Prosperous, Cosmopolitan, and not very Catholic
Yesterday wasn’t only Eddie Delahunt’s birthday, it was also the 21st anniversary of Live-Aid. As I remember the day, there wasn’t a soul in Dublin who didn’t dip into the precursor to Self-Aid, albeit most of them wondering what Bono was doing with that girl. And nobody at the time would admit to not donating money.
Times change, and for credibility now you claim not simply that you didn’t save the world on July 13th 1985 but that you saw nothing of Wembley and you never heard of Philadelphia. Really? Queen played that day?
Another thing that everybody in Dublin was involved in - and I mean absolutely every single person - was the Pope’s mass in the Phoenix Park in 1979. A city of just over a million people hosted a mass attended by over a million people. Do the maths. Turns out now that said papal visit was the beginning of the end for Catholicism in Ireland according to Tom Hundley’s Chicago Tribune report in yesterday’s Kansas City Star.
The youth mass was held in Galway, at Ballybrit Racecourse, and the hundreds of thousands of young Irish folk were entertained by Bishop Eamon Casey and the singing priest himself, Father Michael Cleary. Within ten years both figures were exposed as being less than bishoply and priestly, if still human.
This led to mass attendance plummeting down to 25% of the population, to no priests being ordained in the Dublin archdiocese last year, and to Father Owuamanam from Nigeria being in Dublin’s Pro-Cathedral. If you haven’t visted Ireland for fifteen years or more, and think Ireland is littered with Barry Fitzgerald type priests then this article is for you.
See Also:
• Bono: Part-time Irish Rock Star Learns Piano
• Dublin Pubs Change to Stay the Same
• How the Irish Feel About Being Catholic
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