I'm currently reading The Faithful Tribe: An Intimate Portrait of the Loyal Institutions by Ruth Dudley Edwards. I'm not reading it all the way through, but skipping over parts I find less interesting.
Ruth Dudley Edwards once "liked" a tweet of mine, but that's the limit of my interaction with her. (I forget what the tweet was.)
The Orange Order were the bogeymen in the Republic when I was growing up. There was much indignation about them marching through "nationalist" areas in Northern Ireland.
In our time, when freedom of assembly and freedom of speech is under such attack, the whole controversy about Orange parades appears in a very different light. To me, at least.
I still consider myself an Irish nationalist in the sense that I would like Ireland to regain its national sovereignty and to revive its national culture. However, it's shocking to see how Irish nationalism (on both sides of the border) has become quite the opposite of what it used to be; secularism, progressivism, globalism, and so forth.
This is an extraordinary change, but it rarely seem to be commented on. Indeed, Irish people today seem to see it as an organic and natural progression. They rarely seem to ponder the fact that their great-grandparents would probably be bitterly disappointed in their beliefs and way of life. This, in itself, doesn't make anything right or wrong; but at least it should cause some reflection.
As a matter of fact, I do think the change was organic and natural in the sense that some elements in Irish nationalism and Irish Catholicism (for instance, the emphasis on oppression and victimhood) morphed fairly easily into liberalism. But it didn't have to happen that way.
Unionism has, to a greater degree, remained true to its religious and cultural heritage. Whereas the two main nationalist parties in Northern Ireland now embrace social liberalism and globalism, the DUP are pro-life, pro-family, and pro-nation.
History is full of ironies.
Written a little later: On page 522, Dudley Edwards quotes a 1986 speech in which Gerry Adams said that his goal was "an Ireland free, united, socialist, and Gaelic." I somehow doubt he would advocate for the last article in that laundry list today!
You make a good point.
ReplyDeleteIn general, it surprises me that people want to say things are the same or a continuation when they clearly aren't. How different do things have to be before people will admit that they are different?
Things can change organically and organic change can even be substantial, but a development is different than a divergence. For example, whatever is going on at that Harvard now, it doesn't have anything to do with Puritans. And yet people will try to make that link. But trying to claim that a divergence is a development doesn't give much insight.
It happens all the time! They've had to recast St. Brigid at a pagan feminist New Age goddess to introduce St. Bridget's Day as a public holiday here! Chesterton wrote a good bit about this. And it's a very good point about Harvard.
DeleteIn Ireland, the Fine Gael party is always being called "Blueshirts" because of a semi-fascist element in their history. But really, modern Fine Gael has nothing at all to do with the Blueshirts.
I met RDE at a social event once in London. She told a disparaging Famine joke to get a laugh from her rich English friends. To be fair to the latter, they looked embarrassed.
ReplyDeleteYikes. That's not good. Her visceral reaction to Irish nationalism is obvious in the text but, to be fair to her, she makes an obvious attempt to be fair to both sides and it isn't just a love-fest for the unionists.
DeleteI think, with a lot of those journalists and intellectuals who were anti-Irish nationalist and who had a thing for Ulster unionism or the British military tradition or British aristocracy or whatever...they are now realizing that the same forces they cheered on against Irish nationalism are just as ready to tramp down everything traditional, including the traditions they cherish themselves. It's amazing the alliances woke has created. Religious apologists and New Atheists, Irish nationalists and West Brits, social conservatives and feminists...
I met her on one other social occasion and she expressed her loathing for the new hyper-confident modern Ireland and its wokeness and so on. She also said that the current state of things wasn't what she and her fellow (?) feminists had striven for in the 70s. While on the one hand I see what she means, on the other, she has hardly ever hid her contempt for the 'old Ireland', but now she hates the new one also. So what exactly do you want? You wanted to burn down the building but have nothing to contribute to construct one and instead basically 'jump ship' across the water.
DeleteWell, exactly. Exactly! But I'll never hold it against someone that they are willing to admit their mistakes, or at least, that things haven't gone the way they expected. So I wouldn't want to shame this particular contingent unnecessarily.
DeleteI didn't realize she was a feminist. Her description of Orange culture actually shows a lot of affection for masculinity and male ways.
Just to clarify, she didn't admit any mistakes. She simply hated the way it was and hates the way it is now. Similar with Kevin Myers. Somewhat similar with Peter Hitchens. This is why I've scaled back on my contrarianism a little: it's so easy to bitch, moan and criticise, but what exactly are you going to put in its place that's viable, practical and meaningful? I don't think these people have any answers.
