The Poetry of Discomfort

I've been listening to Irish folk ballads recently. I've found myself thinking of one ballad I particularly like, The Louse House of Kilkenny, a comical song about a night spent in a flea-infested boarding house:

Then she brought me upstairs and she put out the light
And in less than five minutes I had to show fight
And in less than five more when the story was best
The fleas came around me and brought me a curse
Radley fal the diddle ay,,,

'Twas all around me body they formed a march
'Twas all around me body they played the Death march
For the bloody oul major gave me such a pick
That he nearly made away with half of me hip
Radley fal the diddle ay...

Now I'm going to me study, these lines to pen down
And if any poor traveller should e'er come to town
And if any poor traveller should be nighted like me
Beware of Buck St John and his black cavalry
Radley fal the diddle ay....

The Dubliners

I've spent a lot of time wondering why this song, and others like it, appeal to me so much. What is so poetic about discomfort? Why is a night in a flea-infested bed worth immortalizing in song? Why do we find a song like this strangely jolly?

Discomfort is certainly a recurring theme in Irish ballads. One of the most famous Irish ballads is 'The Rocky Road to Dublin', and this is one long catalogue of mishaps, hardships and indignities.
  
Of course, there are plenty of songs lamenting 'the hard life' in world music; for instance, in the genres of the blues or of negro spirituals. But these are straightforward laments, for the most part. The sort of songs I'm talking about there-- and they're not just Irish ballads, as I'll demonstrate soon-- are not melancholy in tone. They are more upbeat, even rumbustious.

One famous song about Irish construction workers in England, 'MacAlpine Fusiliers', (which was written by Brendan Behan's brother Dominic) seems more obviously caught between celebration and complaint, at least in the preamble:

It was in the year of 39 when the sky was full of lead.
When Hitler was heading for Poland and Paddy for Hollyhead.
Come all you pincher laddies and you long distant men.
Don't ever work for McAlpine for Whimpy or John Lang.
For you'll stand behind a mixer till your skin is turned to tan.
And they'll say good on you Paddy with your boat fare in your hand
The craic was good in Cricklewood and we wouldn't leave the Crown
With bottles flying and Biddies crying, sure Paddy was on the town.
Oh mother dear, I'm over here, and I'm never coming back
What keeps me here is a rake of beer, the women, and the craic...

The tune itself is obviously very jaunty.

Percy French

The 1902 comic song 'Are You Right There, Michael, Are You Right?', written by the prolific Percy French, satirises the West Clare Railway System. The railway was not amused, and tried to sue the songwriter. But the tone of the lyrics are unmistakeably affectionate (despite the fact that the song was written after French missed a concert due to a late train):

At Lahinch the sea shines like a jewel
With joy you are ready to shout
When the stoker cries out: There's no fuel
And the fire's tee-totally out
But hand up that bit of a log there
I'll soon have ye out of the fix
There's a fine clamp of turf in the bog there
And the rest go a-gatherin' sticks...

(I can remember, when I was younger, quite often hearing the title invoked in conversation-- I haven't heard that in a long time.)

I mentioned more modern songs. I don't think it's only Irish folk songs which strike this particular note. Take the theme tune of the British TV show (which I've never seen), Auf Wiedersehen Pet:

Working on the site from morning to night
That's living alright!
Then a drink with the boys in a bar full of noise
That's living alright!
Working all day for a pittance of pay
And blow it all on Saturday night
And you kiss the dames but you don't ask their names,
That's living alright!

I could quote other examples (such as another classic TV theme song, 'Rawhide'), but I think that's enough. It seems clear that human beings seem to find something in discomfort and hardship-- at least, in their imaginative representation-- which is not entirely unpleasing to contemplate-- something romantic, poetic, even strangely glamorous.

Rollin', rollin', rollin'!

Of course, this romance only seems to appear under certain conditions. The discomfort and hardship can't be overwhelming-- it's should be intermittent, at most. There needs to be compensating pleasures of some kind-- either in the present, or the near future. And the discomfort should be experienced as a bond, or even a badge of pride.

(Having mentioned 'Rawhide', it occurs to me-- surely this particular sort of poetry is a great part of the romance of the cowboy, and the cowgirl?)

I've argued that this is not something uniquely Irish, I do think it's something distinctively Irish. I think about this a lot.

