Review of The Hungry Sheep by John D. Sheridan

The Hungry Sheep by John D. Sheridan
Arlington House
1974

Where are the writers, the artists, the intellectuals who will proclaim Christ's gospel today? Christianity remains a force in Irish and English society-- sometimes, it even seems to be a kind of official opposition to the liberal consensus, and even to be widely recognised as such. In many ways, being pushed out of the mainstream of society, having its respectability questioned, seems to have been a shot in the arm for Christianity in the British Isles. A Christian today is almost more likely to be questioned by police than to be invited to speak to schoolchildren or to give an inspiring talk on the radio, and this has had something of a galvanising effect.

But where are the modern equivalents of CS Lewis, GK Chesterton, Malcolm Muggeridge, JRR Tolkien, Dorothy L. Sayers? It is true that JK Rowling is a declared Christian, and the Harry Potter books have a pretty strong Christian flavour. But it is difficult to imagine her writing a straightforwardly religious work, or actively using her prominence to evangelize. On the other hand, irreligious writers like Philip Pullman are more than happy to thump the tub for atheism.

In Ireland, the situation seems even worse. John Waters is perhaps our only Christian writer who can claim a standing independent of his religious beliefs, who is immune to the accusation of being a hired pen, and whose talent was recognized before he shocked the nation by going all churchy.

So I felt more than a little nostalgic when I read The Hungry Sheep by John D. Sheridan, a book from a time that is really not all that long ago-- less than forty years-- but which seems a world away in this regard at least, that Sheridan was a nationally-known columnist and author who, in this book, took up the cause of Catholicism in a work of unabashed apologetics. And, unlike the religious writings of John Waters, which are determinedly idiosyncratic and personal, John D. Sheridan is content to roll up his sleeves and get down to the nitty-gritty of explaining, and arguing for, definite doctrines of the faith.

The title is from Milton's Lycidas (ironically, from a Papacy-bashing passage of the poem): The hungry sheep look up, and are not fed. Sheridan's time had this at least in common with ours; that Catholic catechesis was already inadequate by then, and that the faithful were being sent out poorly armed against the assaults of the infidel. This is how he describes the atmosphere after Vatican II:

"The man in the street, who in the days when the Church spoke with one voice might have got official rulings by knocking at any presbytery, is utterly confused on such issues as papal infallibility, freedom of conscience (every man his own theologian), and "co-responsibility". Young priests in polo-neck sweaters (and old ones who should know better) tell him that things are managed more democratically in Holland, advise him to read Teilhard de Chardin (though the Monitum of the Sacred Congregation on the dangers of Teilhard's 'theology-fiction', as Maritain calls it, is still in force), and bewilder him by saying that he need not worry unduly about his own inner spiritual life so long as he loves his neighbour and is concerned about starvation in the Third World."

I like the spirited tone of this book. It is not a "plea", or an "invitation", or "the beginning of a conversation", as so many religious works of today tend to style themselves. It is a call to arms, plain and simple. I really do believe that secular culture will respect religious writers more if they drop the Uriah Heep impression. The "Jesus freak" sketches of the Fast Show ("that's a bit like Jesus, isn't it?") mocked the sort of Christian who is always trying to sneak faith under the radar. Being unabashed might not make you friends, but at least it wins you respect-- even if it's grudging respect.

Sheridan begins at the beginning, which is so often-- and so surprisingly-- left out of discussions about religion. That beginning being, of course, the very existence of the Man Above (as Sheridan terms him), and the reasons we shouldn't assume that the physical world is all there is. Surely this should be the starting point of all apologetics, and all debates with unbelievers? And yet, religious believers seem rather coy on the subject, tending to concentrate instead on the psychological benefits of religion, or our culture's debt to Christianity, or some other topic.

The immateriality of the mind is the entry-point Sheridan chooses:


"Impressions come to me through my senses, but there is something which uses these impressions as raw material for absorption, as the data for that mysterious activity which we call thought. Is this something a part or a function of my material body? Obviously it is free from the limitations of my material body. It can project itself to the stars or to the days of the Roman legions in the twinkling of an eye; and this instancy, this independence of time and space is not a property of material things, which are either here or there, and which take time to move from one to the other."