DeleteI heard Graham Linehan in an interview rather ruefully acknowledging that tearing down Catholic Ireland might not have been such a bright idea. I don't know how serious he was, though.
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DeleteJust a quick question for you: are there any signs of any serious Irish cultural revival lately, or is it just the usual tokenism in the midst of ever-expanding nihilist Capitalism? I regard you as a fine judge of these issues:-)
DeleteI don't see any signs of Irish cultural revival myself. I see signs of a Catholic revival, though, in a modest way. The populist right doesn't seem terribly interested in culture-- understandably, perhaps.
DeleteI'm touched by your confidence, but remember that I'm a pessimist! An American friend who's been here about twenty years, and who has no particular dog in the fight, says it seems to him that the Irish language and Irish language terminology is much more popular now than it was when he arrived.
Although it contained Many positive aspects; IMO On the mass scale, Irish nationalism was motivated mainly by negative, anti-British ideas on the one hand...
ReplyDeleteAnd on the other side, Irish Catholicism was about the most ultramontaine, Rome focused, of anywhere in the world - ie internationalist in character.
So there wasn't strong mass support for something positive, Catholic and national - which is what would have been needed if totalitarian globalism was to have been resisted.
Sorry, bruce g charlton wrote the above comment commencing Although...
ReplyDeleteThanks, Bruce. I think those are all fair points but I'm always arguing that post-independence Ireland DID indeed stand against international trends of secularism and liberalism for many decades. It fell eventually, but nothing lasts forever. And right now "lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds"...
Delete@M - I know what you mean, but I suppose I am distinguishing between the negative process of slow development/ delayed modernization (which is what I think happened in Ireland) and consciously standing against the trends for positive reasons.
DeleteIt seemed to me that the Republic Ireland remained sort of frozen across the board, psychologically and materially, after the civil war ended.
An analogy would be Spain under Franco. Both Ireland and Spain trough 1950s-70s built up a tremendous pressure of (what seems in retrospect) thwarted hedonism!
But you are correct in the sense that modernization always brings the bad stuff. It seems like all or nothing.
There was a bit of this in the UK; Scotland was "held back" by the somewhat puritanical Presbyterian influence, so that when I moved there in 1978 it was like stepping back into the early 1960s in most ways - shops closed most of the time, limited choice of poor quality food, drab grey buildings etc. Then the cork came out in the 1980s (except in the Island of Lewis, apparently - which became a national joke in consequence).
What I would have liked to see was a positive decision, a conscious choice, to say "enough" - and instead of insatiable consumerism and novelty seeking, to use prosperity for "higher things", a better life, a better nation... In England this came closest c 1974 IMO. Instead we got painful but effective economic reforms under Margaret Thatcher, and a great increase in comfort, convenience, and novelty. But also...
But the good choice would have required a depth of spiritual orientation in these nations which was the opposite of what was actually happening.
I know exactly what you mean, Bruce, and the funny thing is that the Irish revolutionaries self-consciously aspired towards a path of modernization and industrialization which would be different from the "materialist" countries such as the UK. For instance, Michael Collins in his book "The Path to Freedom" wrote.
Delete"In the ancient days of Gaelic civilization the people were prosperous and they were not materialists. They were one of the most spiritual and one of the most intellectual peoples in Europe. When Ireland was swept by destitution and famine the spirit of the Irish people came most nearly to extinction. It was with the improved economic conditions of the last twenty years or more that it has reawakened. The insistent needs of the body more adequately satisfied, the people regained desire once more to reach out to the higher things in which the spirit finds its satisfaction.
"What we hope for in the new Ireland is to have such material welfare as will give the Irish spirit that freedom. We want such widely diffused prosperity that the Irish people will not be crushed by destitution into living practically ‘the lives of the beasts’."
So that was the HOPE. It was never really fulfilled. The poverty of pre-sixties Ireland is often exaggerated but the truth remains that, for long stretches of time, it was only sustainable by emigration.
Roger Scruton has written about his nostalgia for communist-era East European city centres, before all the fluorescent lights and garishness of consumerism. I have even heard ACTUAL COMMUNISTS praise Havana for the same thing.
I guess I will just say that, if we have to have consumerism and all the banality of postmodern culture, it's at least better to have different national flavours of it. I think so.