It's interesting that, for a long time-- or so it seems to me-- the Irish imagination valorized poverty, manual labour, and deprivation over affluence, the professions, and comfort. Construction workers, exiles and small farmers seemed to have been privileged figures in song, story and folklore (and I mean contemporary folklore, not historical folklore). I really did grow up thinking that membership of the middle class was something to be ashamed of. And the middle class were mythical figures, anyway-- everybody (I assumed) was working class, including teachers and priests and shopkeepers and anyone I was likely to come into contact with. Everybody was poor, or came from poverty. Everybody was lucky just to have a job and a home and food. The Irish were poor, eternal underdogs-- and proud of it!

I've wondered in retrospect if this was something I just imagined. After all, social snobbery is a persistent theme in Irish literature. Was it just my innocence that conjured this sense of social solidarity?

Possibly, but I don't think so. The sense is just too vivid for that. It's composed of a hundred small examples which would be too tedious and obscure to recount, but which I distinctly remember.

Even the centenary celebrations of 1916 Rebellion brought this home to me. I read biographies of some of the leaders, and many of them, for all their talents, struggled to find a job-- any job. This seemed the norm to me as I was growing up, that just getting a job and having a job was an achievement. Then, when I was in my early twenties, I was amazed to see many of my contemporaries give up good jobs to travel. They were confident they would find other jobs, better jobs. The world had changed, and they were moving with it.

But I have a certain nostalgia for the poverty-stricken eighties, and indeed the many poverty-stricken decades before it (although my father insists that the sixties were an era of prosperity in Ireland). As Friedrich Nietzsche wrote: "He who possesseth little is so much the less possessed. Blessed be moderate poverty!' (This only really works, though, if the poverty is general, and is not crushing.)

But it wasn't just the absence of money that seems to mark this period, in my memory. It was the presence of limits-- limits in terms of career options, lifestyle choices, foods, television and radio channels, and so forth. (Of course, I know this is only relative to the present.) It's a delicate balance-- too many limits can be a tragic brake on human potential. But too few limits can, paradoxically, limit the opportunity for solidarity, shared experience, shared memory, folklore, and so forth. I truly dread the advent of globalism, where there is such a profusion of choice that (I fear) the whole experience of being 'in the same boat' as one's compatriots and contemporaries may be lost, or drastically diminished.

The poet Patrick Kavanagh wrote a line which is both an example of this (since the poem from which it comes was on the Irish school curriculum for many years), and a wonderful expression of it: "Through a chink too wide there comes in no wonder." I might have that put on my gravestone....

Patrick Kavanagh

G.K. Chesterton said something similar: "All my life I have loved frames and limits; and I will maintain that the largest wilderness looks larger seen through a window."

Now I have made my inevitable mention of G.K. Chesterton, I must quote this passage from his book on Charles Dickens, in which he ponders the aspect of 'cosiness' in Dickens's books, especially his Christmas books:

The second element to be found in all such festivity and all such romance is the element which is represented as well as it could be represented by the mere fact that Christmas occurs in the winter. It is the element not merely of contrast, but actually of antagonism. It preserves everything that was best in the merely primitive or pagan view of such ceremonies or such banquets. If we are carousing, at least we are warriors carousing. We hang above us, as it were, the shields and battle-axes with which we must do battle with the giants of the snow and hail. All comfort must be based on discomfort. Man chooses when he wishes to be most joyful the very moment when the whole material universe is most sad. It is this contradiction and mystical defiance which gives a quality of manliness and reality to the old winter feasts which is not characteristic of the sunny felicities of the Earthly Paradise.

"All comfort must be based on discomfort". This seems true. The problem with comfort is that it keeps on disappearing. We are comfortable, and we forget we are comfortable. Not only the comfort disappears; the whole physical world disappears. Discomfort reminds us of both. It brings us back to the body-- perhaps it is not too much to say that it points us towards the Incarnation, a concept we can never really take in and of which we are always losing sight.

One final thought, since I can hardly top that one; have you ever noticed the extent to which organized religion, on the physical side, is almost a pursuit of physical discomfort? We always emphasise the humility involved in kneeling before God-- but it seems relevant that it is not only humbling, but also uncomfortable!

Pádraig Ó Fiannachta RIP

This morning I once again attended the Irish language Mass in Our Lady of Dolours church, Glasnevin. During the Prayers of the Faithful, I was saddened to hear of the death of Monsignor Pádraig Ó Fiannachta, a scholar-priest who translated the Bible into Irish-- amongst many, many other achievements. (Click here for his obituary.)

