and abbesses (mixed religious
communities existed) "saved civilisation".
Celibacy was a choice, not a
necessity, and many church offices were handed from father to son -- and
even sometimes, it was rumoured, to daughter.
But then came the
Vikings, disorder, disruption and the implementation of Gregorian
reforms.
From 1111 a series of synods changed the monastic Irish Church
into a parish-based system.
They still weren't overfond of celibacy
though, or of sending cash to Rome.
And consequently the (forged?) papal
bull of Pope Adrian I was used by the Angevin King Henry II as an
excuse to invade Ireland.
Chronicler Gerald of Wales complained:
"Of all peoples it [Irish Catholics] is the least instructed in the
rudiments of the Faith. They do not pay tithes or first fruits or
contract marriages. They do not avoid incest. They do not attend God's
church with holy reverence."
Oh dear.
Well, Gerald had a habit of
exaggerating, but it can still be said quite truthfully that the
official reason for the Norman invasion of Ireland was to turn us all
into good Roman Catholics.
Now, how ironic is that?
Did it succeed?
Well yes, up to a point -- in that the hierarchical structure of the Roman
Church most definitely replaced the Irish monastic one.
But now that
the great days of the learned monks had ended, the general mass of
people never bothered with all that Roman theological stuff, preferring a
mix of ancient pagan beliefs and rituals combined with an Irish style
Catholicism.
Celebrations at holy wells, harvest bonfires and wild Irish
wakes co-existed with a soft Catholicism practised under the Penal
Laws.
Mass and confession weren't such a big deal for the average Irish
peasant.
And anyway, there were never enough priests to go around.
Hanging was a pretty good deterrent to vocations.
It wasn't until
after the great famine that Roman Catholic Ireland as we know it was
eventually established.
The old superstitions had failed to protect the
people from catastrophe, and the newly emancipated, increasingly
middle-class Roman Church (heavily influenced by Victorian attitudes to
sexuality) was well set to step into the breach.
The "devotional
revolution" commandeered by the Roman-trained Cardinal Paul Cullen
revolutionised the Irish Church.
The British cheerfully handed control
of new schools and hospitals to the clergy -- a cynical move as they
knew the threat of eternal damnation from a bishop was a most excellent
deterrent against sin.
We became the "Jewel in the Vatican Crown"
as impoverished mothers gave their younger children -- whether they
wanted to go or not -- to the Church in the hope of earning honour and
prestige for the family.
We had so many "Mammy vocations" that we
began to export our religious abroad.
Mass attendance increased
exponentially.
And national identity became inextricably linked with
Roman Catholicism.
So when the British finally left, the real victor was
not so much the Irish people but the Roman Catholic Church.
Perhaps
future historians will look back on the 20th century as an unfortunate
period when the Irish replaced one foreign overlord for another, with
disastrous consequences.
Perhaps the Irish clergy calling for a
national synod to discuss the future of the Catholic Church will realise
that whereas Ireland has given so much to Rome, Rome has given little
in return -- bar contempt for our laws, our women and children and our
young, struggling Republic.
There are still many Irish people who
sincerely desire to maintain a spiritual, Catholic religion.
Yet they
are finding it impossible to do so under the weight of Roman pomp, power
and stubborn patriarchy.
Yet community, spirituality and ritual
are still very important to many Irish Catholics.
Do Wiccans Have Hymns?
asked writer Barbara Scully in a blog post last week where she
articulated the innate desire of many lapsed Catholics to be members of a
church that valued community, equality, spirituality, ritual and
support rather than the inflexible "doctrinal truths", invented over the
centuries by Rome.
She is not a "secular-atheist or
pseudo-rationalist", and neither are the majority of the Roman Church's
critics in Ireland and abroad. Nor are they so ignorant as to be blindly
led by some imagined "hysterical anti-Catholic media agenda".
What
would the humble, nomadic Patrick we know from his Confession do?
Would
he support the Church of Rome in its attempts to retain control of its
empire?
Or would he advocate a return to the simple, spiritual yet
pragmatic practices of the early Irish Church?
What do you think?