I Love Modern Churches

I do! Despite being in general more reactionary than a game of Buckaroo and more backwards-looking than Lot's wife, I tend to much prefer churches that were built in the twentieth century, and preferably in the later decades of that century.

Today, feeling like getting out and about on a sunny Saturday, I hopped on a 16 bus and disembarked at Ballinteer. After wandering around a little, I came upon the Church of St. John the Evangelist, a rather squat structure, and was delighted to find that it was open.

(A big difference between the South side of Dublin and the North side, this. Most of the churches in working classes areas are unfortunately closed outside Mass times. I think this says something pretty damning about our society and our loss of any sense of the sacred.)

I was even more delighted when I made my way inside. St. John the Evangelist is exactly my idea of a church. First of all, it has a low, broad, gently-sloping roof. I've never really understood why a spire is taken to be the ideal shape for a church roof. A spire gets narrower as it ascends. Is this a fitting image of Heaven? Is the abode of the angels a pin-point? Sure, a spire looks very evocative when seen a long way off, especially through mist. But standing beneath it and looking up is a different story. Then a spire seems to me to be giving, not only the wrong message, but the opposite message to that which a church's structure should convey.

I loved the airiness, spaciousness, and especially the bright colours of this church. I don't see why the overwhelming impression of a church should be greyness. The Bible is a text rich with sensuous imagery such as wine, green pastures, wedding feasts, rivers of crystal, golden bowls. It seems to me that a church should be a blaze of strong colour, stopping short just of gaudiness.

And I even liked the modernist art. The image of the crucified Christ behind the altar is a stylized sculpture of what a hostile critic might term a matchstick man, almost a skeletal figure, with a circle of rather cartoonish stained glass around him. Is this disrespectful of such a sacred subject? Perhaps a church should be no place for artistic experimentation?

I can understand those objections. But really, when I look at modernist church art, I feel more of a sense of solemnity and mystery. The stylized figure on the cross, in this instance, suggests the phrase Ecce homo to me. Behold the man! This is the mystery of anthropos in its purest, loftiest form. Its very crudity makes it more raw, more striking than the bland, plaster Jesus that hangs above so many altars.

Before postmodern art descended into the banality of Andy Warhol and his successors, much twentieth century visual art had attained a plateau of genuine mysticism. It does not seem ridiculous to me that Mark Rothko, Piet Mondrian and Marc Chagall ascribed religious significance to their bold, apocalyptic, transcendental canvases. Of course, there is such a thing as going too far-- dipping into ugliness and incongruity and grotesquerie. But, as long as that is avoided, I think the sense of displacement and even the sense of awe that modern sacred art conveys can truly be an aid to prayer and devotion.

Funnily enough, the sculptures in the church-- and the new Calvary scene just outside-- is almost Soviet in its naturalism and directness. This, too, I found very bold, and fruitfully unsettling.

All in all, in my short visit to the St. John the Evangelist Church of Balinteer, I truly felt touched by a sense of the sacred. I look forward to visiting it again, and perhaps attending Mass there some time.

If nothing else, modern churches decorated in a contemporary aesthetic proclaim that our God is not a God of the dead, but of the living. And, for all my fogeyish love of tradition and heritage and continuity, that is a message that I believe it is essential to convey.

I would be grateful to any of my readers who could point me to other modern churches in Dublin, which are open outside Mass times.

Scribbles in Drumcondra-- Everything a Newsagent Should Be

I have sometimes been accused of being anti-capitalist. This might be because, although I am a conservative, I do not worship at the shrine of the Free Market. (I even doubt if such a thing as a free market exists. Businesspeople who consider labour and safety laws to be suffocating red tape seem less hostile to other regulations like copyright and contract laws.)

But as a matter of fact I am not anti-capitalist. Nor do I have any problem with the profit motive, with entrepreneurship, or with inequalities of wealth. I think consumerism is a bad thing if it means people are compulsively shopping or becoming obsessed with the acquisition of luxury goods. I think it's healthy to get as much use as possible out of what you have, and to appreciate the old and time-worn more than the new and shiny.