Philosophers of mind might wince, but surely Sheridan has captured the essence of the problem here. Thought is "about" something in a way that physical matter can never be "about" anything. This simple fact makes a nonsense of all philosophical materialism. If religious believers would drive this point home more often, surely the sceptic would be on the backfoot from the start?

The evolutionary theory of human origins is given short shrift in this book, though Sheridan adds that he would be happy to change his mind if he was given compelling evidence, and points out the freedom of thought that the Church allows on this matter. (The Church never condemned the theory of evolution. The current Pope and his predecessor seem to have accepted it, but a Catholic is not bound to follow their example. For my own part, I claim no knowledge of science, but I am officially agnostic on the subject of Darwinism. What I understand of it seems very questionable to me, and the attitude of witch-hunting hysteria displayed towards proponents of "intelligent design" speaks volumes.) The literal truth of the Adam and Eve story is staunchly defended by Sheridan, which made me reflect on how seldom this is even discussed in today's Catholicism.

Sheridan makes a grand tour of all the battlefields on which Catholic teaching and the modern world contend; attitudes towards death, the existence of conscience (and its implications for a material view of the world), the Scholastic proofs of God's existence, the life of Christ and the evidences of the Resurrection, Papal supremacy, free will, original sin, the Virgin Mary, humour and its implications for materialism (a very interesting and original chapter), the sexual revolution, liberal clerics, the spectre of overpopulation, euthanasia, social decline, the Reformation, and Hell. All this in a book of 175 pages, printed in rather large type, and written in an easy, conversational style. I doubt if even Chesterton (though a much more brilliant writer) has produced such a handy one-stop apologia for the Faith.

In fact, seeing all the bases covered at such a strolling pace makes me feel rather frustrated-- at myself as well as other people. It's not so difficult, after all. Every Catholic should have the basic answers to questions and challenges from non-believers and seekers. We should be willing to engage the sceptics head-on rather than perpetually looking to strike glancing blows, or to win skirmishes. We should all, as far as we are able, be like the Catholic Evidence Guild members who stand at Speaker's Corner in Hyde Park and are ready to give an answer to every objection. I am lamentably short of that ideal myself. I hope to move closer to it.

Sheridan's book is a pudding well worth tasting for yourself-- it can be bought cheaply on Amazon, second-hand-- but I will scoop out a few of the plums.

I particularly liked one passage where Sheridan shows up the folly of the classic existentialist response to human life, as articulated here by Bertrand Russell (hardly an existentialist, save in this regard): "Condemned to lose today his dearest, tomorrow to pass himself through the gates of darkness, it remains for Man only to cherish, ere yet the blow falls, the lofty thoughts that enable his little day...to preserve a mind free from the wanton tyranny that rules his outward life; proudly defiant of the irresistible forces that tolerate for a moment his knowledge and his condemnation, to sustain alone, a weary but unyielding Atlas, the world that his own ideals have fashioned despite the trampling march of unconscious power."

Sheridan exposes this, and all similar poses of noble defiance (like that struck by Albert Camus in The Myth of Sisyphus) as sheer muddle-headedness:

"But if man is no more than a chance collocation of atoms, what meaning is there in his defiance, and what reason is there for thinking that the wanton tyranny that shapes his outward life leaves him an inner sanctuary in which he is free to think lofty thoughts-- since from Russell's premise it must shape his inner life also? For that matter, how can his thoughts be "lofty"-- or even his own-- if his hopes and fears, his loves and beliefs, are shaped and determined by irresistible forces which have no prevision of the ends they are achieving?"

(I am constantly struck by the impression that atheists and humanists and liberals simply haven't thought their ideas out "to the absolute ruddy end", as CS Lewis once phrased it. Their daring challenges are simply never daring enough. Or as Sir Francis Bacon once put it: "A little philosophy inclineth man's mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth about men's mind about to religion." I am not here referring solely to Russell's rhetorical flourish above, but to a whole range of different problems.)

When it comes to philosophical arguments for God's existence, Sheridan writes: "The existence of God can be proved from reason, but the famous proofs of Aquinas, which are developments of the proofs advanced by greek philosophers sixteen centuries earlier, are not for everyone; and even for those who can follow them they are not coercive....An argument [like the argument from contingency, one of Aquinas's proofs] is not laced with fire. It inspires no passion of belief. Nor does it involve any commitment, other than an intellectual assent...it will buttress faith, but it will not inspire it unless God speaks when the thinking is done."