The remarkable thing is that I am currently about two hundred pages into an eight hundred page biography of Monsignor Ó Fiannachta. (Written in Irish.) I hadn't even heard of him until perhaps a month ago, when I read an article he wrote, vividly and poetically describing the Advent penitential service in his church. 

He was several-times editor of An Sagart (The Priest), an Irish language magazine whose back issues I have been reading for some months, during my tea and lunch breaks. He also translated St. Augustine's Confessions into Irish. He was fluent in Welsh as well as Irish, and who knows how many other languages. (He visited the USSR in order to acquire some Russian, which he considered a beautiful language, as do I.) He travelled all over the world.

Even more remarkably, I was talking about him to my office mate two days ago, as we were both attending a library presentation in which he was mentioned (in his capacity as a publisher and editor). My office mate had actually met him, once, while in Donegal. He spoke very highly of him.

God rest his soul! His was a life that very strikingly exemplified the old motto, "Do chum glóire Dé agus onóir na hÉireann", "For the glory of God and the honour of Ireland."

St. Canice's Church, Finglas Village

This morning, continuing my exploration of Dublin churches, I went to 10:00 Saturday morning Mass in St. Canice's, Finglas village. (I have decided it makes more sense to go to nearby churches first and radiate outwards, rather than work from an alphabetical list.) As it happened, it was a funeral Mass. St. Canice was a medieval Irish saint who studied in Glasnevin, near Finglas. He is considered one of the 'twelve apostles of Ireland'. (I don't know much about him, to be honest.)

The church is a stone church. Its website said that its foundation stone was laid on Bloody Sunday, 1920-- the day when Michael Collins's hit squad executed many members of the British intelligence in Ireland (along with some civilians), and the British forces responded by shooting into the crowd at a GAA match in Croke Park, killing fourteen. These events are vividly (though not quite accurately) depicted in the movie Michael Collins.

As I made my way to Finglas, I found myself thinking of my late mother Patricia-- I often used to go there with her. Eternal rest grant unto her, oh Lord. May perpetual light shine upon her. May she rest in peace.

The church is the kind of ornate stone church that appeals to most ordinary people with healthy tastes, but which is less interesting to me than more modern churches-- my loss, no doubt. 

It has a high vaulted roof, and two wings radiating from the altar. There is a shrine to Padre Pio and St. Joseph on the left hand wing (or is the word semi-transept?), and there is a shrine to the Little Flower St. Therese of Lisieux on the right hand wing. I noticed that there was a photo of St. Therese's parents by her shrine-- their cult seems to be ever-burgeoning. I also noticed there were portraits of St. Oliver Plunkett and Edel Quinn on the wall above the entrance.

The church has a choir balcony over the entrance, a beautiful marble altar and tabernacle, decorative tiles underfoot, globe-shaped lights hanging from the ceiling, and a stained glass window behind the altar. There is a small side chapel with a sculpture of the crucixion and a very extensive montage of photographs from parish events.

There are white marble statues of Our Lord and Our Lady (as Maria Regina) on either side of the altar.

I especially liked the symbols which decorated the wall behind the altar, in a recurring pattern, in gold-leaf. The Chi-Ro was one, but I didn't recognise all the others.

The Stations of the Cross I liked especially-- rather murky-coloured, entirely representation alnd old-fashioned. The confessionals still seemed to be in use judging from signs posted on them reading, "Welcome". There was a large photo of Pope Francis on one wall.

Before the funeral procession arrived, there were only about fifty people in the church, and most of them were middle-aged to old. As is the case in Dublin, they seemed to come in groups of friends rather than families.

Then the funeral cortege arrived. The funeral was that of a man named Eamonn, who was only in his fifites, and whose death was a surprise. He had worked as a barman in the area and had taken care of his sick mother for the last five years. He was a fan of Dublin GAA and liked to read the morning newspaper. The priest described his as a quiet, good man. Eternal rest grant unto him, oh Lord, and comfort those who mourn him!

Gifts of a GAA jersey and a morning newspaper were put on the coffin, along with the pall and the book of the Gospels.

The priest himself was an old, well-spoken fellow with white hair and glasses. I suspect, in fact, that he is the same priest who often celebrates the Irish language Mass in Glasnevin. The altar server from my local church was also serving the altar here, to my surprise; it's close, but not that close.

