Ireland's Break from The Past

When Shergar wins the Epsom again. When Rev. Paisley does a jig down the Falls Road. When the Dail outlaws the drink.

Well, Shergar’s nowhere to be found, Paisley’s soon to see St. Peter, and considering recent economic forecasts, the Dail could use a pint just about now. But this year in Ireland, the once inconceivable, has become reality.

Queen Elizabeth II, the reigning British monarch, is now more welcome on Erin’s shores than the head of the Roman Catholic Church, Benedict XVII. A more surprising shift in recent history one would be hard-pressed to find. Time has proven once again that it does have a healthy sense of irony.

Catholicism is inextricably linked to the formation of the Irish nation. Under the rule of the Protestant British, the Irish remained unrepentantly Catholic. The 800 years of oppressive British hegemony on the island forged political movements and poetry, national psyche and song. Always up for a rebellion, the Irish repeatedly tried and failed to escape Britain's empire. Moreso than the ballot box or the armalite, Catholicism constituted the greatest rejection of Westminster. Today these hereditary allegiances and enmities have all but melted in the emerald mist.

The thousands of cases of clergy sexual abuse have hollowed out the Irish Church. Hypocrisy has served as the midwife of secularization. The Church has sown the seeds of its own demise, with mass attendance dropping and respect for the institution at an all- time low. In an unprecedented move, the Taoiseach (Prime Minister) rhetorically eviscerated the Church’s cover-up of the sexual abuse crisis before parliament. Soon thereafter the Vatican recalled its ambassador, with Ireland following suit by closing its embassy at the Holy See.

This June, the Church’s Eucharistic Conference will take place in Dublin. The government extended an invitation to the Pope, but this decision rested more on custom than any genuine desire for a papal visit. Sensing the antipathy of the Irish people, the Archbishop of Dublin responded to the invitation by stating that Ireland wasn’t ready for the Pontiff. Perhaps the Church isn’t as deaf as the past would indicate.

The starkness of the Church’s fall from grace has been accompanied by the Irish public’s increasingly positive view of the United Kingdom. The burgeoning relationship between the two countries was capped by a monumental visit from the Queen in the summer of last year. A century of violence and bitterness has transpired since the last visit of a sitting monarch, but the Irish people received the Queen with near universal acclamation. While the Celtic Tiger may have left the country on the golden road to insolvency, it also contributed to the maturation of the Irish nation. Confidence replaced inferiority in public consciousness. Anti-British sentiment has been reduced to a mere relic of Ireland’s nationalist past. “Brits out” and “Up the Ra” no longer mire the thinking of the Anglo-Irish relationship. The British government has certainly contributed to this progression with acts of reconciliation like the Saville Inquiry, apologizing for past miscarriages of justice, and the Queen’s commemoration of Ireland’s War of Independence. Generational change has healed wounds and reshaped the dialogue on both sides of the Irish Sea.

Still, never would an Irishman have thought he’d live to see the day when the Queen, the very embodiment of British imperialism, would be more welcome than the Holy Father. Ireland has shed parochialism, and perhaps some of its national identity (arguably the less savory bits) in the name of modernity. The talk of joining the Commonwealth is certainly premature, but the British Isles are closer now than at any time in recent memory. And as the influence of the Church wanes, Ireland joins the ranks of the post-Christian countries of Western Europe.

Yeats said it best.

Romantic Ireland’s dead and gone,

It’s with O’Leary in the grave.