Congress returns to a changed Ireland

SOME people went without meat.

For three weeks before the Congress opened, the butchers of Dublin suffered a decline in business. The conclusion was that among the poor, many were going without basics, so that money could be set aside to decorate their homes. Far more important than proper nourishment was that the brightest colours be hung out, while the eyes of this world and the next, were on Dublin.

So it went for the Eucharist Congress’s last visit to these shores in 1932. Tomorrow, the congress returns to Dublin for the first time in 80 years.

The past, as represented by how the occasion was celebrated in 1932, was indeed a different country. Through today’s eyes, what emerged on one level, is the picture of a people drunk on religion. Or, as Karl Marx might have had it, stoned out of their minds on the opium of the masses.

An exhibition last week in the library room in Dublin’s RDS illustrated the heady atmosphere in which the congress was celebrated. The main man for the occasion was the Pope’s emissary, Cardinal Lorenzo Lauri.

He received a greeting that these days would be reserved for perhaps an Irish winner of the X Factor. As the city’s lord mayor received him on the steps of the Mansion House, “he stood a while facing the assembled crowd, smiling as cheer after cheer rent the air”.

The carnival atmosphere permeated the whole country. Street altars were erected in most towns and villages.

In Navan, a sign was strung across the main street, proclaiming in large lettering, “Thy Will Be Done”. The only man who is likely to receive a similar greeting these days is the Italian prophet who goes by the name of Giovanni Trappatoni.

All of the photographs and newsreels portray a country giddy with delight at the opportunity to display its fidelity to the Catholic faith.

There were, however, a few stray signs of what lay beneath the outward displays of fevered religion.

One American bishop, visiting for the occasion, had his pocket picked of the $300 he had on his person. He commented wryly that there is “great piety in Ireland, but not great honesty”.

Elsewhere, the magic endured. One woman, who was a slip of a girl in 1932, recalled decades later that her older brother used to suffer frequent epileptic fits in the throes of his mental handicap. However, after attending one of the Masses during the week, his condition never again lapsed into a fit.

The closing Mass in the Phoenix Park was the highlight of the celebrations. Trains began arriving in the city at 2am and continued in ten minute intervals for the rest of the morning. Around 5,000 people slept out in the Park beforehand. A notice in the exhibition was plucked from the catering area. A “sandwich” retailed at 3d, while a “large and substantial sandwich” was going for 4d.

After Mass, the assembled one million souls made their way down along the quays to O’Connell St for the final benediction of the congress. They “fell into position and four long lines, each eight deep, began to march, section by section with a squadron of cavalry heading each one up”.

Overall, the whole occasion was deemed a huge success. The Irish had demonstrated to God once more that, in the civilised world at least, they just knew they were his chosen people.

Tomorrow, the 81st Eucharistic Congress gets underway. The Church in this country, reeling after a decade of scandals, no longer exercises the power it did in those heady post-independence days.

Were they all out of their minds back then? How could they have lost themselves in the fevered embrace of piety? Were they really that backward? No more backward than a people who lost themselves in a similar embrace not so long ago.

These people to whom I refer did not partake in the opium of the masses, but sniffed the glue of Mammon.

This celebration got an annual outing in this country through the years of boom and bubble.

Each Christmas, under the guise of celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ, great swathes of the population engaged in a thoroughly modern frenzy.

For weeks before Dec 25, the streets of the State’s cities and towns were black with people on the prowl. Their most outstanding feature was a look of steely purpose in their eyes, best known to drunks and psychopaths. Citizens lost all reason as they transmogrified into crazed shoppers. Basic civility was thin on the ground. The most practiced among them learned how to use their elbows in a manner best known the narky corner-backs on a football field. All that mattered was beating a path to the cash register, spending money, buying, acquiring, locating the perfect gift, worshipping the god of consumption.

Christmas Day was reduced to the status of interlude. On Dec 24, as the shops closed, and carols floated on the cold night air, the nation collectively paused to catch breadth.

The following day was spent in retreat, eating, fighting, and all the time counting down to the sales. Then, a few days later it was back on the street, that ugly, frenzied impulse wafting through the retail emporiums. It was, in its own way, as crazy as anything that can be captured on black and white photographs from the 1930s.

Those days are gone now, exposed as an illusion. Just as the Church has been exposed as a morally corrupt entity at the upper echelons, where the retention of power and status was regarded as a far higher priority than the protection of children.

God and Mammon have both been undermined by the frailties of man. Large swathes of the country tried God for a long time, and Mammon for a short few years when the latter showed up wearing horns and wielding shopping bags.

Now, at this time of uncertainty and fear, there is, for many, precious little in the way of guidance available. The old certainties are gone.

Over the coming week a minority will attend the events to mark the return of the Congress. Most of them are playing through the second half of life. Some who exist beyond the boundaries of organised religion might regard the devotees as gullible, others might see them as being prepared to turn a blind eye to the corruption.

But perhaps many who will show their devotion this week are merely prioritising their own faith above the institution which claims to interpret the will of the deity. Good luck to them. They will pour into Croke Park next week, just as the multitudes descended on the Phoenix Park 80 years ago. Their celebration will not be the focal point of the nation now as it was then.

Piety is a spent currency in this neck of the woods. Everything has changed utterly since the congress was last in town.

But it’s safe to say that the quality of sandwiches has improved. Even if some are still not as “large and substantial” as they might be.