All of that is true-- and yet, how important buttressing can be! I know that accepting the argument from contingency (basically, the argument that this contingent universe must be rooted in something eternal and perfect) was a crucial moment in the formation of my own faith. After all, there is plenty of "fire" around us all, plenty of stimulants to religious feeling-- a baby's gurgle, the night sky, the poetry of the book of Job, the words of a Christmas carol drifting on winter air. But what the modern world requires-- and what the opponents of the Faith demand-- is steel rather than fire. Difficult as the proofs of Aquinas are, I wonder if it might not be a good idea to teach them in Catholic secondary schools.

Most of the subjects to which Sheridan devotes chapters are predictable, but one that is not is the subject of laughter. Sheridan was a professional humourist, so perhaps this inclusion shouldn't be that surprising. And perhaps it shouldn't be surprising at all, because I have often felt-- and I imagine the intuition is a common one-- that laughter and religious faith are strangely linked. As Sheridan puts it:

"It will be objected that laughter is not the monopoly of the Christian, nor does it mark him off from the materialist; but the Christian can offer a rational explanation of laughter, whereas the rationalist (who so often, unknown to himself, is drawing on the spiritual investment of his ancestors) is in difficulties at once; for if directed chance or molecular structure governs all our actions, there is nothing against which we can measure the unexpected or incongruous."

I think the point could be pushed further. I think the rationalist, if he was a consistent rationalist, would be in difficulties over pretty much every human activity and passion. The rationalist can never say "Best of luck!" (what does he mean?) or "Happy birthday" or "Get better soon!". He can never even say "That's odd", since "odd" and "ordinary" can't really have any meaning for him-- everything is what it is, and that's all there is to it. There are no true surprises in a rationalist universe, no occasion for amazement or awe. Statistical anomalies are only to be expected, after all. Nor can the rationalist invoke "the spirit of the sixties" or "the spirit of science" or "the Blitz spirit", since there is no such thing as a spirit in his universe, not even as a metaphor. Because what would it be a metaphor for, anyway? Does he really believe radicalism was unique to the sixties, or fortitude was unique to the Blitz? Or that either of those emotions are anything but a combination of glands, hormones and circumstances?

On the subject of the permissive society, Sheridan writes: "Today's children...will take their places easily and naturally in the brave new world; the world which regards contraception as "a sort of polio vaccine designed to deal with the disease of procreation" and sex as a game without rules; a world in which promiscuity is the accepted ethic...a world in which blue films get bluer and bluer and even the prestigious Sunday papers publish material which would have led to prosecution thirty years ago; a world which accords pornography the status of a legitimate industry supplying a clamant human need; a world in which copulation-- real or stimulated-- may be watched on stage and screen, and in which the sex motif sells everything from central heating to bubble gum. Whether the permissive society will become still more permissive in time (and as things stand it does not even stop short at murder) is an open question, but now that its recruiting sergeants are at work in the schools the future is anyone's guess."

I wonder what Sheridan would think of today's society? Have we become even more permissive? I think it's an open question. We are probably all increasingly educated about a whole range of perversions, but somehow I feel that the straight-faced seediness of the sixties and seventies has receded. I recently watched a film from the seventies-- The Fog by John Carpenter-- in which a female hitchhiker is picked up by a male driver, late at night. That we soon see them lying in bed together can be guessed; the fact that they only exchange names afterwards is rather more surprising. At least, it's surprising today. I'm guessing it might have been less so to an audience at the time.

I believe that the longing for love, romance and commitment continues to reassert itself, if only as an ideal. The romantic comedy heroine might sleep around, but the audience still demands that she swear faithfulness before the credits roll. And the oh-so-serious sexual radicalism of the Age of Aquarius has, in our day, been replaced by the smirking irony of Graham Norton and his ilk. I am grateful for small mercies.