Sculpture outside the church

 
There were no eulogies other than the eulogy in the funeral homily, which was warm but dignified. The family read the readings, which were "not that we loved God, but that God loved us", from one of the letters of St. John, "I have fought the good fight" from the Second Letter to Timothy, and "Son, behold your mother!" from the Gospel of St. John. The priest also dwelt for a short while on today's Feast Day, that of Our Lady of Saint Carmel.

The hymns were accompanied by a guitar, and were rather bland modern hymns-- "Be Not Afraid, I Go Before You Always", and "Some Say Love It Is a River".

When the time came for Communion, the priest mentioned that a chalice would be available for anyone who could not receive the Eucharist because of a gluten allergy. Although this is entirely laudable, I found myself thinking wryly: "We've reached the stage where the only case in which someone is discouraged from receiving the Eucharist is when they have an allergy."

There were six or eight Eucharistic ministers, who came out to the pews (it is a large church, to be fair). The Eucharistic Minister closest to me was a short woman-- so short that I went to my knees in order to receive on the tongue (everybody ahead of me received in the hand) I saw a woman staring at me as I made my way back to the pews-- I did feel a little self-conscious, but it's better than letting the Host drop (a thing that has happened to me in the past).

The funeral ended, the congregation joining in with the final prayers that I don't know myself. The coffin and the procession left the church.

As I wandered around looking at the shrines, a layman (I presume) began to lead the Rosary, with which I joined. About twenty people remained. I noticed that a prayer to St. Michael the Archangel was included at the end of each decade. They were still at it when I left, after the 'Oh God, whose only begotten son..." prayer. (I strongly feel that this should be the concluding prayer of the Rosary-- surely you can have too many 'trimmings'!)

God bless the soul of our brother in Christ, Eamonn, and all who mourn him!

Catholicism Without Apologies 10: Chick Tracts, Pro-Abortion Politicians, and Catholic Radio

How to Talk to Chicks

  

Have you ever heard of Jack Chick? If I tell you he’s a writer of comic books, you might get the wrong idea. The kind of comic books Mr. Chick writes are religious in subject matter, and very far from the spirit of the Beano or the Dandy. They are written from an Evangelical Christian, born-again perspective. To say that they pull no punches wouldn’t even begin to do justice to their outspokenness. Mr. Chick is utterly uncompromising in his assertions—and one of his assertions is that the Catholic Church is the Whore of Babylon described in the Apocalypse of St. John.

According to the website Catholic Answers, some other interesting claims made about the Catholic Church in Chick tracts include: that the Jesuit order was responsible for the American Civil War and the assassination of Abraham Lincoln; that St. John Paul II was a communist (a spectacularly unsuccessful one, we must conclude);  that the Vatican has the name of every Protestant stored on a ‘big computer’; that the Catholic Church controls the Mafia, international banks, the Masons, and the New Age movement; and that 68 million people were murdered by the Inquisition. Of course, it goes without saying that anyone who dies a Catholic is buying himself a one-way ticket somewhere very hot, with no air-conditioning.

This was the theme of the Chick Tract I was handed in Dublin’s O’Connell Street on Saturday, not far from the Spire. Four or five men, in their thirties to fifties, were handing these tracts out to passers-by. I took the tract, not realising what it was, and smiled encouragingly at the evangelist. After all, he was proclaiming the gospel of Christ as he understood it.

When I glanced at the thing, as I was walking away, I found myself faced with an uncomfortable dilemma. I’m not the kind of extroverted person who finds it easy to debate with strangers in the street. But how could I ignore this challenge to my faith? I turned back several times before I was eventually handed another tract and took the opportunity to argue with my would-be saviour.

I have to say that he was quite pleasant. He was a Hispanic man who might have been in his late thirties or early forties. I began by asking him where he thought the Bible, which was the sole source of the arguments against Catholicism used in the tract, actually came from. He dodged this question, and our impromptu debate zigzagged through familiar Catholic vs. Evangelical terrain; prayer to saints, Our Lady’s virginity, Christ’s words to St. John from the cross. Then (to my relief, I admit) I saw my bus coming, we shook hands, and I ran to catch it, followed by his “God bless you.”

In any meaningful definition of the term, Chick tracts are ‘hate speech’. (In fact, the Hell-bound character in the tract I was handed makes this very accusation, in a confrontation with a street preacher.) If (for instance) casting doubt upon the moral legitimacy of homosexuality can be construed as hate speech, likely to incite prejudice or violence, and to inspire suicidal feelings in young homosexuals, surely Chick’s venomous little comics easily fall within the same category. And yet I would not dream of complaining that they are so freely circulated, or seek to suppress them in any way.

