Part III on the Irish abortion vote

One more bit to go...

So, an Irish-speaking country of young families – and the oldest version of Catholicism outside of the bounds of the later Roman Empire – became an English-speaking country wherein the men and women married late, if at all. And with a Church whose primary function seemed to be to encourage its members to forget the past. Historians of Ireland and the Church now that in the 1800s and into the 1950s, the Irish Catholic Church was the most Progressive, modernizing element in the country’s society. I’ve tried to explain this at Irish festivals in the U.S. (I used to teach Irish at these, and tell Irish-language folktales.) But I was usually laughed at by someone, usually a woman (with red hair, or so it seemed) at how stupid such an assertion was. That just showed their ignorance, of course.

One final point about marrying late: In my mother's mother’s people, of three daughters and one son, only one daughter (the youngest and most American) married, and in my mother's father's family, of two brothers and three or four sisters, only the two brothers married, and one of them "married late" and had no children. In other words, the people were "neutered" culturally and in family life and creation.

And the Church, <i>dar Crom</i>, it would have driven me back to the old religion of an <i>tSlua Sí</i>, the Noble People of the Hills. It was a Jansenist Church, on one hand, and on the other, materialistic. It's schools -- such as they existed, esp in the U.S. were all about attaining material progress. For example, did you know that Communists in England in the later 1800s and early 1900s said the Irish were the easiest to lure away into atheism? Engels' own live-in girlfriend (Mary) was a Byrne (she spelled it "Burns", and could have easily been related to some of my people). When she died (of alcoholism, of course) he took up with her sister.

Now, "payment is due". The "Celtic Tiger" (also known as the Emerald Tiger) made yuppies of a large portion of the Irish, and the thin gruel of their parents' religion offered little resistance.

Of course the Irish hadlittle in the way of rebellion toward Vat II and its baleful spirit, to begin with, as well-noted by Commentators here. Just some stats and thoughts. Poland Ireland ain't. Not remotely. A "Catholic Country"? Well, in many ways, here and there. Once upon a time. We'll see just how much it remains so.

An Précháin