We can guess what the defenders of Fr. Tony Flannery and Fr. Brian D'Arcy, both priests recently censured by the Vatican, would think of this passage (which concerns apostate rather than dissident priests):

"Since Vatican II the Church's attitude to deserters, and especially to priest deserters, has been one of the utmost compassion. One wonders, however, if this leaning backwards towards mercy and understanding has been altogether prudent, especially as many of those concerned have made full use of the printing press and the television screen to pose as heroic souls who have seen the light. Compassion for apostates must not blind us to the fact that apostasy is the most horrendous of treasons."

A chapter entitled "The Population Explosion", full of statistics, proved tough reading for me. I've always felt that statistics are the worst of all arguments, since they can so easily be disputed. And yet we cannot avoid them at times. The subject of "overpopulation" and the Catholic Church's supposed contribution to it is very tricky terrain, since it cannot be answered simply by analysing concepts, but must involve delving into demographics.

The next chapter, which takes in family planning, contraception, and euthanasia, contains a rather prescient passage: "If we may snuff out new life early without qualms of conscience, we are equally entitled to take steps to ensure that those who are so old that they have become a burden to themselves and to society should be snuffed out when they have outstayed their welcome and become a strain on our resources- preferably, but not necessarily, with their own consent, and in these twilight hours the question of consent will be misty on one side at least. Indeed, if the quality of life is what counts, the case for euthanasia is open and shut, for people are living longer nowadays, the number of pensioners are increasing, and there are limits to what wage-and-salary earners can provide for their support withotu disrupting the national economy."

And the last words of the chapter make the overall point with ringing clarity: "Either [life] is sacred, God-given, and inviolable, or it is not; and both abortion and euthanasia are logical corollaries of that death-wish we call contraception". There is an infinite gulf between the sacredness of life and its mere preciousness. A teddy-bear can be "precious".

The book is sprinkled with references to Communism and the Soviet Union, which obviously date it now, but also give us pause for thought. There was something strangely comforting in the existence of the Evil Empire-- though not, of course, for its citizens. It was a visible and tangible antagonist, the embodiment of all the forces that were assailing Christendom. Now the Evil Empire is gone, but the forces of anti-Christianity have lost none of their vitality. The conservative author Peter Hitchens believes that the West's radical left-- or cultural revolutionaries, as he terms them-- were actually liberated by the fall of the USSR. No longer need they be embarrassed by gulags and secret police and the spectacle of a real Revolution at work. No longer would they have to defend the indefensible.

Another regrettable legacy of the Cold War is that conservatism came to be equated with individualism, private enterprise and economic freedom above all else. Strangely enough, this tendency seems to have only increased since the fall of communism, as though the partisans of the free market and of unlimited personal license are still tilting against the ghosts of Stalin and Kruschev-- rather than the more real and impersonal forces of dissolution all around us, forces which often hitch a ride on the tailcoats of the free market.

 The Hungry Sheep ends on an admirably Christological note:

"In seeing God, and in knowing and loving Him, we shall see what makes us different one from another, and how we are all-- in the mass and as individuals-- linked with Him and loved by Him. We shall also see ourselves for the first time, for we shall see ourselves in Him, and it is only in Him that we are really meaningful. He must increase and we must decrease, but our decrease will not be a shrinking nor a diminution. In Christ, our pilgrimage ended, we shall reach our full stature. Our selfhood will be complete and intelligible; and in the end, as Augustine says, there will only be one Christ, loving Himself."

Amen!

I fervently wish that we had more books like The Hungry Sheep. I think it is time for Veritas Publications, and other religious publishers, to stop putting out books with titles like What Being Catholic Means to Me and start putting out more books like the one recently written by Michael Coren, the Canadian broadcaster, under the title Why Catholics are Right.

John D. Sheridan, Humourist of Catholic Ireland

The newspaper column is one of my favourite forms of writing. It seems comfortably ensconced between journalism and literature, the private chat and the public square, the topical and the timeless. My favourite writer of all time, the matchless GK Chesterton, used the format to near-miraculous effect. His column in the Illustrated London News ran for three decades. The free and loose format allowed full play to Chesterton's undisciplined genius. Even the title of one of his most famous newspaper articles-- Rhapsody on a Pig-- gives some idea of the scope and versatility of his talent.