In fact, I will go further. I have more admiration for the distributors of Chick tracts, who take the words of Scripture seriously (even if they so disastrously misunderstand them), than I do for many champions of a vague, nebulous Christianity. Chickites start from the datum of the Bible. Too many Christians today start from the presumption that God must, simply must, conform to their own moral intuitions, and that the Bible and tradition is to be shoe-horned or explained away to conform to these, as well.

Maybe we need our own Jack Chick. Are there are any cartoonists, or would-be cartoonists, reading this?

Hell-Bent for Election?

As I write this, the results of the European and local elections are being announced. The government parties took a hammering and the Labour party came off the worst. The commentators on radio and television have attributed this entirely to the austerity policies that the government has imposed. To my knowledge, only Shane Coleman on Newstalk suggested that the legalisation of abortion might have played a role.

I would like to believe that a great deal of the punishment that the electorate inflicted on the government parties, and on the Labour party in particular, is a backlash from the abortion legislation. I’m rather sceptical about this, however. Why? Because the big winners of the elections were Sinn Féin, whose record on abortion is lamentable. They supported the so-called Protection of Human Life Bill which last year made abortion legal for the first time in the history of the State. Sinn Féin TD Peadar Toibin was suspended from the party for voting against the Bill.

Peadar Toibin. Needs to jump ship.

 

In Northern Ireland, Sinn Féin members of the Northern Ireland Assembly blocked legislation that would prevent a Marie Stopes abortion clinic from operating in Northern Ireland. Their MLA Catriona Ruane described the legislation as  “an attempt to restrict the right of a woman to obtain a termination in life-threatening circumstances.”

Of course, it could be that the surge in support for Sinn Féin and the collapse of the Labour Party vote are separate phenomena, that all the pro-life voters who abandoned the government parties transferred their support to Fianna Fáil or to independents. (There was also a huge increase in support for independent candidates.) But it’s hard to believe this, as it seems very clear that Sinn Féin have taken over the Labour Party vote.

What is the problem with the Catholic voter in Ireland? Though it’s difficult to find statistics for overall Mass attendance, over eighty per cent of Irish people declared themselves Catholic on the 2011 Census, and an MRNI poll commissioned by The Irish Times in 2012 found that over half of Irish Catholics attend Mass at least once a month. How is it, then, that a pro-abortion policy does not equal political suicide in this country? It’s easy to blame our bishops and priests for not preaching on this issue, but ultimately the blame must lie with all those ordinary Mass-goers who have not sufficiently formed their consciences.

A Voice from Heaven

 

Being something of a contrarian, I didn’t acquire a mobile phone until 2004. (I remember asking the man in the shop if the phone he was showing me could send text messages, and the withering look I received in reply.) About a year ago, I took a further bold step into the future and bought a smartphone. Only recently did I work out that the smartphone could be used to play music, and only still more recently did I start to listen to internet radio over this wondrous and compact device.

Of course, I listened to Catholic radio. I downloaded the apps of two American Catholic Radio stations, The Station of the Cross and Ave Maria Radio. There are a bewildering number of American Catholic radio stations, but most of the content seems to be syndicated—very often both of these stations are playing the same show at the same time. (It’s always seemed very odd to me that radio programmes are called ‘shows’, by the way.)

American Christianity and American Catholicism fascinates me. Maybe it’s something to do with the voyage of the Pilgrim Fathers, but there is an American ease with all things supernatural which I envy. When I listen to someone talking about God or Jesus in an Irish accent, or an English accent, they seem to be discussing an idea, a theory. There is a certain tentativeness, a certain awkwardness in the very way they pronounce the syllables.

But Americans are different. The words ‘God’ and ‘Jesus’ roll off their tongue with complete naturalness, as though they were talking about potatoes or boots or doughnuts.

As well as this, we have developed, in this part of the world, a kind of all-consuming irony or flippancy that makes it difficult for us to talk about God. I notice this when I watch Americans (or Africans) at Mass. They are very often demonstrative in a way that Irish Catholics are not—for instance, extending their arms during the Lord’s Prayer. This makes me cringe, but why should it?

