Home from Ireland. Too Soon

HELLO AGAIN!
 
It is 5 AM Monday morning, August 10, as I sit down at my desk to compose a Café post, though my body tells me it is almost noon. Transatlantic flights have peculiar side effects. We returned home from Ireland late Saturday night or early Sunday morning. There was no yellow police tape around my house after our 6+ week absence, but our modem or router or both is/are out of commission. [It turned out to be the router.] The repair man will be here Tuesday morning…so I am not sure precisely when you will boot this material up to your devices. But also, having awakened at 2 AM, Margaret has our washing machine on the power-plus setting and I am raring to go at the keyboard.
 
WHERE WERE WE?
 
If you follow the Café via Facebook or Linked In, you have some idea that we spent the past six weeks in Ireland, specifically in the southwest quadrant. The trip included extended stays in Ennis, Galway, Killarney, Knightstown/Valentia Island, and Dingle. Galway and Knightstown were two-week stays. [Our final night was spent in a Shannon hotel near the airport, courtesy of Delta Airlines, which cancelled our flight till the next day.] Back in 2024 we spent three months in Ireland, September through November. That extended stay was “vacation off season” and included frost and even some snow before we returned home. This year’s trip coincided with the summer tourist rush to Ireland as well as the “heat dome” over Europe. We were blessed with extraordinarily fine summer weather for most of the duration, necessitating the purchase of lighter summer clothing. Like shorts. Who would have thought I’d be rummaging TK Maxx after Sunday Mass in Ireland? Or, narrowly missing a wildfire in a national park near killarney?
 
HOW ARE THE CHURCHES DOING?
 
First off, everywhere we stayed was comfortably close to a local Catholic Church. Thus, we were able to attend Mass every Sunday, almost always on foot, and in two cases around the corner from our rental. Ireland, like the United States, has regions where the shortage of priests does not permit regular daily Mass. There, the parishes are clustered, and two or three priests are responsible for a county or region. The names of the priests are listed in the local bulletin along with their cell phone numbers. Outside the metro areas like Galway, the standard seems to be the celebration of Mass at least once on a weekday in addition to Sunday, usually later in the day. Time for confession and Eucharistic holy hours are usually available in any parish during the week. In Knightstown we were lucky enough to attend an annual Mass on the grounds of the cemetery where Margaret’s relatives are buried. I had the distinct impression that this Mass was almost a religious/social command performance for Catholics on Valentia Island, home to about 600 people. The names of Catholics who died during the past year were read and memorialized, and all the gravesites sprinkled with holy water. The attendance was comparable to any Mass I attended on this Ireland trip.
 
Back in 2024 I marveled that all the jokes about the brevity of Irish Masses were true. A 35-minute time span held up, on average, during this trip. But with more experience of the Catholic Irish culture, I appreciated that generally the style and emphases in the Irish Mass capture much of what Vatican II hoped to achieve in its 1963 reform, Sacrosanctum Concilium. The Masses I attended “got down to business” in ways that reflected and reinforced a Catholic sense of unity and identity. For example, after the welcome words in the missal, it was not unusual for the celebrant to announce the name of the deceased for whom the Mass is offered and then add an affectionate note about the life of the deceased…or someone in the parish who had just died that week. A community preserving its history in the celebration of the Lord’s Supper, when you get down to it. The sermons, usually quite brief, reminded me more of the advice and encouragement you might get in the confessional.
 
It was rare to attend a Mass with a Kiss of Peace, in the American style. In Irish liturgy, the act would often be superfluous, for two reasons: [1] in most churches I visited, people entered the church and looked in on friends already in the pews; thus, they have already greeted and extended peace to their neighbor before Mass; and [2] very few people rush out of Mass, as best as I could tell. There is extended fellowship after Mass on the church grounds, weather permitting, of course. [On a humorous note, I remember attending Mass in Cavan in 2024, and when Mass ended, we filed out to the aroma of an emergency septic tank operation across the street…the birds were dropping out of the air! Still, we enjoyed outdoor fellowship with our Cavan host family and their regular weekly co-worshippers.]  
 
