It’s show-off time… I’m in England at the moment, after having spent the weekend in beautiful, gorgeous Ireland with a beautiful, gorgeous friend of mine (Keith) and his family. Lovely, lovely. So apologies in advance for any mistakes or errant rambling – I’m posting this from the house of the neighbours of the about-to-get-married couple I’m here to visit (the street where they all live is like something out of Coro St, no kidding).
Anyway, as I was in the Republic of Ireland (the first English-speaking Catholic country I’ve been in) I was tres looking forward to going to Mass – an interesting experience, to be sure.
According to his mother, 30-year-old Keith’s “typical of young Irish these days” – no Mass, no way.
Keith’s unapologetic about abandoning the faith of his childhood; as far as he’s concerned, there’s “something out there” but he’s certainly not going to sit in a church “run by paedophiles trying to fool everyone into doing what they want them to”. (As an aside, we talked about this at great length while doing the Ring of Kerry – sorry, but it took me 45 hours of flying, airports and no hand luggage to get here, so I’m going to get mileage out of it…)
Having known Keith for a while, his attitude is not new nor surprising. What did surprise me though was the attitude of his parents. They went to Mass on the Saturday night – it was a 35-minute service! When I expressed surprise at that length, and the comment that congregations would complain if it ran much longer, Keith’s mother and I had an interesting chat.
One of the nicest, most hospitable women you’ve ever met, Noreen’s never missed Mass, but unashamedly says she isn’t interested in hearing what the priest has to say – as far as she’s concerned, he doesn’t know what he’s talking about.
A little thrown by this attitude, I set off for midday Mass (show-off time again) at Killarney Cathedral the next day. Nice building, funny priest (lovely sermon about forgiveness) – but the congregation may as well have been dead from the neck up; little participation and certainly no “parish feel”. Now, it’s summer and Killarney is an extremely popular place (because it’s so ridiculously beautiful and, well, Irish) so I understand that the congregation was gathered from far and wide, but bloody hell – would it have killed them to sing and respond with slightly more than rote answers?
I’m disappointed – not sure exactly what I expected but I certainly thought a country that fought long and hard to gain its independence from Protestant England, and to gain the right to practise Catholicism, would have more to offer a young Catholic.
It led me to think about “going through the motions”. We’ve all done it at one point or another – God knows I spent most of my teenage years doing so at Mass. The question I have going over and over in my head – and what I wanted to ask Noreen – is: What’s the point? How many are just doing it “because”? Is it better to have dwindling numbers of people who want to be there, or stable numbers of people who, really, could be anywhere else?
Now, I’m not the sort of person who says “do it right or don’t do it at all” – especially when it comes to being a Catholic, because I’ve seen the damage that sort of attitude can do. I’m not talking about following the rules, as such, I’m talking about a loving, living, breathing relationship with God – I didn’t see it this past weekend, for sure.
What I’m really getting at is; why bother? As far as I’m concerned, life’s too short to just go through the motions. Love it or leave it – is that too harsh?
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