An Irish priest’s letter

DEAR Mr. Mangahas,

I was very pleasantly surprised to read the title of your column yesterday [Inquirer, 4/21/2012] and found your comments interesting and positive. I don’t think that in more than 40 years of living here in the Philippines that I’ve read any kind of analysis of life in Ireland by a Filipino writing from the perspective of his profession.

If I may be allowed a couple of very minor quibbles. The population of the whole of Ireland, including Northern Ireland, is around 6,200,000. The figure you used for the current population is that of the 2011 census in the Republic. The 1841 figure is for the whole of Ireland, all of which was then part of the United Kingdom. Nevertheless, the contrast between the population growth in Ireland and in the Philippines is startling. Every census from 1851 until 1951 showed a decrease in the population of what is now the Republic of Ireland. … The decline was due mainly to massive emigration and partly to the fact that many never married. This was a rural phenomenon where the eldest son inherited the farm. Most farms were small and land reform had only come towards the end of the 19th century. …

Sadly—I speak as a Catholic priest, a Columban missionary from Dublin—I don’t think that we can claim to be the most church-going anymore. Maybe 50 years ago almost 100 percent of Catholics went to Mass every Sunday. It’s now down to around 48 percent and, according to Archbishop Diarmuid Martin, as low as two percent in some Dublin parishes. This would be in places with more social problems.

The name of the Anglican cathedral you mentioned is ‘Christ Church,’ two words, its popular name. The official name is the Cathedral of the Holy Trinity. The Church of Ireland, though part of the Anglican Communion, is separate from the Church of England. Members of the Church of Ireland are usually referred to now as “Anglicans” rather than “Protestants” but my Church of Ireland neighbors when I was growing up always called themselves “Protestants.”

Yes, “gombeenism” is part of the reality, though is not nearly as endemic as here. A Filipino friend in Dublin told me last year of another Filipino who was stopped by a Garda doing a routine check of driving licenses. Unfortunately, when he handed over his license he also handed over a 10 euro bill. He ended up with a huge fine.

This month I renewed my Philippine driving license, which must be one of the most expensive in the world. It cost more than four days of the Philippine minimum wage, and half a day at the LTO office. It is valid for three years. The Irish one is valid for ten years up to the age of 70. When I renewed my Irish license last year the transaction took about 30 seconds and cost less than two hours of the minimum wage in Ireland.

I’m delighted that you had such a good experience of Ireland. The Irish and Filipinos share a similar kind of friendliness and informality. While Irish people can have a cynical veneer, I don’t think that deep down we are cynical as a group. In last year’s general election in the Republic there was tremendous anger at the outgoing government, led by Fianna Fail, the largest party in the state since 1932. They lost more than 50 of their 76 seats and are now only the third largest party in the Dail and, in a recent poll, only fourth in popularity. Unlike the Philippines, we do have genuine political parties that have some kind of cohesive policies. And our Taoiseach and Minister for Finance are both teachers by profession. How many teachers are there in the Congress or Senate here?

Many thanks for your article. May you have a chance to visit Ireland again.

God bless,

(Father) Sean Coyle <scoylumban@gmail.com>

San Columbano, Bacolod City

Dear Fr. Coyle,

Thank you so much for your thorough reading of my column; it adds further enjoyment to our Irish visit!

I should have remembered that any 19th c. population figure would have included Northern Ireland. Mea culpa. Having been with ISSP since 1990, I’ve always known that its Irish surveys include the Republic only. Yet its British surveys, perhaps for budgetary reasons, have excluded the North and hence been properly labeled “Great Britain.”  …

Thank you too for the correct rendition of Christ Church. Its leaflet for visitors says “Church of Ireland” and underneath “Anglican/Episcopal” which is no doubt precise.  I did not mean to equate the Churches of Ireland and England when I used the word “or”; I only meant to point out that neither Christ Church nor St. Patrick’s is Catholic.

As an agrarian reform researcher, I’ve read the very sad story of the Irish famine—a term that Amartya Sen points out means the lack of access to food, not the lack of food itself; Ireland was a food exporter during the Great Famine. The evictions of tenants from their homes in the “haciendas,” for refusal to continue to work on the crops designated for the landlords, were the height of cruelty; they even had to be enforced by the army.

… Church-going has declined everywhere through the years, in the Philippines as well.  So my best guess is that Ireland is still No. 1 on this measure.

Finally, thank you for agreeing, if I read your letter right, that neither the Irish nor the Filipinos are seriously culturally handicapped by deep cynicism about the future.  The most I would venture to say is that our peoples both tend to be overly modest. …

Best wishes for continued success in your mission in the Philippines.  We Filipinos (including myself personally) have benefited so much from the dedicated work of Irish and Irish-American priests.

MM

* * *

Contact SWS: www.sws.org.ph or mahar.mangahas@sws.org.ph.