The Catechist Cafe
SCRIPTURE
  • HOME
  • MORALITY
  • SCRIPTURE
  • PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT
  • CHURCH HISTORY
  • BOOKS
  • LITURGY
  • ON MY MIND
  • The Boys of Aroma Hill-Callicoon
  • ABOUT THE BREWMASTER
  • CATHOLIC NOVELISTS and the BOOKS THEY WRITE
  • VATICAN II DECREE ON LITURGY STUDY

7/8/2015

Masculine Faith

0 Comments

Read Now
 
Picture

According to my Fit Bit yesterday (Monday) I walked 21,000 steps, nearly 10 miles, and climbed 100 flights of stairs (or one or two rain forest mountains). We hiked out to the home of Margaret's father and brother, the latter known as Uncle Con. Con is remembered for his maintenance and care of a Marian grotto, which is a place of local devotion today. In fact, I have attempted to attach a photo of a highway sign pointing to the grotto; can you decipher the Gaelic names on the sign?

Today was the first day of our stay in Ireland where the weather truly lived up to Irish reputation. Low sky, high winds, cold rain--in fact, we arrived home at 6 PM to discover that our power was out. I went to the pub across the street and was assured that it was an area-wide problem. An hour later I returned home to reassure my traveling mates.

This afternoon I finally got to see Con's grotto. I was expecting to see a little garden, a statue, and a bench. What I actually saw was rather breathtaking: a life-sized statue of Mary several hundred feet up a wall of a working slate mine. Con was one of hundreds who worked on this remarkable project, undertaken to honor the Marian Year of 1954. This would have been just four years after the declaration of the doctrine of the Assumption of Mary, declared by Pius XII, in his encyclical Munificentissimus Deus. (I have been waiting six months to show off my erudition in this regard--actually, the Assumption was the subject of my graduate research in 1972.)

Con's story, I would guess, might be typical of devotional men of his place and generation. Con worked multiple jobs throughout his life, including checking the equipment of international communications outlets on Valentia Island. (The trans-Atlantic cable ends in three places on the island, including next to the Catholic Church down the street.) His surviving relative told me that every day he visited the shrine to say his prayers, and worked as a volunteer at the site, accompanied for many years by his faithful dog. It would seem that devotion to Mary was a major component in sustaining his faith.

I was receiving my first religious instruction in Con's working years, and I recall that Mary was looked to as a mediator of mercy, that devotion to God's mother would soften the divine wrath. This outlook on Mary was true in the U.S., and it was very true in Ireland. Today, in driving about Valentia and the mainland we encountered two modest but well-kept roadside Marian shrines, with turn offs where one or two cars might pull in off the shoulder.

Devotion of Mary allowed a laboring man to put his energies and skills to good use; Con is remembered by his family for his labors at the slate shrine (Even as an in-law, I have heard these stories for years.) The rosary, with its straight formulary and order, must have appealed to task oriented males in the way that monks find satisfaction in regular recitation of the psalms.

These are educated guesses on my part, of course, but the physical landscape of the land and the physical evidence of its devotions seem to me to be clues to the underlying faith of a Catholic land that has had its struggles from within and without.

Share

0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

Details

    THINGS BIBLICAL

    .

    Archives

    April 2023
    November 2022
    October 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    August 2021
    August 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    June 2019
    December 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    August 2014

    RSS Feed

Proudly powered by Weebly
  • HOME
  • MORALITY
  • SCRIPTURE
  • PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT
  • CHURCH HISTORY
  • BOOKS
  • LITURGY
  • ON MY MIND
  • The Boys of Aroma Hill-Callicoon
  • ABOUT THE BREWMASTER
  • CATHOLIC NOVELISTS and the BOOKS THEY WRITE
  • VATICAN II DECREE ON LITURGY STUDY