Even those of us who choose to be outspoken about our religious beliefs, in this part of the world, find ourselves becoming defiant rather than natural, when it comes to the way we talk about God. I’m reminded of the words of C.S. Lewis, when he described the attitude of English people to ritual and ceremony: “They go through it lumpishly and with a certain mixture of defiance and embarrassment, as if everyone felt he was being rather silly and was at the same time willing to shoot anyone who said so.”

Ideas vs. Incarnation

But it isn’t just the American ease with spiritual matters that has kept me hooked to these radio stations in the past week. It’s an ever-increasing fascination with the vision of the Church as the body of Christ, as a temple formed of living stones, as a living, breathing thing rather than an idea.

Victor Hugo

 There are a lot of inspiring quotations out there on the subject of ideas. Perhaps the most famous is Victor Hugo’s “There is one thing stronger than all the armies in the world, and that is an idea whose time has come.” I imagine that the glamour that hangs over what we might describe as ‘the idea of ideas’ became especially strong in the nineteenth century, which was the great era of ideologues.

But, in truth, ideas are thin, wispy things. As Cranly says in Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man: “Every jackass going the road thinks he has ideas.” A lot of the time, these jackasses are crazed, emaciated independent scholars who spend their lives in the reading rooms of libraries and produce huge folios that moulder on a shelf forever more. But now and again, one of these jackasses gets the world to actually try one of their ideas—think of a Karl Marx or an Adolf Hitler or a Jean Jacques Rousseau. The consequences are nearly always horrendous.

Catholicism is not an idea. It is a living thing. The Catholic Church came into existence in the Upper Room in Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost. Since then, it has lived and grown from moment to moment—a thing with a pulse and a body and a personality. “Touch me and see for yourselves”, said Christ to the disciples, after his Resurrection. “A ghost has no flesh and bones as you can see that I have.”

The heart of the Church, of course, is the Eucharist, the liturgy and the sacraments—the estimated 350, 000 thousand Masses that are celebrated every single day, in ancient cathedrals and sleepy suburban churches and in a hundred other settings. It’s the baptisms and confirmations and weddings and confessions and ordinations that are also happening every day of the week.

But the life of the Church is so much broader than that. It’s every Rosary said, every pilgrimage, every Bible study class, every minute of Eucharistic Adoration, every family praying together, every individual praying alone. It’s all the hours and hours of women’s shows and current affairs shows and phone-in shows on Catholic radio stations. It’s all the Catholic blogs on the internet. I hope that even half-witted columns like this one might be considered a part of the life of the Church.

Trying to get the world to understand this conception of the Church—as the mystical body of Christ, rather than a transmitter of a message, a school of ethics, or some kind of encounter group—is, I think, one of the great challenges facing us as we interact with a culture that is increasingly mystified by Mystery.

The Light Through the Window

For Michelle
 
I stop by a normal house on a normal day
In a normal street, and my soul is swept away
By a sight too strange and too commonplace to say.

The living room window is open, the curtain furled,
The door of the room is ajar, and through it is hurled
From a further window, the light from another world.

Another world, which is mine; but to see it plain
I must see it at second-hand, through a window pane,
From a window outside, in a place I cannot remain.

The light from that window lit up all the tales I was told
Of the adult world, before I was ten years old.
By this light Keats saw Homer's realms of gold.

This is the daylight, the cold and eternal gleam,
That lights all the faraway pictures of childhood that seem
To lie on the border of memory and dream.

It shines through proverbs and stories and street vendors' cries,
Through the flames of a Halloween bonfire, and painted skies,
And purest of all in the light of a lover's eyes.

It is gone, it is gone...and yet it can never be gone.
We will find it again, not too distant, but stumbled upon;
The light from the New Jerusalem, leading us on.

 

Mass at St. Brendan's Church, Coolock

I recently had the idea of attending Mass in as many Dublin churches as I can-- maybe even of attending Mass in all of them all by some point. I like visiting different churches, but many of them-- especially the ordinary suburban churches I find most interesting-- are closed outside Mass times.

Well, in Ireland, most churches hold a Mass at 10.00 a.m. on Saturday morning, so I thought that would be a good time to check them out, and to participate in Mass at them.

I like attending Mass in as many places as I can. (I have been to Mass in Ireland, England, America and Austria; in Irish, English, German and Latin.) I have no idea if there is any spiritual benefit to this. It's just my own version of trainspotting. But I don't think there's any harm to it, either. And I think that an account of the Masses I attend, which I intend to keep both here and in my diary, might have some anthropological or sociological interest, especially in years to come. It's fieldwork, baby!