For all that, I don't see anything dirty or shameful about shopping itself, or even taking pleasure in shopping. I love shops. I'm not talking about the swanky shops full of big-name brands, the sort of shops that probably charge your credit card just for looking in their windows. No, I like corner shops and pound shops and second-hand shops. I think there is a unique pleasure in scanning shelves of cookie jars and soapdishes and novelty pencil-cases. Shelves full of battered old books and old numbers of The Northumbrian History Society Journal are even better.

(I even had a Dublin Shops blog at one stage. It must have been the least-visited corner of the internet.)

I walk from Dublin city centre to Ballymun most workdays, and I usually make it my habit to drop into Scribbles on Drumcondra Road, the best li'l newsagent in the city, if not in the whole of Ireland. It's a pokey little shop-- I often find myself bumping into other customers-- but it's better-stocked than most other newsagent's I know, and it has a unique character.

First of all, and best of all, it stocks all the Catholic newspapers and magazines. The Catholic Herald, the Catholic Voice, the Irish Catholic, the Catholic Times (which I didn't even know existed), the Sacred Heart Messenger, the Universe, and more. This is fairly remarkable in itself, since most newsagents don't stock any of the above. It also stocks Catholic calenders and cards.

It sells the provincial newspapers, along with lots of international newspapers. Also available are Ireland's Own and Ireland's Eye, old-fashioned Irish magazines which hold their own in so many newsagents against the tide of celebrity and sports and computer titles.

In keeping with its name, the shop has a whole wall of stationery and pens, which I take great pleasure in dawdling over. Pretty much every writing implement and aid you could imagine is there, along with envelopes of every kind, copies and notebooks, twine, folders, and so on. Just looking at them arouses that deep-seated desire that lurks in so many of us, the desire to deprive blank paper of its virginity, to keep records and compile journals and doodle on a lined page with a deliciously fluid felt-tip pen.

It has books, too, and a surprising selection. There are the standard thrillers, and the usual chick-lit, but there are also books by local authors (and I don't mean just Cecilia Ahern), books of regional jokes, and other oddities.

And there are toys, the kind of toys that were plentiful in shops when I was a kid, but that I never notice these days-- toys that are not merchandising attached to some TV show, but rather timeless favourites like water pistols and skittles and magnifying glasses. Cheap toys that come in a bag rather than a box. Even seeing them makes me nostalgic.

Even the sweets are different from those of other shops. Sure, they have all the standard chocolate and fizzy drinks, but they also have unexpected products. I bought an American cream soda there recently, and today I acquired a can of root beer. Root beer! I've only tasted it once before, and that was in the USA.

My favourite thing about Scribbles, though, is the whole atmosphere and layout of the shop. Nothing is more soul-numbing than the orderly, logical, rationalistic floorplan of a Tesco or a Hughes and Hughes. There is something in the human spirit that cries out for disorder and spontaneity, and little shops like Scribbles satisfy that appetite supremely. Everything is on top of everything else, and everything is higgledy-piggledy, making the place as individual as a fingerprint.

Added to all this, the staff are really friendly, and are usually chatting to regulars when you walk in. Some people seem to resent shop assistants talking on duty-- at least if it delays them being served by as much as a precious half-second. Personally, I've never wanted to be served by zombies with vacant grins. I like to feel that every shop has a life of its own, that it's more than just a place of business. Even if that means I have to wait five or ten or even fifteen whole seconds for attention.

Is this a lot of words to waste on a mere newsagent's? I don't think so. I think we are too dismissive of shops. We spend a lot of time in them. They are public places, community centres, even little societies of their own. And the good ones, the ones that preserve a character and individuality of their own in the face of the Tesco's and Spar's and Centra's, deserve to be celebrated and cherished.

As Ireland Votes Away Even More of its Sovereignty...

...the Late Late Show celebrates fifty years broadcasting.

