A visit to Ireland

Last week, my wife Thetis and I very much enjoyed visiting Ireland for the first time. We were instantly on a first-name basis with the pleasant couples who ran our bed-and-breakfasts, in Dublin and in Cork.

On Easter Sunday, our first full day, we managed to set eyes on Dublin Archbishop Diarmuid Martin, Irish Taoiseach (pronounced TEE-SHOCK, meaning prime minister) Enda Kenny, and President Michael D. Higgins. After the Mass celebrated by the archbishop at St. Mary’s Pro-Cathedral, we saw the high officials on big screens at the noontime commemoration, at the nearby General Post Office (GPO), of the 1916 Easter Rising that proclaimed the Irish Republic independent from Britain, which had ruled the general Dublin area (the “Pale”) since the 12th century, and then all Ireland since the 16th century.

The long British occupation brought about the domination of the English language. The 1916 proclamation was in English. Public signs are bilingual, but major mass media are in English. At the Easter Mass, only a few readings and hymns were in Irish; the gospel and the homily were in English. I suspect that the usage of Irish in Ireland is less than that of Filipino in the Philippines.

The English Reformation was harsh on the Irish Catholic Church. Hundreds of Irish bishops and priests were martyred; church lands were confiscated. The grander cathedrals of Dublin, St. Patrick’s and Christchurch, belong to the Churches of England or Ireland. St. Mary’s is comparatively small and new (1829).

Religiosity. The Easter Mass—highlighted by Handel’s Hallelujah Chorus sung by the Palestrina boys’ choir—was packed. Ireland has the world’s highest church-going rate; the Philippines comes second. This is according to the International Social Survey Program (ISSP), the same source of this week’s reportage on world belief in God.  I used such data, by SWS, in my column “Filipinos’ exceptional religiosity” (Inquirer, July 26, 2008).

Incidentally, the Irish constitution was amended in 1995 to allow divorce, after getting a slim 50.3 percent in a referendum. Abortion is illegal unless a woman’s life is endangered by continuation of the pregnancy.  The sale of contraceptives was legalized in 1980.

Ireland is underpopulated. There were 8.1 million people in 1841, but in the next decade a million died from famine, and another million emigrated. Today there are less than 5 million. In contrast, the Philippine population grew from 7.6 million in 1903 to 92.3 million in 2010.

Touring. It was a pleasure to visit, even in the rain that keeps Ireland so green, the monastery of St. Kevin (6th c.) at Glendalough. Kevin was so kind that, when a bird began to build a nest on his hand outstretched in prayer, he waited for the eggs to be laid and hatched, and for the baby birds to fly away.  Perhaps that helped him live to age 120.

It was disappointing to find the heart of St. Lawrence O’Toole (12th c.), patron of Dublin, newly stolen from Christchurch. A sad church keeper told me it had happened on his watch a month ago, while the sound of the thieves’ metal-cutters was concealed by the organ music.

The Irish are friendly. An old man at the GPO crowd offered us the traditional “100,000 welcomes” upon learning we were Filipinos.  The gardai (policemen) were good-natured in keeping away protestors at St. Mary’s, with posters saying “the Catholic Church is Satan’s worldwide pedophile army” and “Catholics rape children for free in Ireland.”

Be ready for Irish blarney. I was addressed as “young man” by a number of shopkeepers with hair less white than mine. One claimed that I could afford to buy anything, since he accepted payment only from women, for instance from my “daughter” with me in the store.

The Irish are musical.  Their uillean (pronounced ILL-AN) pipes have the wind not blown from the mouth like Scottish bagpipes, but pressed by the elbow. I bought a tin whistle, and can play tunes on it, thanks to my recorder experience.

Gombeenism. Yet things in Ireland are not completely fine at all, at all.  Last April 14, veteran pundit James Downey wrote in the Irish Independent:

“The broader question is what we have done with the independence which we gained in the period 1916-1921 and on which our leaders subsequently built.

“It’s tempting to say that our ancestors won it and that our own generation has thrown it away. Not only tempting, but in important respects true.  Undoubtedly we have lost our economic independence and will take a very long time to regain it. …

“Where they went wrong was not so much in the excesses of Tiger years … as in the failure, and worse than failure, to curb corruption and what we like to call ‘gombeenism’. … [This word] can cover almost anything from dramatic strokes and deals to improper political and business practices to the trading of small favors and abuse of petty power.

“It was endemic before independence. It is still endemic. In some ways it is worse than before. Virtually all the measures aimed at putting it down have been insincere or misdirected, ruined by political and official inertia or subverted by the cynical Irish belief that nothing can ever change for the better.”

But are most Irish really that cynical?  Would most Filipinos be that cynical?  In the absence of evidence from reliable sources like the ISSP, I think that putting one’s people down as culturally handicapped does not help to get on the road to true development.

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Contact SWS: www.sws.org.ph or [email protected].