The changes of a generation March 6, 2012
Posted by irishelectionliterature in Uncategorized.trackback
My own children are making their Communion and Confirmation soon. My daughter asked me recently what a Confession Box was.
I was stunned and then I tried explaining about this dark room where you knelt down and waited for a hatch to open….. all to rather perplexed looks.
Yet at that age I couldn’t wait to be inside for real. We’d snuck a look a few times, waited in the pews for parents and older siblings we’d even , to much hilarity, had Frank O’Connor’s “First Confession” narrated to us on a car journey to Wexford…..
Growing up the church and religion were a central part of my home life. My parents were daily Communicants and I would have been more than a regular at the various services. Family members served Mass, Read at Mass, were Ministers of the Eucharist and so on. Family members were also involved in the Parish in various guises from Sacristan to Church Flowers to Parish Council and more. Priests were regular visitors to the house (luckily no harm done) and were treated like royalty.
“Will you have a cup of tea father?”
“I’ll have a sandwich”
On the few holidays abroad (England and Wales) and at home, almost the first thing after arriving was finding the Mass times for the Sunday and if need be where the church was.
We got colour Television for the Popes visit in 1979 and I went to see him in The Phoenix Park, the motorcade and was woken at an unearthly hour to go down and see him in a very wet Limerick.
So a fairly typical Catholic upbringing for the time….
I wouldn’t be a regular at mass and haven’t been for at least 25 years. My wife though brings the children to mass and they meet their grandparents there and go back to their house afterwards.
Where in my day it was assumed you had religious instruction at home, these days the Communion and Confirmation preparation entails a huge amount of parental involvement.
For the Communion there are a number of designated masses that you have to attend with your child and meetings you have to attend as a parent.
For Confirmation there are the masses and the children also have to attend a series of classes at night in the school with parents arriving at the end for a prayer service. These classes are given by parents who have to give up time to train and give the classes.
There are also talks you are expected to attend. I was at one recently which in fact was excellent (which may be tempered by an expectation of them being dreadful), although at the end the lights were turned off and we had to close our eyes, relax and imagine we were walking along a beautiful beach when who did we meet? … only Jesus and we had to imagine sitting down and having a chat with him.
What the talks and a lot of this preparation has been focused on is passing on the faith, growing our child’s faith from the faith they have at the moment to one where they eventually develop their own relationship with God.
My eldest is of course facing big tests after making the confirmation, he’ll be finishing primary and going to secondary school, becoming a teenager and all that goes with it.
Still, despite my own uninvolvement with the Church, I find the change in the role of the church in my children’s lives compared to mine quite astonishing. Thirty years ago , when I was Confirmed (by Brendan Comiskey) , the idea that the church would be in tatters as it is now seemed far fetched if not unthinkable. Yet now to people younger than myself the role of the church when I grew up seems far fetched if not unthinkable.
The Church has only themselves to blame.
Excellent post IEL.
Growing up in suburban Dublin in the late sixties and seventies, going to Mass of a Sunday was just the done thing. Everyone was there. Standing room only. The change over the last 30 years has been massive.
I bring my ma to Mass now every Sunday in Kilbarrack. I see how the church tries to engage parents and children in preparation for Communion and Confirmation. They turn up for those occasions but not of an ordinary Sunday.
We’ll never go back to the days when everyone turned up every Sunday without a thought, thanks be to God.
My kids attend(ed) the local RC national school and were willing participants in the whole rigmarole of communion and confirmation. It leaves me absolutely cold, I’ve no time for religion, but being in a rural area I didn’t have the heart to impose that view on my kids and mark them out as being unusual. They can make their own minds up later on. Sitting through the mass service, listening to the priest encourage more involvement in the church or else it will wither away, I look forward to that withering. The church had its chance during the centuries to side with the oppressed, and didn’t. It is not a friend of the working class or those that preceded that class. Its attempts to renew itself through grassroots involvement ring hollow, its a hierarchical imperial machine that has been millenia in the making, a master of mind control, an opium of the people as the man said. Good riddance to it.
No scrap of evidence to support belief in a deity in my poinion, end of story, even of RC church was a friend of the poor, which it isn’t.
I went/was taken to mass every week, indeed I was an altar boy (a bit of a larf!), confession etc. All part of the deal for an Irish family in the UK. Some of the priest were OK, some creepy and some outright pompiuys idiots. Most of the others at church were Irish, Maltese etc. I used to think that English Catholics were a bit odd somehow.
