2009 was probably the worst year in the history of the Catholic Church in Ireland since the Penal Laws. Curious to get the measure of what’s happening in parishes in the north of Ireland for the first time in very many years I found myself at 10 o’clock mass on Christmas morning.
Nestling at the seat of Divis Mountain sits Holy Trinity, the parish church of the Mac Uaid clan and which serves the spiritual needs of the assertively Republican Turf Lodge area. From the Catholic Church’s point of view the problem seems to be that most of the people of Turf Lodge don’t have too many spiritual needs anymore. My expectation was that the church would be filled to capacity but at 10’clock a generous guess would say that it was sixty percent full. The congregation’s demographic spread was not at all reflective of the local area. People of school age and those in their twenties, thirties and forties were massively under-represented and older people dominated. The days when the sons and daughters would be roused on a Sunday morning troop into Mass with a sore head are over. The most vocal of the younger participants were bawling infants. I’m certain that churches used to have special soundproofed rooms where they would spend the hour. If I were a regular mass goer I’d campaign vigorously to reinstate that tradition along with excommunication for numpties who don’t switch off their mobiles.
If you can set aside your scepticism about the theological claims of virgin births – a concept Catholics valiantly defend in the face of all the evidence about mistranslation – and coming back from the dead there was a fair bit that the priest said that was perfectly reasonable to even the most militant atheist. Before starting the liturgy he pointed out that giving love is much more important than giving material goods. Though on fuller reflection it would be a very brave ecosocialist or Christian parent on Christmas morning who said either “I didn’t get you the new mobile you wanted but here’s a five year old one that’s been reconditioned and works perfectly well” or “I didn’t get you those trainers but instead I’ll love you unconditionally.” He reminded the audience of that old Marxist standby when pointing out the evils of capitalism that maybe one person in three globally lives on a dollar a day and he asked the congregation to pray for those who cause violence and war. The rich and powerful nations. I think he was hoping for divine intervention to make them see sense. Good luck with that one.
One innovation they’ve introduced that most organisations would benefit from is having someone to welcome you as you enter though it can make you feel a bit guilty about your cynical motives for being there. An impressive continuity is the assertive mumbling of the Creed which summarises all the hard to swallow bits about the ceremony. Nevertheless two or three hundred people had committed to memory a text that was written in 325CE and were able to recite it without prompting.
It was only a snapshot but this morning’s ceremony confirmed that Irish Catholicism’s long term future as an organisation dominating people’s personal behaviour, social lives and ways of viewing the world is bleak.
Oddly enough it is the Irish and British governments which give the Church a lot of social weight. Both states allow it to run much of the island’s education system, where it does such a fine job educating young Catholics that most of them can’t be bothered going to Mass on a Sunday morning. Even you accepted the barmy argument that running a religious community gives you the right to educate children on the state’s behalf then the church attendance figures, especially in cities, make it utterly unsustainable today.
The church is no longer able to recruit the numbers of priests it requires for its infrastructure. More significantly the majority of people who identify themselves as Catholics feel little need to listen to what it has to say or any pressure to attend its ceremonies. This is not to say that it is going to vanish. Like any other religion it will retain a committed group of followers and a small number of clerics but it is facing a not too distant future when its flock’s relationship to it will be rather more like the Church of England’s to its communities.
Liam redux 
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