ARE the Irish Catholic anymore?
I only ask because whenever I think about being Irish in Britain that is one of the most significant things I think about.
I remember us being the only ones in our street who went to Mass, the only ones who went anywhere near a church.
In a largely immigrant area with a large Irish population our street remained something of an enclave of older English people and amongst them one of the things that made us stand out was our observance of religious rituals.
I recall one English kid asking me what we did when we got there as if our Catholic church housed all the mysteries he was barred from knowing.
I remember the long walk along the redbrick streets to Sunday morning Mass and how it was an integral part of the day. I remember how it framed both Sunday dinner and later, as we got older, a Sunday afternoon drink in the local Irish club.
I remember the walk to that church and how I was taken there when I was 10 years old and two local lads with Donegal parents were buried after being blown up in the Birmingham pub bombings.
I remember Midnight Mass at Christmas and the drunks who gathered at the back. I remember the walk back along the cold, dark, Christmas streets.
I remember the Catholic symbols that adorned our house and the Sacred Heart that sat above the fireplace and the red eternal light that sat on the wall in my parent’s bedroom.
I remember how much of a comfort that was if you were a frightened kid who woke in the night. I remember how the eyes of Our Lord in the picture seemed to be looking at you wherever you were in the room.
I remember all the holy pictures scattered around our house and the bewildered look this caused on the faces of English friends when I went away to college and finally met some.
I remember Dave Allen was such a shocking delight because he mocked, gently but deeply, Catholicism from within.
I remember the mysterious container my parents had that contained some crosses and small chalices and was for the laying out of a body and the administering of the last rites. I’m still not quite sure why we had that.
I remember the priests and nuns from school and meeting them in the street and saying ‘hello Father’ or ‘hello Sister.’ I remember the Holy Confession box and the desperate recalling of made-up childish sins.
Religious statues and imagery were once common place in Irish homes. Picture: iStockI remember the grandeur of the church attached to my secondary school and the whisper of something outside of everyday life that hung around the dark recesses of any church, some- thing extra from life itself.
I remember the days of my First Communion and Confirmation and the aura attached to them. I remember too my adolescent disillusionment with the Church and then really not wanting to go to Mass before actually stopping altogether.
I remember too turning to panicked prayer in moments of crisis and how that hasn’t ever really gone away. I remember all this because I do wonder now just how Catholic we are anymore.
I for one let my Catholicism slip many years ago and after the Ryan Report and the horrific scandals really considered signing up to that list where you state that you are officially leaving the Church. I never did though.
My own kids though, growing up here in Ireland, they’ve gone through the sacraments but we don’t go to Mass and they are having nowhere near the Catholic upbringing I had.
And yes, sometimes I see that as a liberation and sometimes I think it’s a loss. So are we Catholic anymore? Is that still one of the things that will identify us as Irish?
Is it, in particular, one of the things that will identify the immigrant Irish the way it identified my family?
I mean I have spent so long being genuinely appalled by so much about the Church and I have disagreed with them politically for so long and wondered if after the abuse scandals and the cover-ups whether they shouldn’t in fact just be closed down.
I still now find Mass to be laced with hypocrisy and a tacit embracing of the comfortable instead of those in need of comforting.
Yet, after all that, why does the fading of our Catholicism still feel like a loss?
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