By about 16 I ddn’t believe anymore. Science grabbed my head and mass and sermons just sounded like ridiculous drivel – YMMV. I would leave for mass (I would go in the evening, M & P in the morning), but I never got there (pub instead). The sky didn’t fall in, I was free! Eventually my siblings owned up to being non-believers. My sons were never taken to church and aren’t interested, except in an academic sense, in religion. They were annoyed when one of the teachers in their English state non-faith primary school slipped religion into assemblies (which actually the law mandates but which many head teachers ignore). “Gody-pants” they called him.
So in one generation the Catholic church lost all my family’s allegiance – result! I had to go into the local RC church quite recently (o do with my mum) West Africans seem to have replaced the Irish, most of the non-African congregation seem to be older.
Don’t go along with it.
Non-, Ex-, Post- Catholics are a majority in this country now. The church relies on what I call the X-Factor factor: loads of people watch the X-F, but let themselves off the hook by saying they’re doing it ‘ironically’ or that ‘they know it’s fixed’ and so on – they imagine that they are the fringe, the knowing minority and they sneer at what they imagine is the majority that take it seriously – but there is no such majority: no one takes it at face value and the makers know this full well. Everyone thinks they’re smarter than everyone else by erecting an imaginary distance between themselves and what they’re watching and the imaginary, non-existent majority are a construct to allow this. Irony, and distance are, in their way, much more complicit with hegemony either cultural, political or religious, than either total belief or un- belief.
Same with the church: everyone – or nearly everyone – feels the way you guys do, but they all imagine they’re keeping those who ‘really believe’ -parents etc. – happy. But my guess is that most people are pretending at this stage, and anyone with a genuine religious conviction must, almost by definition, respect difference.
The Church knows this, and knows that it’s not the true believers who keep it going – because they’re the ones hugely and genuinely disgusted by what’s gone on – it’s you lot: by your
complicity, they keep a hold of education, of hospital boards etc, because people are afraid of what they imagine their parents will think.
Do you want your kids to the same thing to keep you happy when the time comes?
Sonofstan
Don’t count me in on that! I don’t live in Ireland but here in the UK I, and my family, are pretty trenchant critics of religion of all kinds when we get the chance, we argue for genuinely, openly secular education (it sort of is in most state schools – but not officially). I do agree though that most people just go along in a fuzzy way with the special dispensations for religion/the religion in RoI and the UK. They just don’t care enough about it or have a sort of vague feeling it is nice to have around (especially for the kids, like Father Christmas), although they don’t have anything more than a fuzzy pantheistic view at most. There are no campaigns to change the 1944 Education Act here to remove all trace of religion from schools (except as a subject for academic study) because most schools let it fall by the wayside (except when Thatcher tried to revive it). Perhaps a very British (but unsatisfactory) solution – unlike in France.
Of course the churches in the UK are complaining about militant secularism – if only!
Wasn’t including you – should have been clearer
‘your kids to do the same thing…..’
Lots of ‘imagines’ and ‘imaginary’ up there.
Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.
Marx
Tom,
While I humbly agree with Marx as quoted this famous quote doesn’t go far enough, religion is a lot more: it’s obscurantist and it serves many other social/political roles.
There should be a secularist campaign. There are a large number of clergy on the state payroll as chaplins etc.They are in schools, hospitals etc. What a waste.
It is difficult/impossible to get a secular education. I think as a concession religion could be taught outside school hours and it should be paid for by the parents concerned. The state should be reponsible only for the secular aspects of education.
Hollande the Frech Socialist candidate has said he will put the secular laws of France (1905?) into the constitution. Hollande is of course an “ultraleftist” who wnat a 75% income tax rate for the super rich. All Gilmore does is close dowm an embassy (not a bad thing) rather starting the process of creating a proper republic.
It is nor enought to be post christian. Some of the new religions here are like 50′s Catholics. They do take their religion seriously. Imagine what the impact will be as they demand the same as the Christian groups. Even worse maybe female circumcision on the Health service.
Across the world there is a rise of bigotry. I am afraid that the Arab spring will morph into winter, with minorities as the new target.
A parent writes about serving on a Board of Management in todays Irish Times.
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/education/2012/0306/1224312846810.html
Re sonofstans points.
In my own case its nothing to do with pleasing my parents or parents in law. I’ve a nephew who didn’t get baptized or christened and nobody gave a hoot.
However the children are in a Catholic School and school is hard enough without them standing out by not making their Communion and Confirmation, they actually want to make them though.
That said and it goes back to your point about schools and the churches role, you do hear stories of people getting their children Christened/Baptized so as they can get into the local school.
If the Schools had no religious involvement, no religion thought and Communions, First Confessions, Confirmations etc were done solely through the Parish then the numbers taking them would surely decline.
