Russell Shorto: The Irish Affliction
[Russell Shorto, a contributing writer, is the author of “Descartes’ Bones” and other books.]
To reach the geographical heart of Irish Catholicism, you leave the main road in windswept County Donegal and drive through miles of gorsy heath, past sheep poised on gray knuckles of rock, until you come to Lough Derg, a wilderness lake edged with pines. Half a mile offshore lies Station Island, where according to legend, St. Patrick had a meditative epiphany in the fifth century, during his mission to convert the Irish.
Station Island has been a place of pilgrimage since the Middle Ages. Its director, Prior Richard Mohan, who has worked there since 1974, greeted me as I stepped ashore, while a brewing autumn storm roiled the tea-colored water of the lake. Over lunch in the staff dining room, he told me how he has modernized the pilgrimage center. Early pilgrims relived the saint’s experience of huddling in a pit in the ground. Today there are updated dormitories, showers, even a gift shop. Prior Mohan said that Station Island “is in the genes of the Irish people,” so much so that there is a phrase for making the pilgrimage: going in on Station. Indeed, Ireland’s greatest living writer, the Nobel Prize-winning poet Seamus Heaney, devoted what is perhaps his most beloved collection, “Station Island,” to a meditation on the pilgrimage, the Irish and their tug of war with the church.
Mohan reckoned that the island’s impressive number of visitors — more than 20,000 a year — actually relates to a drop in church attendance in Ireland. Many people have abandoned the institutional church but not their faith, so they come to this wild spot in an effort to plug directly into their historical religious tradition without the mediation of the church. “This is seen as independent,” he said. In fact, the Catholic Church maintains control over the island, as it does over dozens of such places around the world.
Over the course of the 20th century, Station Island became a symbol of the way that Catholicism rooted itself in the Irish nation. Politics at the beginning of the century centered on two debates: British rule and religion. There were those — like the playwright George Bernard Shaw and the poet William Butler Yeats — who thought that the potential break with England constituted an occasion for Ireland to cut the strings to the Catholic Church and to embrace a progressive, international sensibility. Others wrapped Irish patriotism together with Catholicism, agrarian traditions and the Gaelic language, and they won the day. Eamon De Valera, the political leader, drafted a constitution side by side with the all-powerful archbishop of Dublin, John Charles McQuaid, which gave the Catholic Church a special role in state affairs and which to this day begins with the words, “In the name of the most holy trinity.”
Thus the 20th-century image of “Irishness” came into being: rural, charming, locked in an eternal, tragicomic struggle with the church. The archbishops of Dublin became something like grand inquisitors, wielding great power. The church’s heavy influence on Irish society kept the wider world at bay for a surprisingly long time. Eamon Maher told me that in the 1970s, his parents found it profoundly disorienting when the evening recitation of the rosary suddenly had to compete with American shows like “Dallas,” and “the world of wealth, flash cars and extramarital affairs.” Contraception was illegal in Ireland as recently as 1980, and until 1985 condoms were available only with a prescription....
Read entire article at NYT
To reach the geographical heart of Irish Catholicism, you leave the main road in windswept County Donegal and drive through miles of gorsy heath, past sheep poised on gray knuckles of rock, until you come to Lough Derg, a wilderness lake edged with pines. Half a mile offshore lies Station Island, where according to legend, St. Patrick had a meditative epiphany in the fifth century, during his mission to convert the Irish.
Station Island has been a place of pilgrimage since the Middle Ages. Its director, Prior Richard Mohan, who has worked there since 1974, greeted me as I stepped ashore, while a brewing autumn storm roiled the tea-colored water of the lake. Over lunch in the staff dining room, he told me how he has modernized the pilgrimage center. Early pilgrims relived the saint’s experience of huddling in a pit in the ground. Today there are updated dormitories, showers, even a gift shop. Prior Mohan said that Station Island “is in the genes of the Irish people,” so much so that there is a phrase for making the pilgrimage: going in on Station. Indeed, Ireland’s greatest living writer, the Nobel Prize-winning poet Seamus Heaney, devoted what is perhaps his most beloved collection, “Station Island,” to a meditation on the pilgrimage, the Irish and their tug of war with the church.
Mohan reckoned that the island’s impressive number of visitors — more than 20,000 a year — actually relates to a drop in church attendance in Ireland. Many people have abandoned the institutional church but not their faith, so they come to this wild spot in an effort to plug directly into their historical religious tradition without the mediation of the church. “This is seen as independent,” he said. In fact, the Catholic Church maintains control over the island, as it does over dozens of such places around the world.
Over the course of the 20th century, Station Island became a symbol of the way that Catholicism rooted itself in the Irish nation. Politics at the beginning of the century centered on two debates: British rule and religion. There were those — like the playwright George Bernard Shaw and the poet William Butler Yeats — who thought that the potential break with England constituted an occasion for Ireland to cut the strings to the Catholic Church and to embrace a progressive, international sensibility. Others wrapped Irish patriotism together with Catholicism, agrarian traditions and the Gaelic language, and they won the day. Eamon De Valera, the political leader, drafted a constitution side by side with the all-powerful archbishop of Dublin, John Charles McQuaid, which gave the Catholic Church a special role in state affairs and which to this day begins with the words, “In the name of the most holy trinity.”
Thus the 20th-century image of “Irishness” came into being: rural, charming, locked in an eternal, tragicomic struggle with the church. The archbishops of Dublin became something like grand inquisitors, wielding great power. The church’s heavy influence on Irish society kept the wider world at bay for a surprisingly long time. Eamon Maher told me that in the 1970s, his parents found it profoundly disorienting when the evening recitation of the rosary suddenly had to compete with American shows like “Dallas,” and “the world of wealth, flash cars and extramarital affairs.” Contraception was illegal in Ireland as recently as 1980, and until 1985 condoms were available only with a prescription....