Depending upon where we worshipped, parts of the congregational prayers were lifted in Gaelic, particularly the Our Father. I was intrigued by that, and later I learned that Gaelic or “Irish” is taught in the schools. So, I asked my budget AI program to confirm that: “The Irish language is compulsory in primary and secondary schools across Ireland for most. It is also required for entry to many Irish universities.” Now that intrigued me. It is one of my life’s regrets that I never learned a second language to speak fluently. Today, for me, that regret is greatest with Spanish, spoken widely in Florida; the absence of facility with Spanish is a deficit in both my counseling and my catechizing work today.
 
But aside from my own personal regrets, I found this Irish linguistic national focus—reflected in society and churches alike-quite remarkable. There is a consciousness of Ireland’s unique story—the glory of its saints and the agonies of persecution and programmed starvation—that is inescapable, even to an outside visitor like myself. This explains in part why Irish churches retain the art, devotion, and language of centuries past and remain faithful to the discipline of recording and observing contemporary life, including parish life.
 
Irish Catholicism is buttressed by powerful devotion to the Eucharist, Mary, and the saints. The newer churches in the United States, relatively speaking, simplified their worship spaces after Vatican II. In Ireland nearly every church I visited is “busy” in the design sense, with multiple sites of religious art, ikons, stained glass, and statues. The Catholic Church in Knightstown is open all day every day, as were numerous others along our way. I made several off-hours visits to the Knightstown church there, and every time I went, I encountered other worshippers, often mothers with small children.
 
WHAT DOES THE FUTURE HOLD?
 
I mentioned above that I collected church bulletins, and I started doing calculations with the weekly collection figures. [Once a pastor, always a pastor, I guess.] In many cases I was left wondering how the parishes survive financially. Outside of Galway, I came across several parishes reporting a weekly summer mean of about 250 Euros or 300 U.S. dollars. In some areas, the church bulletin is printed for a regional cluster of church worship sites, so it is harder to factor the average sources of income. I considered, too, that these numbers were tallied during the height of the summer vacation season in Ireland.
 
The issue of money is critical. The obvious expenses are maintenance and upkeep of the churches, as well as the sustenance of the priests themselves. Beyond that, at least some churches probably need more ministerial workspace. Many churches do not have ancillary structures, such as a social hall and rooms for religious instructions, not to mention room for Sunday coffee, fundraisers, various ministries, etc. There is also the hard reality that most of Ireland’s Catholic churches were built a long time ago—multiple centuries in some cases—and require major expensive restorations. [This is true across Europe in general.] In recent times, the movement of immigrants from other countries, notably Ukraine, continues to challenge destination nations, including Ireland. I recall from 2024 seeing a hotel that had been put at the service of housing Ukrainian war refugees. Because the Irish people are instinctively welcoming, does this make the Emerald Isle a prime destination for desperate peoples all over the globe? Can the country meet that challenge? I did not get the opportunity to seriously study the political direction of the Irish government on policy or direction of accepting more immigrants. Note too, it is generally accepted by those I talked to that Ireland, like the United States, has a serious housing shortage.
 
I would venture a guess that most religious education of the young occurs in the home under the parents’ tutelage. This model is specifically cited in the Roman Rite for Infant Baptism, where parents are blessed and commissioned “to be the best of teachers” of their newborns in the ways of the Faith. I looked hard to detect the existence of adult faith formation programs to assist parents and adults generally, but I had little luck. I suspect there are more such programs around Dublin, with its proximity to the venerable seminary, Maynooth.
 
WOULD WE GO BACK TO IRELAND?
 
I would never say never. Margaret and I are of the same mind that this past trip was something very special. The pleasure of time with family and good friends in Ireland was exceeded only by the quality time we enjoyed with each other. We had a ritual of sitting together each night and marveling at the scenery of water, mountains, meadows, and sunsets. [The sun, cooperatively.  set after 10 PM.]
 
We are also realists. Next year we celebrate turning 80. We did not rent a car on this trip; the left lane driving is more challenging than it used to be. Early in the trip this year we utilized public transportation, which is very good. Later in the trip we depended upon our driver/tour guide/devout Catholic and true friend Mary for those adventures in the Ring of Kerry and the treacherous coastline…and at the final goodbye at Shannon Airport.
 
Next year’s dance card is full, and it includes a trip to see my family, so that takes us to 2028, at least. My family is based in Buffalo and Kansas City. We are still recovering from this year’s journeys, so who knows what the future holds? Maybe the call of Irish brown bread, fish and chips, and digestives at Tesco’s will become overwhelming.