I don’t buy the point about ‘not standing out’: if your kids are in any primary school in Dublin, then there’s kids in their classes that ‘stand out’ far more in terms of ethnicity, language, religion than the merely non-catholic Irish. And, to put it in tabloid-ese, what sort of message does it give immigrants when they discover that the Irish can’t even bear to display diversity even in this relatively minor context? A society still cowed and conformist?
Well, I imagine if the kids themselves want to make their Communion and Confirmation, however much that’s an artifact of peer pressure, which it is, that has some power. In a way it’s a little like Santa Claus – and again brings back the issue about ceremony, one might dislike having to pay obeisance to that construct at Christmas, but it’s easier said than done when one is faced with a four year old or a seven year old who is absolutely convinced there’s a direct line to a guy living North of Stockholm.
Well that’s even more of an insult to the church isn’t it? to treat its great mysteries as being ‘like Santa Claus’?
It’s not meant as one, I’m trying to give a sense of the dynamic from a kids point of view – or peer pressure from below…
with reference to “making their Communion and Confirmation, they actually want to make them though”
My son, born 1983, didn’t want to receive Communion and Confirmation and I hope he is not the only one.
He has always been a rational type of thinker and contested what he was told in catechism from the word go. Aged 7 or 8 he objected to the idea of God, saying he had never seen any sign of Him and was disgusted by the idea of communion, saying it was cannabalism.He point blank refused to continue with Catechism. He has constantly refused make his first communion or be confirmed.
He is now studying for a PhD in a science-related subject, having done advanced Maths and Physics in his MSc .
I remember a few years back, I was attending my cousin’s first communion. My Dad, who is slightly deaf and a result tends to talk quite loudly, was standing at the back and, just as mass was ending turned to his brother in law and said ‘It’s all bollocks isn’t it?’
To this day he doesn’t realise that most of the parish heard him.
FergusD:
No scrap of evidence to support belief in a deity in my poinion
And surprisingly enough, that is why they call it faith.
Otherwise it would be a science.
True.
“My daughter asked me recently what a Confession Box was.
I was stunned and then I tried explaining about this dark room where you knelt down and waited for a hatch to open”
I remember the wonder when word reached us in Clondlakin that the Dominican Friary in Tallaght village had gone very modern, and had these new-fangled confessional boxes that were brightly lit minature sitting rooms where you sat, rather than knelt, in an arm chair across from the priest to make your confession.
There was something similar in Kilbarrack in the 1970s when confessions went modern there too. Never much liked it in either variant. But that could be the CofI, and further back Methodist side of the family coming through there.
Clearly I’m a bit unsual here in being a sort of theist. Not a great one, tending towards agnosticism, but still just residually theist. Don’t really believe God, assuming there is one, has much interest in the universe, or much input either. But who knows. TBH never seen a massive contradiction with science, though there’s a distinction there between belief in God and science and religion and science. The latter is more problematic.
Re secularism, I’d tend to the view religion should be out of schools and hospitals in terms of ‘ownership’, the public sphere – in terms of politics, etc.
Whether though even in a post-Catholic society that is a feasible goal is an interesting question.
Re Christenings etc, like IELB, certainly not a case of pleasing grandparents, who are on one side militantly atheist. I kind of like ceremonies, but as with schools, hospitals, I dislike forcing them on those who don’t. But I also agree with IELB that those who do it simply for school access make a mockery and in any case, it should go back to the Parish.
It’s nothing to do with what you believe or don’t believe WBS. It’s to do with people pretending to believe something in other to conform to an entirely imaginary consensus. I’ve no problem with religious people at all: it’s those who privately disavow it, but publicly go along with it for a quiet life that drive me up the wall.
Yes, I see the point you’re making, and I think you’re right.
Though social pressures are an odd one. And can be very difficult to shrug off however tenuous their strength.
Actually the classes are fairly uniform, I think there is only one non Catholic in my sons class (not sure about the others) and for the communion there is just one girl in my daughters class who is not Catholic.
That girl is actually included in everything, for instance she was at the First Confession. On the day of the Communion she will be in the church and at the school afterwards in a non white (red?) dress. Some of the previous years Communion photos have girls at the front with red dresses on. I thought it was parents being different but its actually a case where the child is included in everything bar the actual communion and confession themselves.
The non Catholics generally go to the Educate Together or COI schools close by.
@IEL – Fair enough. Round my way, the *Catholic* schools seem weirdly more mixed than than the two ETs, as the waiting lists for the latter de facto preclude a lot of recent immigrants.
Are the ETs primary or post primary?
Primary.
Interesting.
ETs are getting into the second-level system though. I think their first second levelschool is to be in Waterford.
