Saint Patrick, Ireland, and Irish Americans

In the 5^th Century AD, a teenager named Patrick was kidnapped and sold into slavery in Ireland. Though he escaped, Patrick returned decades later as Ireland’s bishop and left a powerful impression on the island for centuries to come. Irish historian, Thomas Cahill notes:

Within his lifetime or soon after his death, the Irish slave trade came to a halt and other forms of violence…decreased…. [H]e established indigenous monasteries and convents,…[which] reminded the Irish that the virtues of lifelong faithfulness, courage, and generosity were actually attainable by ordinary human beings (Thomas Cahill, 1996).

Ireland 1978

This author, Joseph Patrick Tevington, was born in Brooklyn in 1959 to a Dublin-born dad and a first generation Irish-American mom.  Along with my sister, we traveled to Ireland in 1978 with an assortment of our family’s New York-based diaspora for a family wedding.  A few things about late 1970s Ireland were far from what I expected:

• Though Paul McCartney just had a monster hit in Ireland and the United Kingdom, the song only gained miniscule attention in the U.S. Popular culture tastes differed on both sides of the Atlantic.
• Beatle-inspired long hair for young men was on its way out in Ireland, while “punk rock” with safety pins and tales of fisticuffs was in vogue.
• While centuries long struggles between some British and some Irish had reignited and were very much in the American news, I heard little of it in the Dublin area.
• Irish Mass attendance had been in decline since 1972 (Faith Survey, 2016). At a bar, I had the occasion to ask a young priest about that decline.  I was taken aback that he seemed to see decreased church attendance as a positive!

Though Ireland’s vaunted Catholicism seemed to be fast becoming a thing of the past in 1978, a Polish pope would reignite it the following year – at least temporarily.

Ireland 1979

My late father-in-law liked to tease me by saying that places get nicer after I leave them!

On 9/29/79, one third of Ireland came to Dublin’s Phoenix Park (the same site in 2018) to celebrate Mass with Saint Pope John Paul II.  It was the largest gathering of Irish people in history! In a visit of just a few days, it is believed that John Paul II was seen by virtually everyone in Ireland (Irish Post, 9/29/20).

The BBC reported that “In 1983, four years after the triumphal visit of Pope John Paul II, the Irish people put the Eighth Amendment into their constitution.  The amendment gave equal rights to life to both the mother and the unborn” (BBC, 5/26/18).

Other than for that outstanding protection for pre-born children (and possibly a temporary upswing in Mass attendance), improvements in Catholic practice, respect for the sanctity of human life, and respect for the sanctity of the transmission of human life now appear to have been short-lived. Irish culture returned to its downward trajectory.  “Over the period 1972-2011, weekly church attendance by Irish Roman Catholics fell from 91% to 30%” (Faith Survey, 2016). Current numbers are even lower.

Ireland 1979 – 2018

While contraceptives became legal in 1979 and divorce in 1996, the recognition of marriage as limited to individuals of the opposite sex ended in 2015.  Constitutional protection for pre-born children ended in 2018.  Ireland has seen a

sixfold increase in marital breakdown since 1986….[and a] huge increase in cohabitation….a third figure worth highlighting is the number of children being raised outside marriage.  In 1986 this was 12.8pc of all children.  By 2011 it had increased to over 28.1 percent….as “family diversity” in Ireland increases overwhelmingly it will be the result of marriage and relationship breakdown and will go hand-in-hand with a rise in families without active, present fathers. (Iona Institute, 10/31/2013)

Ireland 2018

My second trip to Ireland was in June 2018 – just one month after Ireland’s horrific child abuse of abandoning the Eighth Amendment that protected unborn life. Though our trip was planned as a pilgrimage to Ireland’s holy places, only one or two of my fellow pilgrims had any Irish heritage – most were Filipino Americans.  One of them shared with me that they wanted to see what went wrong with Irish Catholicism to learn safeguards for the defense of Filipino Catholicism. Here’s a plausible explanation:

The Western world has defaulted to its old time religion: paganism….There were three widespread practices in antiquity that marked pagan life, each casually embraced: elimination of unwanted children, exploited sexuality, and leisured divorce….The rejection of amendment eight by the Irish is part of Christendom’s continuing collapse in the West, and a startling one, done by free democratic vote of the people. But this is… Ratzinger’s “Church of pagans who call themselves Christian” (Catholic World Report, 6/1/2018).

By vote of the “Irish” people (many of whom I suspect were U.S. citizens with dual citizenship), Ireland actually chose to enshrine same sex marriage and abortion:

Unlike Ireland, America never chose abortion; it was imposed upon them by the U.S. Supreme Court….Merely 18% of Ireland faithfully attend Mass….just 10 years ago, that number was almost half of Ireland. In 1983 when the 8th Amendment was passed into law?  Almost 4 in 5 faithfully attended Mass. (Lepanto Institute, 2018)

Conclusion – Celebrating Saint Patrick

New York’s Saint Patrick’s Day Parade has long been larger than its Dublin counterpart.  While leaving the NYC parade in 1979, I saw inebriated men urinating against the wall of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

In the 1980s, John Cardinal O’Connor argued that same-sex advocacy groups should not be allowed to march under a banner as the parade was a religious event.  I recall thinking that the horrendous behavior tolerated at the parade would discredit his argument that is was a religious event.

To my pleasant surprise, New York’s feisty cardinal was successful in getting the parade somewhat cleaned up.  It was not until fourteen years after Cardinal O’Connor’s death that same sex advocacy groups were allowed to march in the famous Parade under their own banner.

All of us – especially those of the Irish diaspora – need to be on our knees praying for Ireland and against its neo-paganism.  We need John Cardinal O’Connor’s feistiness in standing up for the sanctity of human life and the sanctity of the transmission of human life.