WHEN HE LAUNCHED the Dublin archdiocese’s new policy on First
Communion on Monday, Archbishop Diarmuid Martin said there had been
“enormous change in the Irish church” since Vatican II. Those of us whose childhoods coincided with the late 1950s and early 1960s can agree, although much remains the same.
Ireland was changed utterly by two events in those years, the Lemass-Whitaker First Programme for Economic Expansion, from 1958 to 1963, and the Second Vatican Council, from 1962 to 1965.
But in October 1962 all eyes in Ireland, as elsewhere, were on Cuba, not Rome. The end of the world seemed nigh. A Catholic Irish-American, John F Kennedy, had become leader of the most powerful country in the world 22 months beforehand, and life as we knew it seemed on the brink of mutually assured destruction.
Catholicism in those days seemed to be all about suffering, punishment and investment in eternity. My teacher at Mullen school, near Frenchpark, Co Roscommon, was Mrs Ford. A devout woman, she had immense influence on me. I saw her cry just once. It was the morning after her daughter entered a convent. She had “died” to the family, who did not know when they might see her again.
It was a cruel religion, particularly to women. My devout grandmother buried her son, Matthew, in a field near our house in Mullen. He died after birth, before he could be baptised, so he could not be buried in consecrated ground and would never see heaven. He was in limbo, which was “abolished” by Pope Benedict in 2007.
At Sunday Mass in Frenchpark, women sat on their own side of the church, with their heads covered. They rarely went outside the home beyond attending confession and Mass.
In October 1962 I was being trained to be an altar boy by Mrs Ford. A Sunday previously there was no altar boy to serve Mass, and Fr Donnellan berated the congregation in a deep rage from the altar.
In our house there were intimations of changes to come. My father had stopped going to Mass. Early in 1961 the Vatican announced that St Philomena was being removed from the calendar of saints. To my father that meant she never existed. He was stunned.
His mother was devoted to St Philomena. She wore a St Philomena scapular around her neck as she endured a slow death from stomach cancer in the 1930s. When she died, in 1939, she left the St Philomena scapular to my father, her youngest child.
I never finished training to be an altar boy with Mrs Ford. In December 1962 we moved from Mullen, a townland where my ancestors had lived, to Ballaghaderreen, about 10km away.
Ballaghaderreen was full of priests, brothers and nuns.
At the time Ireland was producing so many clergy that between a third and half went on the missions. In 1961 it moved Pope John to say, “Any Christian country will produce a greater or lesser number of priests. But Ireland, that beloved country, is the most fruitful of mothers in this respect.” He might have been talking about Ballaghaderreen.
The priests taught at St Nathy’s diocesan college in the town; more were in the presbytery, with the bishop of Achonry living in a palace out the road. Every committee in the town had a priest on it, and he was usually its chairman.
Men, passing priests or brothers on the street, took off their hats and saluted them. They stepped off the footpath to allow nuns to pass.
IT WAS AT THE cathedral in Ballaghaderreen that I really became aware of Vatican II.
At the 10am children’s Mass on Sundays Bishop James Fergus would tell us “boys and girls” what was going on in Rome, in an avuncular style that conveyed his wonderment at it all.
We were amazed when the cathedral was painted in bright creams, an altar was installed in front of the high altar, and the priest began to face us during Mass, which was now in English. And sometimes in Irish. More generally, people began to realise that in the eyes of God they were just as good as priests, nuns and brothers.
As the council progressed I was very taken with the document Gaudium et Spes. It felt like a prescription for the Catholic Church to get involved in creating a just society. And there were the Nostra Aetate and the Unitatis Redintegratio, documents that were kind to other Christians and people of other religions.
At the Brothers’ school I sat beside the only Protestant boy in Ballaghaderreen. He was the most mild-mannered and best-behaved of us all. I could not believe he was destined for hell.
IN JANUARY 1965 my youngest brother was born, and it was decided to call him after Douglas Hyde, who was buried 5km out the road. His grave was beside a church that, we were told, guaranteed hellfire should we darken its door.
At the baptism, when the priest at the cathedral was told our baby brother was to be called Douglas, he turned on my mother and said, “You can’t call him that. That’s a Protestant name. Whoever heard of a St Douglas?”
My mother, bless her, responded quickfire “We’ll call him Peter Douglas so, after the first pope and the first president.”
And it was done, but my brother has only ever been known as Douglas.
As a young and devout Catholic I was excited by the developments emerging from Vatican II. I was convinced I would be a priest then, and very much wanted to be, in this new exciting Catholic Church.
One day in our Greek class at St Nathy’s our priest-teacher improved on the philosopher Heraclitus, who had said you can never step in the same river twice.
The priest said, “Boys, remember you can never step in the same river even once. Because it is never the same river.”
It suggested a dynamic church.
That man, Fr Tom Flynn, went on to become president of St Nathy’s; later, following the traditional route not of his making, he became bishop of Achonry.
In the midst of all this heady ecclesiastical activity some of us kids set up our own youth club. We were allowed to have a representative on the newly created parish pastoral council, and I was chosen to be it.
In 1970 Bishop James Fergus decided the glorious trees around the cathedral should be cut down and the area be turned into a car park. There was uproar in the town, but not one person would say it to him.
At a parish council meeting I did.
The rest were silent.
After the meeting an older woman on the council came to me and said, “Musha gossoon, what do you know and you still wet behind the ears?”
I realised two things then: that the already slow progress in church reform after Vatican II was as much the fault of a passive laity as of the clergy; and that I would not be a priest.
I could never take a vow of obedience.
The trees were cut down and replaced by tarmacadam.
In our youth club Christmas concert that year, which I scripted, we had a news item detailing Ballaghaderreen’s contribution to Conservation Year (as 1970 was), “They cut down all the trees around the cathedral,” followed by guffaws.
Some older people in the audience walked out, including my neighbour, who had sons in the clergy.
Yes, there was enormous change in the Irish Catholic Church after Vatican II, but, as with Heraclitus, it remained the same river.