Yep, and one slated for the Northside of Dublin.
Think there’s one on the way in Balbriggan also?
WbS: “TBH never seen a massive contradiction with science, though there’s a distinction there between belief in God and science and religion and science. The latter is more problematic.” Not quite sure what you mean there. I think there is a massive contradiction. As Bartley commented religion/belief in a deity is a “faith”, i.e. not based on empirical evidence, while science is based on empirical evidence.
I don’t really understand your view/belief that there is some kind of deity but that “it” doesn’t have any consequences for human life (or anything else) as that seems a pointless construct. At least Christians etc have a point to their God, he/she/it can save them from oblivion i.e. can provide life after death aka heaven. Many today don’t believ that but still hang on to some goddy-type thing? Why? A bit like SoS that annoys me more than the true believers. Maybe I shouldn’t let it bother me, but it does!
For myself, I love the description offered by one of my friends – the whole religious thing comes down to arguing over who has the best imaginary friend. But for others close to me, I can see it plays a valuable role for them.
My folks regularly rave about the active retirement centre their parish runs; they’d be very old-school catholics and were obviously knocked for six by the child-abuse revelations but this strikes me as more akin to the community model of early christians, they have a library, classes on this, that and the other and to be honest they’d be lost if it wasn’t there. I kinda like the way their parish is at the heart of something important to them that goes beyond the usual weekly mass attendance.
My brother was a long-term agnostic until a few years ago when there was a horrific fire in the house across the road – the mother and one child survived, but the father and two other kids died, one of whom was carried across to his house wrapped in a blanket until the fire brigade arrived. That obviously had a massive psychological impact on the whole road and he found great consolation from deciding to go back to church.
Obviously his circumstances were exceptional, but even in general terms it’s very difficult to separate the genuine benefits that many catholics feel their religion provides to them from the fact that their institution is run by a bunch of scumbags.
I think your first paragraph is spot on. To me it’s quite a private thing, and that’s how it should be. Also, my own sense of this is very contingent. But there are community aspects of religion, which shoudl be outside the school/health/public areas which are positive to my mind too.
Re atheists, my own father was a very very strong atheist all his life, even during my most agnostic days, until he became terminally ill. It was quite a turn around. He didn’t embrace religion – he and his family had had too much experience of the worst the RCC could deliver in the 30s and 40s, but he did a sort of theism. I could understand that entirely as a dynamic, though it didn’t make full blown theism seem convincing to me – but as I was saying my own sense of a deity is quite detached.
Talking about such matters, here’s a fascinating, and one presumes non religious non theistic hypothesis about the universe which begs many questions but explains all too well why the left never has enduring victories…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulation_hypothesis
New Scientist and Scientific American – which by the way I subscribe to, no irrationalist I bar on this issue
– both have covered it in its cosmological variant with some seriousness over the past few years.
And that’s another thing – sorry, in a bit of a ranty mood tonight – there’s no such thing as a private religion, any more than there’s a private language: organised religion is a tautology.
I agree, mostly about religion.
I think though one could have beliefs about – say a God, without feeling that those would have to of necessity have to impinge on others. In that sense it would be ‘private’. Granted, as with most belief systems the desire to convert/capture is very very strong in most.
I’ll put it a different way, I have no interest in shifting anyone to my beliefs, in part because I think what I believe is so filled with uncertainty. To ask others to buy into that would be monstrous. Actually, I kind of feel similar about politics, but to a lesser degree. The danger of course is that then it becomes solipsistic. And I’ve always loathed the 1960s hippy stuff about self. All very contradictory.
A lot has changed. One thing that hasn’t is that attitudes to ‘the Church’ in this state still means attitudes to the Roman Catholic church. I understand perfectly why disgust at the activities of certain priests and the hierarchy has led so many ( well represented here) to throw their hat at the whole religion thing. It must be all the confirmation one would need that clerics need to be kept out of their children’s education – lives, even – completely.
Not every Christian is an RC though. And those of us who aren’t would draw the line at the reasoning: “the Roman Catholic Church has behaved disgracefully and is not fit to be in charge of schools; therefore ALL denominations must be excluded from school patronage.” I attended Church of Ireland schools for my whole education and I’m grateful. As far as I can tell, there’s no demand from the minority Christian denominations for an end to church patronage of schools – and therefore no justification for having such a measure imposed on them.
It is interesting how CofI education became to some degree, as with Mount Temple, the default ‘liberal’ position for non CofI people. Early and regular [ie weekly at some times] exposure to the CofI has had its impact on me but.. still not sure it or any religion should have patronage of schools.
Or to turn your phrase around, simply because CofI schools didn’t behave disgracefully is not a good enough reason to have religious school patronage.