Aside from anything else, seeing new places is always good. Every now and again I am struck with a sense of wonder at the size and multiplicity of the world, and that is demonstrated as much by the avenue we never walked down, though it is ten minutes away from our place of work, than it is by a coral reef or a mountain peak in a distant land.

Indeed, even an out-of-use store room seems a place of wonder to me. It is a place unto its own, a place you never knew. One of the things I like about working in University College Dublin is the amount of places there are inside the same place (so to speak). Even within the library itself, there are some rooms I'd never been inside after a decade and a half working there (including the rarely-used Medieval Studies Room, which I eventually learned has pictures of priests on the wall-- priests who curated the collection in former days). I feel like I'm working in Hogwarts or Gormenghast.

I had this idea yesterday and this morning I decided to act on it. I went to the A-Z of Dublin Mass Times on the Catholic Ireland website. The first church listed there was St. John Vianney church in Ardlea. So I set out towards it, getting 17A bus past the Northside Shopping Centre and trying to find it from there.

As anyone who is personally acquainted with me knows, I have a disastrous sense of direction-- spectacularly bad-- and I have a history of getting lost in Coolock in particular. So I was neither surprised nor bothered when I found myself in St. Brendan's Church, Coolock rather than St. John Vianney's, Coolock. It began to rain heavily so further exploration seemed undesirable anyway.

Only picture I can find!

As it happens, St. Brendan's church is precisely the kind of small, humdrum church that appeals to me the most.

The Rosary was being recited when I entered, and I was surprised at how many people were already there, though it was twenty minutes before Mass. There must have been about thirty people (at least), and there was about a hundred people at Mass itself. There is usually only about twenty or thirty people at my usual Saturday morning Mass in Ballymun. They were mostly old people in their sixties and upwards-- a mother with young children here and there, but not many. There were three nuns in blue habits in front of me, one of them young and African, two of them older and (I presume) Irish.

I was surprised, not only by the amount of people saying the Rosary, but by the enthusiasm of their participation. It's usually mumbled by a few people, in my experience.

I very much like the church architecture of St. Brendan's. The ceiling is high in the centre, but low around the sides. Large windows admit sunlight into the central section of the roof, so the centre of the church is sunny but the wings are dark. The pews are around three sides of the altar, so the congregation are not all facing in the same direction. There were very few empty pews.

Although the church is rather plain, it has quite a lot of decoration. There is a plaster statue of Jesus, along with statues of other saints, and a rather modenistic wooden etching of St. Brendan in one corner. I particularly liked the Stations of the Cross, which were paintings somewhat after the style of Chagall, with regard to their vibrant colours. I feel there should be more vibrant colour in churches. The cross over the altar was traditional and there was a handsome and somewhat Mediterranean hanging of the Blessed Virgin in front of the ambo (or podium).

After the Rosary, there was some extending playing on the organ, and the priest emerged-- a white haired old priest, who (I hope it's not ungenerous to say) seemed a bit shaky on his feet. There was an opening hymn I didn't recognize, and I found it hard to make out the words-- "Emmanuel, Emmanuel" was the closing line.

The priest referred to the readings in his opening words, which I always like.

The first reading was read by a lady Minister of the Word-- it was the "I am a man of unclean lips" section from Isaiah. The gospel was read by the priest, of course, and was Matthew 10:24-33: "Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul",

There were hymns and songs throughout the Mass. 'God in Heaven, we praise thy name' was the only one I could sing along with. The closing hymn was something about Mary, Queen of the Universe, in which the word 'triumph' occurred a few times-- I liked it but didn't recognise it. "Céad Míle Fáilte romhat, a Íosa" was played on the organ after Communion. The Lord's Prayer was sung, folk Mass style. The Hail Mary was said in Irish, I forget when precisely. The entire congregation aside from me seemed to know all the songs. The psalm was spoken but the 'mystery of faith' was sung.

I was pleased and surprised that there was no Sign of Peace, the spinach of the liturgy.

The priest did not give a homily, which always disappoints me, but he said a few words during the Prayers of the Faithful. He mentioned the frequency with which the phrase 'do not be afraid' occurs in the Bible (I forget how many times it appears, but it's a lot) and said: "We pray for people who see God as something to be a afraid of, that he's watching over them and spying on them. He's not watching over them". I winced a little at that, but I knew what he meant. He also rather adroitly worked the readings into a prayer for vocations, asking us to pray for young people who were being called in a special way but might be afraid to answer the call.