My non-Irish readers might not know about the Late Late Show. It is (I have just read) the longest-running TV chat show in the world. For almost forty years, with a brief hiatus, it was presented by one man, Gay Byrne, whose silky voice is deeply soothing and comforting, even if you think (as I do) that his influence on the nation has been a bad one. The Late Late Show served as something of a banner for the liberalisation of Ireland over the years, tackling "taboo" subjects and opening "debate".

At least, that's what they always say. I don't remember much of that myself. I don't even remember the famous show featuring Annie Murphy, the woman who had a child by Bishop Eamon Casey, triggering the first of the 1990's scandals featuring the Irish Catholic Church.

No, all I remember of the Late Late Show is lying on the couch or the sitting room floor on Friday nights, happy to have a weekend stretching before me, often drifting to sleep while the studio conversation formed pictures in my head. So even though the Late, Late Show was a harbinger of Modern Ireland, I very much associate it with the Ireland of my youth-- which was the very last dregs of Catholic, nationalist Ireland.

But it was more than that. Since the topics covered ranged from serious to light-- Ireland was still, at this time, a fairly cultured nation-- it gave me an impression of the wholeness of life, and made me think of Ireland as one big extended family. (Especially as my parents usually watched it-- that is, my mother never missed it and my father usually sat in to complain about the guests.)

I've barely watched it since I was a child, but I understood it has become as jazzy, slick and superficial as the Ireland it helped to create.

Will I watch the fiftieth anniversary edition tonight? You know, I feel half-tempted (an odd expression but sometimes the right one). At least it will keep me from thinking about the referendum.

I Fear the Geeks Even When They Bring Gifts...

There has been a fair amount of stir recently, in Catholic and conservative publications, about a new book called The Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt. The latest issue of First Things magazine opens with a piece on it. With evident satisfaction, R.R. Reno writes:

"It wasn't a conclusion he thought he'd come to. When he was a young graduate student, Jonathan Haidt presumed that "liberal" was pretty much a synonym for "reasonable", if not for "obvious". Now as he writes in The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion, he has found that liberalls have limited moral vision. One that is, I'd say, therefore certainly less reasonable than conservatism's, and for the vast majority of people in the world far from obvious."

He goes on to describe Haidt's claims; that "our moral outlooks are largely intuitive rather than reasoned" (fairly obvious, I'd say), and that "people tend to be liberal or conservative because they have different emotional responses to the same social realities" (again, fairly obvious, though some people like to insist they have arrived at their views purely through a process of reason. I don't really believe anyone who makes this claim).

The meat of Haidt's sandwich is the claim that conservatives have more "receptors" for moral intutions than liberals do. Liberals only have "receptors" for "care, freedom and fairness" while conservatives also take "loyalty, authority and sanctity" into consideration.

It's true that, when arguing with a liberal or a progressive, I often feel scandalised that they don't even seem to perceive things that I do-- for instance, they don't seem to care about national identity, or the difference between the sexes, or a sense of rootedness.

But deriving some sort of pseudo-scientific theory from this fact is, I think, a leap too far. I am sure the liberal thinks I am sottishly insensible to concerns or hopes or aspirations that he cherishes. I do believe I inhabit a wider and freer mental world than he does, but I don't think there's anything obviously true about my claim. I think he could claim the same thing.

It is unwise of conservatives or religious people to take books like The Righteous Mind to their hearts. Believing in the freedom and dignity of the human soul as I do, I am not much interested in a social scientist's attempt to anatomise our minds, whether it is Haidt in this book or Theodor Adorno in The Authoritarian Personality, a famous and influential attempt to pathologize right-wingers.

It's true that I haven't read Haidt's book, only reviews of it (most of them short), and perhaps I am being unfair to it. But I am much more interested in arguments and philosophies themselves, rather than theories about why people hold those philosophies or make those arguments.