If we were designing a system from scratch, i’d agree. But we’re not. And, to mention but one obstacle, how is the state to afford the purchase of so much property of minority denominations?
Well, arguably we are now in a situation with expanding numbers where it is precisely the time to reboot the system as if it were starting from scratch. As to the affordability I wonder if in the long run both minority and majority [almost] denominations will find it increasingly difficult to sustain their interest/patronage in cost terms.
I have vivid memories of getting up around 4 in the morning and traipsing into the racecourse in Limerick to see the Pope. Some priest was MC’ing and told a really corny joke that involved the pope’s helicopter making an emergency landing in a field; half the crowd misheard, thought the pope had crashed and launched into a breathless rendition of the rosary. It was on the way home, hours later (it did go on all day, or at least I remember it that way) that I got my first insight into how superficial some of these displays of religious fervour can be. A big crowd of teenagers were moving through the crowd, some of them swigging cans, and all of them singing (to the tune of He’s got the whole world in his hands) ‘He’s got the whole world…down his pants’!
That I believe, was the beginning of the end.
Excellent. Nothing like teens and alcohol to put it into perspective.
My abiding memory of that day is making a fairly excellent Battlestar Galactic jigsaw, and being puzzled at the big deal – not so much from my family who were fairly indifferent, but more like the next few days in school. Like Battlestar Galactica. Jigsaw. What’s not to like?
In my own defense I was 13.
Was the racecourse not Galway and the MC priests, Michael Cleary and Eamonn Casey, I recall walking to the Phoenix Park very early that morning then after that heading to Connolly where you just got on a train and went to Galway arriving there in the middle of the night, a gang of us from North Strand went not so much for the religion I would suggest but as teenagers for the sense of adventure and to maybe pick up a few birds.
And a couple of beers and a parody of `the whole world in his hands’?
This is all getting a bit David McWilliams.
I saw him at Maynooth. Too young for beer.
“pick up a few birds”
Ghandi, you know I like you, but really, that sort of language is intolerable.
Tomorrow is International Womens Day by the way.
WP statement here: http://www.workerspartyireland.net/id711.html
No mention of birds…
Clearly LATC has not heard of the long tradition of pigeon fancying in the nner city.
what exactly is it that your teaching your kids so they dont’ stand out?
[...] The changes of a generation 10:25 Tue Mar 06, 2012 | irishelectionliterature [...]
[...] The changes of a generation 10:25 Tue Mar 06, 2012 | irishelectionliterature [...]
On SoS’ point about going along with the consensus, maybe so, but when your kids are the ones actively pushing the involvement, their opinions and behaviour having been informed to a large degree by the culture in their school experience as well as the home culture, then I don’t have a huge problem with facilitating their enthusiasm for the communion and confirmation occasions. At that age it’s all peer pressure and wedges of cash, and being special on the day, being made a fuss of. I draw the line at escalating the involvement to a regular thing, a habit, a routine, and the kids have never objected to that. With my elder two, post-confirmation, the interest in religion has disappeared altogether, thankfully. Religion is an examinable subject in their schools (one is in a convent school, the other is in a VEC school), so it hasn’t dropped off their radar, but the peer influence and the intensity of the communion/confirmation regime has dropped away, and the home influence seems to be gaining gorund. My eldest was writing an essay the other day about “What Heaven Means To Me” or some such, english homework, and she wrote explicitly in that of her disinterest in religion. So on the point of perpetuating the consensus, I’m not sure to be honest. It may be true where there’s no opposite pole of opinion to counteract the schooling, but unless and until we have an education system that actively encourages rebellion and questioning across the board then I think that the religious fallout of that perperuation of status quo is only one part of the negative outcome. Having said that, if I could vote tomorrow for an absolutely secular education system, I would do so. Small steps in a progressive direction are to be welcomed as well. Oh, my youngest informed me that she has to go to mass tonight because it’s first penance or something for the younger class and she’s in the choir, so could I bring her please. Grrr!!
I’m probably being stubborn beyond all reason here, and maybe you’re right – that it’s all about sweets and being made a fuss of – but I remember a sense of a certain awful moment to it all when I made my communion that kind of transcended the trip into Derry to buy a Thunderbirds 3 scale model with the proceeds. I knew this shit was supposed to be important. I think kids have a grasp of the different weight of things beyond what they may be able to express at the time.
One of the joys – though not unmixed – of having a grown- up daughter is talking to her about how things that happened appeared from her side: it can be instructive how much the observant sub-teen can grasp of what’s going on in their parents’ lives and in the world outside.
