Diaspora Irish the world over gathered in their parishes to keep the light of their civilization and their Faith alive, so far from Ireland’s green shores.
Today, the Faith is dying in Ireland. Only the very elderly attend Mass. Ancient nuns clad in twinsets decline to identify themselves on hotel registers; they call themselves ‘Ms.’ Vocations are practically non-existent. Ordinary Irish people are hostile to the Faith of their forebears – or what they think that Faith is. Denied catechism for over 50 years, most of the laity know next to nothing of the Faith.
Incredibly, the reaction of much of the Church’s aging hierarchy is to go deeper into denial. No one attends Mass? They want to make the Mass more ‘relevant.’ No one believes in the Real Presence? They shunt the Eucharist aside. What is the problem? It’s Rome, of course.
Meanwhile, media reports and popular films full of half-truths infuriate people all over again--and they stay away in droves. No sacraments. No grace. No vocations. A kind of spiritual death lies like a cold pall over what was once heralded as ‘the Land of Saints and Scholars.’
What will happen? Either the Faith will re-enter that culture or Ireland will lose it entirely. But Faith is ultimately something in the heart, and the Faith runs deep in Ireland.
We believe that we are witnessing the first stirrings of yet another turning point in Ireland’s long history.
Faithful Irish priests and lay people tell us that there are small cadres of young people ardent for the Faith, in Irish cities, universities and country towns. We have visited parishes in the midst of a rebirth. We have spoken with ancient Orders, suddenly receiving young, orthodox vocations.
For the truth is that the Faith that the real Saint Patrick – a fifth century Romanized Briton who was kidnapped by Irish slavers – brought to Ireland is not dead. It lies hidden in the Real Presence, now a flame flickering in Ireland’s green heart -- in ‘The Secret Catholic Insider Guide to Ireland.’
Beverly Stevens
Editor
Dublin, Ireland, May, 2014
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