Sadly, the entire congregation joined in with the Eucharistic doxology, i.e., "through him and with him and in him", etc. (I know one priest who says this in Irish to avoid this abuse.) The priest actually encouraged the conregation to join in with: "I leave you peace, my peace I give you."

There were three or four extraordinary ministers of the Eucharist.

At the end of the Mass, the priest thanked us all for having the 'courage' to come to Mass through the rain!

On the whole, I very much liked this church, the priest and the congregation. I wish I knew more of the traditional Catholic songs. Indeed, I intend to learn them-- but I have intended that for some time. I like the fact that the Catholic Church has preserved an everyday oral folk culture amongst ordinary people, at a time when there is so little oral folk culture in the classic sense.

It might take me a while to 'get Mass' in all the churches of Dublin, but I'm in no great rush.

I've always had an inclination to visit all the pubs in Dublin, too!

P.S. I am an inveterate chronicler. I have kept a (private) diary of the last year of my life on the excellent Penzu.com website, and I wish I had kept diaries all my life. I have a spreadsheet of all the films I've ever seen, the marks I gave them, the place I saw them, the company I saw them in, and whether I sat through the whole thing.

So here is a list of the other Dublin churches in which I have attended Mass, as far as I can remember. I put a star beside ones that particularly appeal to me:

Holy Spirit Church, Ballymun (sister’s wedding, mother’s funeral, innumerable other times) *

Virgin Mary Church, Ballymun (First Holy Communion, uncle’s funeral, innumerable times) *

Our Lady of Victories Church, Glasnevin (Confirmation, many times)

Our Lady of Dolours Church, Glasnevin (many times)

St. Joseph’s Church, Poppintree (once or maybe twice)

Our Lady Queen of Heaven, Dublin Airport (several times) *

Our Lady Queen of Peace, Merrion Road (many times)

St. Mary’s Pro-Cathedral, Dublin City Centre (several times)

St. Kevin’s Church, Harrington Street, Dublin City Centre (twice-- Latin Mass, low and high)

Our Lady Seat of Wisdom, University College Dublin (innumerable times) *

Holy Redeemer Church, Bray (funeral Mass)

Blessed Margaret Ball Chapel, Santry (once) *

Church of the Holy Family, Santry (many times)

Church of the Immaculate Conception, Clondalkin (funeral)

Church of the Presentation of our Lord, Clondalkin Dutch Village (many times)

Holy Child Church, Whitehall (many times)

Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Whitefriar Street (my Wedding Mass, many times) *

St. Theresa’s Church, Clarendon Street (many times)

Our Lady of Consolation, Donnycarney (once)

Church of the Immaculate Conception (Adam and Eve’s), Merchant’s Quay (once)

Our Mother of Divine Grace, Ballygall (once or twice)

St. Michael’s Church, Inchicore (once)

Terenure College Chapel, Terenure (funeral)

Church of the Sacred Heart, Donnybrook (once)

St. John the Baptist church, Clontarf (funeral)

Outside of Dublin, in Ireland, I think I have only attended Mass in Westport city centre, Clarina in County Limerick, and Portlaoise. St. Joseph's Church in Clarina, Limerick, had a big effect on me as a teenager and led me to a religious conversion which lasted all of several weeks.

Help Save the Central Catholic Library!

There was an interesting story in The Irish Catholic recently about goings-on at the Central Catholic Library in Dublin's Merrion Square. There is a proposal (which has been protested) to transfer some holdings to Dublin City University. This is being considered for financial reasons. And the opening hours of the library have been contracting recently, for lack of staffing (it is mostly staffed on a volunteer basis).

It's a real shame to see the Central Catholic Library suffer so, because it is a gem. It is where we have held all but one of our G.K. Chesterton Society of Ireland meetings. It has a large variety of old Catholic (and not just Catholic books)-- it has new books, too, but the old ones are especially interesting. And there is a reading room on the first floor with a variety of Catholic publications.

It's housed in a beautiful old Georgian house, and the environment itself is very peaceful and conducive to serious thought.

Support the library! Become a member! Become a visitor! Maybe even become a volunteer, if you have the time!

Members will (the article suggests) get to vote on this proposal, too. So if you have strong views on it, consider becoming a member and helping to decide the future of the Library and its holdings. Either way, it will need support to survive.