So what I’m getting at is that if one makes a stand about this kind of thing, and indicate that it is important enough to you to do so, then it communicates itself. Put it another way: people kind of expect that atheists/ agnostics will ‘go along’ for the sake of a quiet life, whereas no one expects Muslims/ Jews/ Hindus to conform to the Christian practices just to ‘fit in’. So my question is, why is what you believe (or don’t believe) as someone non-religious less respected than what religious people believe?
Stubborn is good.
It’s a good question you raise there.
But I don’t know if it really boils down to a disrespect for the non-religious viewpoint at the end of the day.
The way I look at it is that I married (in an RC church) someone who isn’t anti-religion to the same extent as myself, she would value tradition, her mother was daily mass goer, you know the score. So my family unit is based on respect for different viewpoints in that regard, I don’t participate myself but I will engage with the process to the extent that it facilitates my kids interests and wishes, I will show up at the communion & conformation for the practice run and the main event, I will go along to extended family christenings / communions / weddings, but my kids know I’m only doing it because it’s a family event. I don’t hold my hand together in prayer, I don’t bless myself, I don’t recite the prayers during the service, I don’t take communion, and the kids see all of that. At home I refuse to encourage religious behaviour in the house, I don’t do bedtime prayers, I don’t do non-occasion church attendence, although I will act as a taxi-driver if the kids need to go there for choir participation or whatever. So I think the kids have picked up that in our house it is allowed to hold pro or anti positions on religion. We openly discuss it sometimes over dinner or whatever, and you know to be honest the Father Ted line “You don’t really believe in that sort of thing do you Ted?” does carry the day, there’s no faith-based worldview in our house. So whatever about losing the battles over the attendence at occasional religious events, I’m happy enough that the war against faith has been well and truly won. My kids may or may not decide to carry on religious involvement in later life, but I expect it would be on the basis of tradition rather than anything more meaningful, it will be a la carte, take it or leave it, so there’s no real grip over their lives or opinions or behaviour which is based on religion or meaningful participation in a religious community. Which I think is the important result. And equally, they may decide to actively discard any religious engagement altogether, which would be better again. I don’t think there’s much chance of them going all born-again and embracing christ into their daily lives, but you know kids, they do like to rebel against their parents!
http://crookedtimber.org/2005/04/03/when-the-pope-came-to-ireland/
Speaking of Papal visits
Reading that article reminded me that the Eamonn Casey story broke in the same month as the X case. It *was* an interesting time to be politically aware(ish).
Are not pop/rock festivals a secular form of the religious mania that we had when the Pope visited.It could not be the quality of the music in a mass venue. Otherwise intelligent people waving their hans in semi religious awe od some band. As for football, don’t get me started. I suppose it is about a sense of belonging.Then it reminds me of dictators as well.
I remember being effectively interned by it in Templeogue. It really annoys me when you have a public display of whast should be private. Catholic religious parades etc.
A few generations ago in Ireland, there was a process which has been characterised as ‘language shift.’ It was necessarily a protracted process (because people needed to be able to communicate with one another across the generations). Theoretically, you might have grandparents who were monoglot speakers of Irish, parents who were bilingual, and children who were monoglot speakers of English, In reality, the ‘shift’ took longer in most places and in most families – not least because there were children who liked to speak to their grandparents. The process therefore was gradual, interspersed with sharp shocks, notably the Famine
Would it be fanciful to compare this with what’s been going on in the religious sphere since the 1960s? For cultural reasons, the cohort that came to adulthood between c.1970 and 1990 included many who were not prepared to uncritically accept ‘the faith of their fathers.’ As they entered into relationships and began to raise families of their own, many of them were drawn back to their natal church by rites of passage (weddings & christenings) initially, or by pressure from spouses or extended family (and even from their children when it came to confirmation and the like). If some were shocked out of their passivity by the abuse scandals of the past decade or so, others continued to bring their mothers and their children to mass. Practicing without belief or ‘faith’, people of that generation are comparable, in some ways, to their bilingual grandparents. The social pressures that obliged them to be observant won’t exist for the next generation. The children now growing up will practice religion, or not, in very different conditions.
I wouldnt underestimate the resilience of an institution that survived two millenia, nor their ability to adapt to the transformed cultural milieu.
A softly-softly campaign is underway in the US to woo back lapsed Catholics:
http://www.youtube.com/user/CatholicsComeHome?feature=relchannel
Expect similar production values to be applied to their lost market share on this side of the pond.
And in some cases, the Church will be pushing an open door, as many of the thirty/forty-something lapsed Catholics I know are begining to see elements of practice as a cultural artifact they want to hand onto their kids. (Not a thousand miles from the attitude many CoI members had back in the 80s and 90s).