The first columnist for whom I developed a passion was Keith Waterhouse, an English writer whose long career ended with his death some years ago. I found a book of his newspaper columns, Monday Thursdays, lying around the house when I was a child, and read it over and over again. I remember one column about a delicious cheese he had bought as a gift on a visit to some English country town, and every crumb of which he ended up scoffing himself. Another column described an encounter he had with a graffiti artist on the London Underground. When Waterhouse asked the surprised vandal why he was defacing a wall, the young fellow asked him what else there was to do. Waterhouse takes up the challenge and gives him a pretty long list of suggestions. I remember two of them were "eating a Mars bar" and "building a model of the Eiffel Tower out of matchsticks". When he is finished, the vandal gives Waterhouse a pitying look and says, "You're a sad git, you are."

I remember the cover of Mondays, Thursdays showed a cartoon of various figures sitting on a merry-go-round. They included Mickey Mouse and JR of Dallas fame. I think this is the poetry of the newspaper column-- it gives us a confidence in the inexhaustible variety and picturesqueness of life.

Another book of newspaper columns I enjoyed was An Irish Eye by Anthony Cronin (though I disagreed with nearly all of his opinions) and-- of course-- the majestic Best of Myles by Myles Na Gopaleen. Cruiskeen Lawn by Myles Na Gopaleen was probably the apotheosis of the newspaper column. In fact, it is difficult to even think of Cruiskeen Lawn as a newspaper column, since Myles (AKA Flann O'Brien and Brian O'Nolan) rarely paid much attention to the events of the day, or engaged in the kind of social observation and commentary that is the bread and butter of most columnists. Cruiskeen Lawn instead was a dazzling display of comic fireworks, too idiosyncratic and brilliant to bear much comparison with any other columnist.

It is a perfect contrast with the columns of John D. Sheridan, an Irish newspaper humourist whose career overlapped with that of Myles. Sheridan wrote for the Irish Independent, while Myles wrote for the Irish Times, the other major Irish national daily. Both writers were Catholics, though many readers of Myles might be surprised to learn of his religious faith. John D. Sheridan, on the other hand, was much more straightforwardly devout, writing for a magazine called The Irish Rosary and even producing a book-length defence of Catholic doctrine (The Hungry Sheep).

The biggest difference, it has to be said, was that Myles was a literary genius, while John D. Sheridan was-- not.

All the same, I am a fan of Sheridan. Reading him takes me back to an Ireland that I never knew, but for which I feel nostalgic anyway, the Ireland of the fities and sixties. (He was published from the thirties onwards, but I've mostly read his later writing.) It was a fairly complacent Ireland, or (as John Major might put it) a nation at ease with itself. The great majority of Irish people were Catholic and nationalist, while those that were not Catholic were still Christian or, at the very least, respectful of religion. The turmoil of the War of Independence, the Civil War and the Emergency were a memory, and the Troubles in the North were yet to come. Ireland was enjoying the first comforts of modernity-- cars and radios and foreign holidays-- while still retaining a vibrant national tradition.

Even the dustjackets of John D. Sheridan's books describe his humour as "gentle"-- and if it was gentle then, it is trebly gentle now. (It has to be admitted that, in this case as many others, "gentle" is sometimes a synonym for "mediocre" and "bland". But even mediocrity and blandness have their charms.)

Sheridan was not just a newspaper columnist. He also wrote poetry (especially children's poetry), biography (a biography of James Clarence Mangan, the poet) and novels. I've read only one of his novels, The Magnificent McDarney. It is a surprisingly gritty and dark work, somewhat similar to the novels of Walter Macken in style. It chronicles the last days of an alcoholic who neglects and exploits his family, a former actor who gets by on handouts and charm. The novel does not flinch from the ugliness of alcoholism, poverty or feckless fatherhood, but-- spoiler alert-- it has a happy ending, in which McDarney goes on a retreat and makes a good confession before suddenly dying. An ending like that, in which Catholic beliefs are not only a metaphor or a theme, but actually crucial to the whole point of the story, is difficult to imagine in a popular writer today.

But it is Sheridan's newspaper articles that I enjoy the most, and they are much lighter in tone. Even their titles convey a certain naivety, a lack of obliqueness that I find refreshing. Scanning down the contents page of My Hat Blew Off (one of two collections on my shelf), I find titles like Christmas Parties And Paper Hats, On Wedding Breakfasts, On Asking the Way and A Letter to Santa. They read like set titles for schoolboy essays-- an appealing association, in my view.