The Nutty Professors

Having worked in a university library for a little over a decade, I have a front-row view of the radicalist crusade that is waged by a great many academics in the humanities and social sciences. Simply glancing at the books that pass over the loans desk is usually enough to demonstrate how utterly one-sided the "debate" within the academy really is. Sometimes the partisanship is actually comical. Canadian Studies: An Introductory Reader (it's hard to dream up an academic discipline that doesn't actually exist somewhere; we actually have Porn Studies now), a volume edited by one Donald Wright, has an introduction that opens thus:

"In his 1975 report, To Know Ourselves, Tom Symons argued that Canadian studies must not be understood as a patriotic project, one designed to preserve and promote a particular Canadian identity....He was right then and and he is right now. Patriotism has no place in the university and the unexamined life isn't worth living."

Impossible to imagine that the examined life might lead one to patriotism! But didn't Socrates himself perish because he refused to flee from his beloved Athens?

Today I have been transferring some books into the restricted collection. These are books that have to be kept permanently in the library, since somebody-- usually an academic-- has put them on a reading list.

One of the books is Coercive Control: How Men Entrap Women in Personal Life by Evan Stark. The blurb declares: "If the focus remains on acts of physical violence at the expense of a full assault on the patriarchy, he argues, the domestic violence movement is doomed."

Another is Community Development in Ireland, edited by Ashling Jackson and Colm O'Doherty, and published by Gill and MacMillan (a name with rather pleasant, nostalgic associations for many of us). The blurb promises that, through reading this book, we will "recognise and value community development as a powerful force for social change in Ireland". Because what sane person could doubt the crying need for radical social change in this backward nation of ours?

As is my wont, I looked up various keywords in the index, and the entry for "religion, and diversity"-- there was no entry simply for "religion"-- led me to this very amusing (but disconcerting) passage:

"Religion can be for many an important source of emotional support. Culturally competent practice is achieved, for example, when a community development worker takes the trouble to find out the significance of religious and cultural traditions to the client or client's family. Is there a need to accommodate, in some way, non-Christian religious holidays and prayer times? Does an agency show respect for non-Christian traditions, for example wearing the hijab, and specific dietary requirements?"

To be fair, I doubt that this passage represents anything more sinister than a belief that Christian holidays and traditions are so securely embedded in Irish society that they need no protection. Sadly, this is not true. But I would also guess that most "community development workers", and especially those training them, would probably not be very sympathetic to many Christian traditions and values anyway.

(Incidentally, I noticed that the index cited the feminist and leftist poet bell hooks, who eschews capital letters in her name. It didn't surprise me in the least.)

Lovely Article by Breda O'Brien in the Irish Catholic this week...

...although I think the headline, "The Church I go on Loving Despite it All", is rather inappropriate and doesn't reflect the text. Maybe it reflects the editorial outlook of The Irish Catholic.

I liked it for its frankness and even its vulnerability. I think Catholic writers certainly have to be able to mix it with anti-Catholic and anti-religious bruisers and there is a crying need for the bullish apologist. But I think that it is the still, small voice that often reaches where the bombardment of heavy-duty philosophical and historical arguments can't.

She begins: "Recently, I was asked to give a talk on being a Catholic in Ireland today. The request got me thinking about what Catholicism means to me, and why it would be extremely difficult to imagine my life without my Catholic faith."

She then goes on to make what I think is a refreshing and disarming admission: "If I had been raised as a Muslim, there is a high probability that I would have been a devout Muslim. I think some people are more inclined to a spiritual or religious outlook on life."

Sceptics so often present this argument as if it was devastating. "If you were born in Pakistan, you'd be just as confident that Islam was true as you are that Christianity is true! If you'd been raised a Mormon, you'd find excuses for all the anachronisms in the Book of Mormon and all the hypocrisies of Joseph Smith, just like you explain away all the dark parts of Catholic history now!"

Of course, counter-factual claims can never be tested, so the sceptic is taking rather a cheap shot. But I do in fact acknowledge the basic truth of the claim. I'd like to think that, whatever religion I had been born to, or even if I had been born into a secular family, I would have found my way to the Catholic faith. But I am not entirely confident of this. It seems to me it would take an enormous independence of thought to reach Catholicism from a devoutly Hindu or Sikh or Muslim background. It's impossible to know.