Certainly never back to the smoothering \’who said Mass?\’ atmosphere of the 1970s, but they would see no harm in bringing the brood to church for the more theatrical ceremonies … midnight Mass on Christmas Eve, monochrome face-painting on Ash Wednesday, gore and violence on Good Friday etc.
Now that Mammy is no longer standing over them with a big stick, the heat is taken out of it, and they\’re willing to explore whatever residual positive value there might be found in their kids moral formation within the context of Catholic doctrine-lite.
That’s exactly my point about disavowal though: the church sustains itself through that sort of indulgent take it or leave it buffet version of catholicism. And to an extent I’ve no real problem with the survival of the catholic church – what I have the problem with is its continued control of the education system, its sectarian influence on health policy and – as you refer to in your last paragraph – the notion that ‘moral formation’ requires a religious setting.
The church relies on exactly that disavowal to maintain its otherwise unjustified hold in these areas: so the idea that ‘a little bit of catholicism’ does no harm, is exactly wrong.
SoS – again I agree. I find the fuzzy religious just annoy me more that the true believers. I think it is the fuzzy thinking that gets me (OK, it’s all fuzzy thinking but some is more fuzzy than others). Some arguments I have heard are that:
“You cannot prove God does not exist (true, it isn’t a scientific hypothesis) therefore God may exist, or at least the chances are 50:50, so I may as well believe it in case it is true. Also, I can’t accept we are here my chance so I’d like to believe God put me here, for some reason, but I’m not bothered enough to follow an established religion to try to influence God to be nice to me, so my belief serves no real purpose. Except Christians are nice, aren’t they (?!) and so maybe they make us behave better, it’s good for the kids anyway – and weddings, funerals etc.”
This is from highly educated people. Rot, all of it. Give me strength!
I can see the culture link, but that annoys to. To this day I remember lying in a hospital bed in Brum and a RC priest arrived to see me. Irish, natch. He told me he was astonished to see in the records (!!) that I had said none for religion (instead of RC natch) – surely that couldn’t be true, with my name (er.. how can you express this? “native” Irish? Gaelic in origin?)!! That was SO WRONG for some many reasons (this was during the height of the Troubles) that I was *nearly* speechless.
I am an atheiest. I am 61. I have been an atheiest since about 11. I don`t see me having a deathbed conversion.
My 2 children were baptised, made communion & confirmation, out of respect to my wifes then professed religious beliefs. We had agreed that when they were older they could decide for themselves if religion was to be a part of their lives.
My oldest was the first to object to going to church on any day, she was 14 yrs old. Her sister followed about 1 year later.
The oldest married at a Registery Office. The oldest now has 3 children, none of them are baptised, her oldest is in the communion class this year and is not making the communion, nor will the 2 other siblings. That is a decision that both my daughter & her husband came to before the children were born. They have allowed the oldest child to stay in class when religious instruction/indoctrination takes place. The child is not impressed.
The school is in a rural village, the teachers seem to be ok with the fact that a lot of the children will not be making the communion this year. Some of these children would have parents who are of different faiths and none.
To say I am pleased at the outcome for my children & my grandchildren would be an understatement!
My second child is of the same inclination, she has no intention of baptising any child of hers. She wants her children to learn about religion but from an onlookers point of view.
In a conversation with a friend of my wife last week, she was informed that our grandchild was not making a communion, the fact that the child was not baptised was also stated. The shock on that ladies face was a sight to see. Her response ” what about the last day ” ?
I am glad for my grandchildren that that type of mind control/indoctrination will not affect them in their lives, that they will have an open mind about all things in the world and not a narrow perspective dominated by religious cult outlook.
I hope to live for enough years so that I can show them the stupidity of religious belief and its controlling aspects, no matter what its forms.
Religion, if it must be practiced or learned, should never be taught in schools. Any and all religions that is. If any parent wants their child to have religious education/indoctrination then they should do so at their church or home or indeed pay for it privately.
No religious group no matter which faith they are should have any influence whatsoever in any schools/hospitals etc., and the state should not at any time help to fund, or make any contribution to, any type of faith based educational/indoctrination schools/centres/hospitals etc.
The changes that have come about here in Ireland over the last 30 years ,in relation to to the power of the roman catholic church, are to be welcomed, hopefully the changes that are coming will come much quicker now. The religious cults are gathering all over the world. They have much to fear from knowledge, science, and the quest for understanding that abounds in this world.
Tawdy, that’s a great story you’re telling there. Agreed totally that secularisation of education (and healthcare) must be a priority for society. The tide is heading in that direction I think, and accelerating, thankfully.
‘Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,..’