It has to be admitted that Sheridan was not always inspired, often stretching a theme as far as it could go and further, even within three pages. He has one feeble piece in which he describes an evening alone in the house, during which he amuses himself by ringing its various bells. (It sounds more interesting than it is.) And then there is the article in which he tries to make comic mileage out of the awkwardness of railway station farewells, a situation in which nobody (he insists) can ever think of anything to say. Artistic representations of boredom are always boring, and I no more want to read about somebody with nothing to say than I want to meet (or read) somebody with nothing to say.

But more often, Sheridan does have something to say-- usually some meditation on the mishaps of daily life, or the little pleasures of existence, or the changes in manners and in ways of life.

Writers like him are a good source of social history. In one of the articles in My Hat Blew Off-- a piece decrying the observance of the New Year-- he records that the "War on Christmas" had begun as long ago as 1951 (the year the collection was published):

It is not without significance that as New Year's becomes more and more of a feast, Christmas is becoming less and less of a feast-- in the sense that millions of people the world over no longer believe in the Founder of the feast. We have reached the stage where we commemorate a birthday without adverting to the tremendous and central fact that Someone was born; and it is on record that, some years ago, an American director of education issued instructions to his teachers, saying that every school should have a Santa Claus and a Christmas tree, but banning all songs, carols and dramatizations that "mention the Nativity" or "stress the religious significance" of a feast that has no other significance. For you cannot even use the word "Christmas" without declaring your allegiance, and even "Xmas", that miserable subterfuge, begins with a letter that is shaped like a cross.

(Incidentally, I don't myself think there is anything wrong or anti-Christian with "Xmas", and I often use it. I also don't see any conflict in celebrating both Christmas and the New Year)

One of my favourite articles is On Wedding Breakfasts, in which Sheridan lambasts the pretentiousness of modern wedding breakfasts. He writes:

Presently the guests are taken off to breakfast, and they expect, but don't get, a magnificent breakfast. They get one and a half sardines, five congealed green peas, two cubes of beetroot, several unrecognizable foreign bodies, and an immensity of knives and forks.

Sheridan is right to abhor all this, and I wish I could shake the man's hand for his own recommendation, which is exactly and even exuberantly correct:

The backbone of a breakfast, wedding or ordinary, is rashers and eggs and TEA; lashing and leavings of tea-- and from the word "go", not when one has been chilled with diced betroot and green peas. For a wedding, of course, there should be something more: since the guests expect it, and since the bride's father will have to pay through the nose whether or no. So we should have-- in addition to the basic constituents-- such trimmings as liver, sausages, black pudding, fried bread and potato cake; not all on one plate, but distributed in easily-accessible places, like side-dishes at a hunting breakfast.

Oh, all ye organizers of parties and celebrations and nosh-ups of every kind, commit these words of wisdom to memory, and never fail to heed them:

A feast should mean enormous helpings of the things you are used to, not a dismal succession of bite-sized fragments that are as unfamiliar as they are unappetizing.

A man who has made his mind up to enjoy himself thoroughly is in no mood for experiment.

Many of his articles appeal on account of their Irishness. Just One Little Word is a meditation on the Irish dialect word oul' (as in Dublin in the Rare Oul' Times). Sheridan spells it owl, and gives quite an accomplished and entertaining description of its range of meanings, its many uses and undertones. In the final paragraphs, Sheridan writes:

We Irish are supposed to wear our hearts on our sleeves; but we don't. We are terribly afraid of our hearts, and the old Gaelic reticence is still strong in us. We hide our deepest feelings, and give our emotions no words.

We can coin mighty compliments when we speak from the head, but when we speak from the heart we are tongue-tied. However, we manage to get along. We have one little word that sees us through all our emotional difficulties, and it is a fine stand-by when th'owl tongue lets us down.

 Another instance in which Sheridan gives tongue to my own views is in his tirade against eating out of doors, entitled (with usual imagination) Meals Out-of-Doors:

Country folk, with centuries of true culture behind them, never take their food out-of-doors-- unless some desperate adventure is afoot, like mowing the far meadow, or selling a cow in the neighbouring town. They may bring a can of tea to the meadow, or a few monster sandwiches to the town, but when they do they have the air of exiles, and they are always glad to get back again to the one place where a human being can eat properly...Every time you go on a picnic, you sell your birthright and become a beast of the field.

