Church and Culture in Catholic Ireland

Abstract

Church and Culture in Catholic Ireland Tom Inglis There was a time, not long ago, when the Republic of Ireland was a homogeneous society and culture. The vast majority of the people were white, English-speaking and Catholic. Over the last fifty years, the cultural map of the country has changed dramatically. Ireland has become a multi-national, cosmopolitan, globalised society. There has been a shift in the balance of institutional cultural power away from the Catholic Church towards the state, the market and the media. The Catholic Church no longer has a monopoly over morality or spirituality. Everyday life has become more secularised: people no longer operate in Catholic time and space as they once did. They are increasingly making up their own minds as to what is right and wrong. They are devising their own paths to salvation and they are finding their own paths to God, the supernatural and transcendence. The demise of the institutional power of the Church is part of the decline of social hierarchies, particularly patriarchy. Social relations have become less formal. The rigid protocols that governed relations between men and women, children and parents, and between social classes have melted. We can see this as part of a long-term process of informalisation. At the same time, people increasingly see and understand themselves as discrete, free, independent individuals who are not bound by the family, community and religion into which they were born. We can see this as a process of individualisation.1 The decline in the power of the Catholic Church in Irish society is similar to the decline in the power of churches and institutional religion in other Western societies.2 There has also been a dramatic decline in the importance of Church teachings and religious beliefs and practices in everyday life.3 With some exceptions – most notably the debate about abortion – religion has moved from the public to the private sphere. Religion is not in the hearts, in the minds or on the lips of Catholics. Yet, more than four in five people see themselves as Catholics, nine in ten children go to Catholic primary schools and the majority of people are baptised, married and buried with Catholic ceremonies. There has been, I argue, a shift away from more traditional, orthodox and Studies • volume 106 • number 421 21 Church and Culture in Catholic Ireland legalistic forms of being Catholic to more individual, liberal forms. And yet the majority of Irish people see and understand themselves as Catholics. Their Catholic identity is important. It is part of their cultural heritage. In this sense, they are what I call Cultural Catholics.4 The old Catholic order is, then, yielding place to a new order that is less institutional and in which people are more ambiguous and sceptical about key beliefs and practices. There is less certainty about the existence of life after death, heaven and hell and the divinity of Christ. Catholics are increasingly making up their own minds about what is right or wrong. They are inventive in creating their own meanings of life in this sense, although they might never see themselves as Protestant, they are becoming more Protestant in the way they see the Church and live their lives. Institutional decline The decline in the power of the institutional Church is most obvious in the decline of vocations and the increase in the average age of those remaining in religious life. The Church does not have the same symbolic presence in parishes, schools, hospitals or social welfare homes. The practice of annual home visitations has almost disappeared. Today there is probably more chance of seeing a kingfisher on the river Liffey than there is of seeing a religious in clerical dress on the streets of Dublin. The problem is not just the decline in numbers. The child sex abuse scandals, and the way they were handled by the Church, have led to a decline in the dignity of, and respect for, priests, nuns and brothers. The honour they received in the community and in public places in the past was often a major compensation for a lonely celibate life. Instead of being at the heart of social life, there...