State support for religious schools should end in Ireland, North and South.
The separation of church and state should surely be part of a republican constitution.
Britains decision in the 1830s to establish state-supported Catholic run ‘national’ schools has done untold damage.
Its not healthy for society to entrust the education of the young to criminals who protected and facilitated the serial rapists of children.
Perhaps the upcoming constitutional convention will do something real to end this medievalism and modernize
Ireland.
LATC,
Shouldn’t preserving healthcare and education be the top priorities? Right now the threats to those areas is very real, and it’s not like a nun is leading the charge to closes hospitals or lay off teachers.
And it should also be noted on a general point (towards Tawdy) that agnosticism and atheism that talks down to people and ridicules their beliefs (even if those beliefs are a waning relic of the real deal) does very little to hasten religion’s demise.
As someone under thirty (for at least another week!) I have certainly seen the demise of religion amongst my generation which would make some folks here happy, but a word of warning, the idea that something akin secular humanism will replace religion is not what I have seen. Instead a culture of consumerism and materialism has taken hold. Obviously the picture is a little more nuanced than that, but as I general rule of thumb Jesus got replaced by Coke, not nessecarily a great trend.
sorry, should read, “the threats to those areas are very real…” my bad
You know what? Upon review that whole comment is littered with typos, sorry the commenting box keeps jumping up and down, not reallu letting me see what I’m writing. So yeah once again, my bad.
On that: http://averypublicsociologist.blogspot.com/2010/09/pope-and-atheist-identity-politics.html
It doesn’t have to either/ or though does it?
The idea that if you have no religion you are a slave to consumerism doesn’t stand up just because some people who profess no religion are so.
(Though Chesterton’s remark that those who stop believing in God, don’t believe in nothing; rather they’ll believe anything has more than a germ of truth)
And I would never talk down or ridicule people’s beliefs. The boneheaded Dawkins/ Hitchens ‘there is no God, therefore if you believe in God you’re stupid nah, nah, nah’ is the metaphysics of the public school bully (PS in the English sense).
What I was arguing against -LATC can answer for himself – is bad faith: people being dishonest about something as important as religion for a quiet life, because my view it is that this sustains the political and social power of – in an Irish context – the RCC,(and in an English contest, the established church – if I was there rather than here, I’d argue just a forcibly against the role of that church in education, the place of Anglican bishops in the House of Lords,etc.)
YC, I take your point about the replacement of religion with consumerism and it’s something that I’ve had the discussion about with friends and family, usually over a few beers mind you, so it’s a well-aired argument. The way I look at it is that it has taken a millenium or two to break the hold of superstition and to remove the societal domination of that particular non-territorial imperial organisation. That the societal vaccuum has been quickly replaced with superficial consumerism is something that I can live with in the short term. The way I look at it is not that consumerism is the end point in that journey. I’d like to see religion replaced with humanism or a secular belief inthe common good or whatever label you want to put on that, but clearly there’s a job of work to be done to move society in that direction. But the first hurdle had to be to break the hold of religion, which I think has largely been completed here and in this generation, and at different times elsewhere. Step 2 is to build the alternative, amongst many alternatives, of which consumerism is one choice and which of course is the hegemonic choice of capitalism. It’s not necessarily a one way journey of course, the tide could flow back again. And it could be argued that having broken the grip of superstition and moral authority, and the habit of obedience, it would be difficult to rebuild it in another form.
What you mention about education and healthcare being essentials in this time of austerity is perhaps cloaking the issue. The church is part of the elite of reaction. It needs to be disestablished. If that results in hospital or school closures then I’m more than happy to be involved in the battle to force the state to pick up the pieces. It’s not like schools and hospitals are staffed by religious orders anymore, they just own the buildings at this stage. Write them a cheque and say goodbye and thanks for their work.
religion aside is there something to the ceremonies in that kids are moving towards adult hood. lot of theese things where hijacked by the church originally and had their stamp put on them. maybe you you look deeper there might be something else to them.
Religion and consumerism co-exist quite happily.
Religion will always exist and here I have in mind the Christian religion.Our Creator created everything and because of egoism gone mad in the case of Adam and Eve especially their misuse of the ‘freedom’ granted to all of us we find ourselves in such debates as the one now ongoing.
Believe if one likes in the ‘big bang’but who caused it?
Science has throughout the centuries studied miracles of the Eucharist and other spiritual phenomena and have failed to find any frauds.Although in mans history there have been frauds such as Hitler,Lenin,Marx,etc,.as well as some alleged Christians who need our prayers.
But the truth is the truth and all will be revealed at the moment of truth-at the moment of death.
May God bless you all !!!!!!!