Goodbye to Catholic Ireland

by Mary Kenny

Book Overview

This is a cultural and personal narrative of the author's native society, from the fall of Parnell to the rise of President Mary Robinson. A social history of the 20th century in Ireland, the book... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0872432459
• ISBN13: 9780872432451
• Release Date: January 2000
• Publisher: Templegate Pub
• Length: 376 Pages
• Weight: 1.35 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.0" x 1.0" x 6.0"

Customer Reviews

Popular, fair-minded but critical narrative

Compared to Louise Fuller's Irish Catholicism since 1950: The Undoing of a Culture (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan, 2002), journalist Mary Kenny's book is lighter not only in size but in style. But, as with Fuller's academic study of the last half-century, Kenny traces too (if in condensed form) the previous history of Irish Catholicism that led up to its undoing. Fuller and Kenny both incorporate effectively the "Question Box" feature of the paper the Sacred Heart Messenger to cite how ordinary Irish Catholics acted and thought, and what such men and women worried about in their practice of the Faith, or at least its outward signs of devotion. Both authors evoke well the legalistic, overscrupulous, and rule-bound nature of a Catholic practice rooted in the ritual, the recital, and the repetition of prayers, visits, or duties in precisely the same manner, or else one risked damnation. Kenny shows effectively, however, that this now-discarded emphasis on "externals" rather than on the interior reforming of the soul was balanced somewhat by the kindness many--contrary to persistent stereotyping blaming the sins of a few scandalous figures on the goodness of the self-effacing majority--found a notable feature of Irish Catholicism over most of the 20th c. She gives fair credit to the thousands, if not millions, who sought to find comfort and relieve injustice, and how Irish Catholicism, for all its faults, drew many towards a more generous spirit--again countering media distortion. By delving into the anecdotes and asides of many, both clergy and laity, Kenny strives towards a fair depiction of what made Irish Catholicism both admirable and reprehensible, and it his to her credit that you close this book better aware of the intricacies and the impacts of both qualities. She born around WWII, also intersperses her own coming-of-age into what used to be called "women's liberation" as one of the pioneering Irish feminists, circa 1970, alongside such as Mary Robinson, later President. On varied issues Kenny has valuable insights, on matters such as the material abundance of the North vs. the poverty of the South, on women's roles within the Church and the power they exercised and the marginalization they faced, on the struggle for personal liberty from rules and strictures vs. the rampant consumerism and competition that has transformed Ireland, and on the distortions of the film version of "Angela's Ashes" vs. the more complicated reality of Catholicism and its then-inextricable ties with all of Irish life. The book does jump about a bit, although the chapters generally follow chronology, and at times her journalistic knack for summation overshadows a reader's wish for more in-depth insights, but she does refer to many more such sources in her narrative that can provide these considerations. This book, for a popular audience, is not weighty but nonetheless contains a wealth of ideas, albeit in scattered form. Kenny blends her own experiences, her wide r