I once went and looked up the last words of the 16, it struck me how religious most of their sentiments were. Pearse, (other than his weird take on the graves of Pádraig and Wolfe Tone) was very clearly moved by religion. The fact that four of the five Nationalist Gifford sisters converted to Catholicism says something about how closely tied Ireland and Catholicism are. I once noted that Ireland has been Catholic longer than it was Celtic pagan, and yet today somehow that has been thrown away.
ReplyDeleteThe Saint Brigid remake is a weird example of this because according to actual experts in the field there was a woman who either founded or converted the monastery at Kildare and so the saint named Brigid is real and not just a pagan goddess dressed up. Furthermore the first reference we have to such a goddess is actually to three goddesses in the Glossary of Cormac and there is no real information about them. The information we do have has led scholar Ronald Hutton to conclude that the goddesses have no demonstrable relation what so ever to Saint Brigid and yet the myth that we know something discernable about a pre- Catholic Ireland is pervasive.
I also have noticed in my Irish language research that while leftist groups in Ireland are fine with learning modern standard, they tend to dislike the idea of learning Irish from even 100 years ago, I have wondered if this is because it is easy to keep the myth of a non Catholic Ireland alive if people feel Gaelic, in that they know the modern language, but they will have a harder time with the older texts that are much more religiously explicit.
I will note that none of this is helped by the myth that seems to be spreading among American Evanglicals at least, that early Christian Ireland was some sort of Baptist country.
I really cannot see Irish culture surviving without Catholicism. It is Catholicism that caused Ireland to survive in the first place and maintain cultural distinctiveness. Victor Frankl's observations apply to Ireland, people need something higher than themselves in order to have the courage to continue through hard times. Catholicism led Ireland through, but in so doing Irishness became inseparable from it. Progressive secularization will just be the global culture with perhaps a the words "Bí Cineálta" as a way to try to claim that Irishness still exists in some form. But in reality progressiveness is not kindness and it is totalizing, it has its heretics like anything else. It has the potential to be the blow to Ireland that England could never land.
Well, I completely agree with all that, although the stuff about St. Brigid is news to me and I didn't know it; thank you. It's extraordinary how much the narrative flies in the face of historical fact.
DeleteAlthough I wonder if your points about modern standard Irish might have a more innocent explanation. It's a very difficult language to learn and some simplification seems necessary. The seanchló, for instance, is very beautiful, but really does heap difficulty on difficulty. I might be missing your point, though.
I was more referring to the outright hostility toward people seeking to learn classical Irish that I have run into online looking for resources. It makes sense to me that in language revival a language might need to be simplified in order to get it back into common usage, but it seems strange to go the next step and oppose people who are seeking to go further and learn the older form for their own enrichment.
DeleteNíor thuig mé go raibh a leithéid de conspóid agus baineann sé preab asam!
DeleteIt's a topic for another post, or series of posts! But there are striking differences between Catholic the Holy Ireland of the Saints, before 1000AD when the church was undivided (pretty much) - and the "Celtic Church" was run on lines more like Eastern Orthodoxy (e.g.. a national Patriarch, ruled by Abbotts and Abesses, with Bishops relatively subordinate; and focused on monasticism and monks, rather than priests) - and the Ultramontaine Ireland of recent times.
ReplyDeleteI said I wouldn't be a contrarian anymore, but Feargal Keane has a long article on Irish identity, pushing the wearisome 'fluid' vibes.... https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cgln9y13x3yo
ReplyDeleteYeah, no chance I'm reading that! I'm sure the clichés flow in torrents!
DeleteAbove is me, Maolsheachlann. Another reason I wouldn't read it is because I've heard it all a million times before.
DeleteAh good old Feargal Keane! - the man who made a lucrative career from promiscuous compassion (always so-sincere, yet always conveniently woke).
ReplyDeleteWhenever my wife and I see it on the menu, we have a laugh remembering his epoch-making empathy-fest on "the plight of the Sea Bass"... Is there nothing on earth for which that man's heart does not shed warm tears?
https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/commentators/sea-bass-the-latest-fashion-in-ecological-genocide-5370015.html
bruce g charlton
I don't know a whole lot about him, but I was at least impressed to see his compassion extends to pro-life Catholic MPS! A rarity for Irish journalists...
Deletehttps://www.independent.co.uk/voices/commentators/fergal-keane-where-in-the-rules-does-it-say-that-personal-beliefs-can-be-allowed-to-act-as-a-bar-to-an-mp-s-selection-5364615.html