Is this simply admitting, tacitly if not explicitly, that all religions are basically the same and they are all-- at best-- clumsy but poignant attempts to express the mystery at the heart of life?

No, absolutely not. I believe unreservedly that Catholicism is the true faith, for all that other faiths contain glimmers of the truth. It is perfectly logical to believe that what you believe is true, while accepting that you might have believed differently if your circumstances had been difficult. A twenty-first century liberal could whole-heartedly believe that slavery is wrong while accepting that he would have thought differently if he had been a fifth-century BC Athenian.

But it goes further than this, for me. I never had sympathy with the sceptic's argument that a just Deity would have revealed himself to all mankind at once, and have given each human an equal chance to come to the Truth. How boringly rationalistic that would be! How great a loss it would be to miss out on all those thrilling tales of missionaries and revivals and Road to Damascus moments! I prefer the drama of the Acts of the Apostles to some kind of divine Public Service Broadcast screened all over the world at the same time.

Breda O'Brien goes on to write: "People who incline to intellectual atheism are often unable to identify with the mystical aspects of religion...attemps to talk about a relationship with God evoke a baffled response, akin to embarrassment, as if an adult still sucked her thumb. It's as if I were talking a different language. Perhaps I am."

How familiar a situation this is to most religious believers today! Outside the ranks of New Atheist boors, most non-believers are polite and respectful and recognize that a person's religious faith is of supreme importance to them. They tend to humour us rather than challenge us. There often even seems to be a kind of admiration or benign envy at play.

In a way, this reaction is more of a challenge to the religious believer than the zealotry of the New Atheist. The pathological Church-basher and antagonist of religion seems so obviously to be repressing a spiritual hunger that he is almost making our case for us. Encountering anti-Catholicism tends to buoy up my own faith. Encountering good-humoured unbelief is rather more disarming.

And yet, it usually seems to me that those who seem indifferent to religion feel the religious impulse in another form. Very often they are enraptured by music or art or perhaps devotion to some cause. I sincerely believe that, if they really thought about these insights into the sublime, they would realise that they are actually calls to worship. Nothing human, nothing historical or conditional, can take the weight of human yearning, or the human tendency to complete devotion. I think even a collector of vintage cars is ultimately seeking the sacred.

Futher in the article, Ms O'Brien makes another excellent point: "More importantly, I love churches for their sense of presence. It is not only the combined energy of all the human beings who have come to pray there, but a sense of a greater presence. Presence is a vital concept in our world, where so many people are scattered and distracted. People who are really present are rare, and precious. Naturally, a place with a sense of the presence of God is even more treasured."

Ironically, the writer who probably best expressed my own feelings about churches was the atheist, Philip Larkin, in his poem Church-Going. He hit the bull's-eye with the line: "A serious house on serious earth it is." Churches are serious places-- and how our souls cry out for seriousness! How much of the fun and hilarity and irony and pleasure-seeking in our society is, in reality, an expression of despair! There is certainly a place for mirth in this world, but joy-- true, deep and overwhelming joy-- is a serious, even a solemn thing. 

Somehow, I feel that my joy in everything is centred in the tabernacle of a Catholic church. I quite often get bored during Mass and my mind regularly wanders during the liturgy. But, at the same time, I feel that this holy place is the hearth of all human life, that it spreads warmth and light and comfort through every other element of existence. (I eat my post-Mass breakfast with more relish than any other breakfast.) Somehow, the magic of the darkened cinema and the exciting gloom of early mornings in winter and the carnival atmosphere of a crowded, sun-spangled street in summer all seem to depend upon the existence of churches. My joy in a deserted beach or a cluttered second-hand bookshop or a cosy pub rests on the knowledge that, at that very moment, all over the world, the Lord's Supper is being celebrated. Knowing that raises all the fun and frivolity and feverishness to a higher level. It's a very difficult feeling to express.