I can't cheer this loud enough! As far as I'm concerned, there are two requirements to the proper enjoyment of food and drink. One is a table beneath you, and the other is a roof above you.

Sheridan's essays usually reflect a comfortable, middle-class world-- "the office" is taken to be the typical working hours location of the reader-- but, this being Catholic Ireland, he is aware of poverty and deprivation. One article describes his experience of volunteering for the St. Vincent de Paul, while another describes a carefree down-and-out sunning himself by the O'Connell monument in Dublin.

In an article entitled By The Sea, Sheridan puts forward a thesis that I have established to my own satisfaction, by spending the entirety of a passage between Dublin and Holyhead on the deck of a ferry:

I found that man of normal intelligence can exhaust the intellectual possibilities of the sea in about twenty minutes. After that it becomes monotonous. You have seen the picture through dozens of times, and there is nothing for it but to go home to your supper.

(The sea serves very well for a backdrop when you are thinking of other things, or when you are walking along it discussing other things with another soul. But try gazing into it for any length of time and you will find that Sheridan is entirely right.)

Sheridan's most touching and enjoyable pieces are usually his forays into nostalgia, and his accounts of how times have changed. This is a valuable service that the topical writer performs for posterity; he is there to capture the passing of one way of doing things, and the introduction of another. New Lamps for Old is a fascinating description of electrification, and an affectionate tribute to the oil lamp:

One of the things I noticed during two recent runs by car to places west of the Shannon is that the lights of the cities have rivals now in the lights of the little towns. Main Street is not yet as bright as O'Connell Street, but it at least belongs to the same order of brightness...the thing is spreading. To-day the towns, tomorrow the villages, and the townlands the day after...Manus the Shop, who can sell you anything from a quarter of cough-lozenges to a bag of meal, now has electric irons in his shelves, and old men are telling each other that it was all set down in Colmcille's prophecies and the end of the world is only round the corner.

(I can remember my own uncle, a Limerick farmer, discussing Colmcille's prophecies with a neighbour, in no flippant tone.)

This is what he has to say about the oil-lamp, and it makes me envious of people in those days:

Getting the lamp going was almost as soothing as filling a pipe. The globe was breathed on and polished with soft flannel, the wick was trimmed, and women cautioned their daughters to keep the flame low until the glass had time to heat. The light did not burst on you suddenly, and your eyes were ready for the full glare when it came...

One essay, A Happy Christmas, is written in Ogden Nash-like verse and shows that Sheridan's attitude towards Christmas shopping is the same as my father's:

I want to have my old-fashioned Christmas fun and do all the things that in the best circles are no longer done.
I want to be trampled and squeezed to death, to dig with and be dug by elbows as I struggle for breath,
To move in a sardine crush of reactionary fellow-shoppers in places like the Coombe and Henry Street
Where I have to ask total strangers not to stand on my feet.
I want to be one of the gawkers who stand and look at the hawkers
To be importuned to contribute to the gaiety of nations by buying a dancing sailor or a Christmas motto or the last-- the very last-- of the Christmas decorations.

I do admire the ideal, but I am afraid it is too heroic for me. I shop ahead.

One essay, On Bridges, in which Sheridan laments the city habit of passing bridges without stopping to stare into the waters below for a meditative moment, has actually changed my own behaviour. I now usually remind myself not to pass the glories of running water, even in a bus, without pausing to look.

An essay entitled The Country Dresser praises this piece of furniture and mourns its passing. One paragraph in particular is a fine summation of the whole cultural and social world that Sheridan's columns occupy:

There were letters for answering, and ink to answer them with; Rosary beads hanging from nails, prayer books, tin "pandies" with wire handles, scones of bread, neckties that were worn only once a week, and a crock of cream with a piece of fine butter-muslin across it. You went to the dresser for everything from a drink of clean water to a dab of holy water. It answered every need and was the universal provider.