Another excellent point that Breda O'Brien makes is that "human nature is such that unless it has something powerfully attractive drawing it beyond itself, it declines into hedonism, boredom and cruelty." Absolutely. There is no equilibrium. Those who attack Christianity think they are dealing it a crushing blow when they point out how pitifully short Christians fall of their own ideals. But should we really lower our moral standards to make it easier for ourselves? It is our nature to strive. If we are not striving to love God and our neighbour (and doubtless failing miserably) we are soon striving to outdo our neighbour and become God.

 This paragraph is quite brilliant: "When I am gazing at my own navel, nothing makes sense, and the world is dull and painful. When I am gazing at the beauty of stars, nothing makes sense, either, but things do not make sense in a mysterious, reassuring, and fascinating way."

Religious people are often criticized for needing a cut-and-dried philosophy of life, for taking refuge from uncertainty in dogma. It seems to me that religion opens up the world more than any non-religious philosophy. It exposes us even more nakedly to mystery. Scientific materialism, liberalism, Marxism, anarchism, nationalism-- all those merely human outlooks seem so settled and tidy. But the voice of religion is like the voice of God in  the Book of Job, or the apparently evasive answers that our Lord so often makes in the Gospels. It seems to explain the enigma of life by deepening it. And something deep within us responds; yes, this makes sense. This corresponds to the strangeness of life.

Breda O'Brien concludes: "It [the Church] is my still point in a turning world, and it is incredibly precious to me."

All too often, "spiritual" articles in Catholic publications are composed of little more than platitudes and "the warm fuzzies". That has its place, but it is too prevalent. It is so much more effective and powerful when a writer really examines his or her faith with an effort at objectivity. I also think articles like this might be better placed in the secular press,  where I really think they might catch the attention of those who do not consider themselves religious, or who have drifted out of practicing their faith. In any case, hats off to Breda O'Brien!

And may the Holy Spirit shower graces on all of us this Pentecost! 

P.S.: Holy cow! I just did an internet search on Breda O'Brien and was knocked over by all the vitriolic posts from left-feminist, secularist and otherwise embittered bloggers. Even the hatred heaped on David Quinn pales in comparison. I hope this post balances the ledger even a little bit-- in fact, that is one of the reasons I set up this blog. Far too many Irish bloggers seem to be consumed by hatred towards the Church. I'm hoping to provide some counterbalance.

Why I am a Traditionalist Conservative

I'm tired of invoking Edmund Burke
And tired of the shuttlecock of debate.
I really don't care if the new ways work,
I'll always root for the out-of-date.
I'll always root for the long-in-the-tooth
Though the new be better a thousandfold.
No more shall I hide the terrible truth;
I like old things because they are old.

I like old things because they are slower
And cruder and leave us a chance to laugh.
Give me a scythe, not a new lawn-mower;
A daguerreotype, not a photograph.
I like old ways because they wander
I like them because they don't make sense.
I can't add seven and six, but I'm fonder
Of shillings and farthings than pounds and pence.

I like old things because the dust
Of custom and habit have fallen on them.
I like them because they've been blessed and cussed
And joked about since the time of Shem.
I'm all for cooked-up and fake traditions;
There's not a quaint fiction I won't uphold.
Let Christmas be laden with new additions;
I like new things that pretend to be old.

I thirst for cobwebs and rust and dog-ears
By ivy and lichen I take my stand.
I am not pleased when nostalgia's fog clears
And leaves us standing in no-man's-land.
I like a verse more the more it's recited;
I like a tale more the more it's told.
So call me backwards, blockish, benighted;
I like old things because they are old.

You tell me my sort have been moaning and mourning
Since someone rubbed sticks and discovered fire;
That mankind lives in an endless dawning
From tin to typeface to telephone wire.
You say that the past is doomed, you sages,
And tramp on its deathbed to prove you're bold;
By God, I don't think you so very courageous;
I like old things because they are old.