Sheridan writes perceptively and sensitively about childhood. His own children, who he calls Morsels One, Two and Three (I wonder how they liked that as they grew older?) often form the subject-matter of his articles. I liked this description of a child's love for lemonade (a love I share-- and American readers, please note that, in Ireland, lemonade is a fizzy drink, commercially produced rather than homemade):

 Children love lemonade. They love the fizz and sparkle of it, the cold cutting taste of it, and the tickle that it gives the throat as it goes down. They can almost feel the beaded bubbles crumbling between their teeth. They tire in time of iced cake and trifle, and they sometimes leave a sliver of apple tart on the plate, but they would sell their nearest and dearest for lemonade, and the party is never over until the last siphon is empty.

I like John D. Sheridan because he is sentimental. I like him because is nostalgic. I like him because he is affectionate. I enjoy reading his books as much on account of the things I know won't be there as the things that I know will be there. There will be no explicit sex references, no scatology, no blasphemy or disrespect to religion. The references to pop culture will be limited to mentioning a film star here and there. The moral universe he inhabits is one that assumes every human being has dignity and worth-- there will be no reference to "losers" or "loners" or "wasters". Perhaps these are the virtues of the public he wrote for, rather than virtues particular to his work. But the point is that John D. Sheridan gave voice to that public-- he wrote for a society whose taboos and pieties, I believe, actually created more freedom than oppression, on balance. Another man may feel oppressed in a culture where he cannot describe unsavoury bodily functions in lurid language; but I feel rather liberated in knowing that he is not going to do so.

My favourite of Sheridan's articles goes by the title A Letter to Santa, and it actually made me weep one very early morning, while I was waiting to take a bus to Dublin Airport, en route to America. I think an article like this illustrates how drastically our society has been de-Christianized. In today's Ireland it is considered acceptable to write seriously about God only if you are a licensed God-botherer; a priest, or a theologian, or a spokesman for the Iona Institute. That a humourist writing for the masses, today, might introduce a serious Christian theme is almost unthinkable.

I also love this article because it makes a case for the Santa myth in a Christian household. Many of my favourite Catholic writers, like Edward Feser and Mark Shea, discourage the propogation of the Santa myth. Chesterton, on the other hand, defended it, and Tolkien (an ardent Catholic) wrote his children letters from Father Christmas every year. Is Santa a lie? Or is he an allegory that children come to understand as they mature? I don't know the answer, but I know which answer I prefer. I certainly don't feel my faith was harmed by the claim that Santa brought me gifts at Christmas time.

Sheridan writes:

Once-- and not so long ago-- Europe, at this blessed time of year, was a blaze of lighted chuch-windows, carols meant more than carousals, and red, symbolic candles shone out from a million sills to guide your landings. But the lights grow fewer every year, and a great darkness is spreading over the face of Christendom.

You were always a legend, Santa, but now they are trying to make you a lie; and you were never a lie. You were, rather, a logical necessity. You just had to be invented. You stand, not just for a parable, but for a whole medley of parables.

You represent, for instance, the belief that prayers are heard-- and answered; the belief that time and space do not exist in the spiritual dimension; the belief that there is a Bounty that is not embarrassed or diminished by the number of clients or the immensity of their needs.

Futher on, Sheridan insists: "Nothing is surer than that the spatter of Christmas lights that once pin-pointed Europe, from Tagus to Volga will come again in God's good time."

His closing lines are even more touching, and show that, though Sheridan wrote a lot of dull and plodding pieces, now and again his prose could sing:

That is why I am still prepared, in spite of the cost of living, to act as your local representative and depot superintendent until my Illustrious Virtues [his children] find both of us out; why I am prepared to perpetuate a legend that looks like a lie but is merely a cloak for the truth; why I can say, literally and with all reverence, that the tiny things I have wrapped in brown paper and hidden away against the Vigil of the Feast are part of the Deposit of Faith.

But sure, who am I telling it to?

John D. Sheridan was by no means a great writer. But I turn to his writings with great pleasure and relief, because I believe they reflect a time and a society that had attained something like greatness-- or (if that is too bold a claim) a society that was, at least, turned towards those mysteries and dogmas that are the only truly great things in this world, and are also the only enduring pillars of a life that is fully human, humane, and happy.

(NOTE: If you liked this post-- and it seems to generate a fair amount of traffic, probably because there is so little about this author on the internet-- you might also like my review of The Hungry Sheep, Sheridan's book in defence of the Catholic faith.)