Congress reduced to niche affair
WE may have changed our heroes but not our habits. The world of scapulars, holy water, and relics has disappeared but the taste for public spectacle has not. Across Britain, bunting, tea towels, mugs, and street parties were everywhere last weekend as jubilee mania took hold.
The crowded and festooned streets that welcomed the Papal Legate Cardinal Lauri into Dublin for the Eucharistic Congress in 1932 were evocative of a triumphal entry. It was reminiscent of the welcome given 30 years previously to King George V and repeated 30 years later for John F Kennedy.
The papal visit of 1979 is still a live memory as is the incredible gusto of the public welcome in the capital city for Jack’s Army after Italia ’90 and President Obama last year. Even Queen Elizabeth’s visit excited massive public interest.
It is a world away now but Pope Pius XI was deeply gratified to hear how homes were decorated throughout Ireland for the Eucharistic Congress of 1932. Cardinal Lauri had noticed that “especially those living in the small streets of Dublin” excelled themselves. Last Friday, walking through Stoneybatter to meet cultural historian Lisa Godson in adjacent Phibsborough, there was a complete absence of public decoration. Only the churches were bedecked, and they were underdressed. The “small streets” were bereft.
Godson specialises in design and material culture at the National College of Arts and Design and has studied the 1932 congress. She explained the emphasis on the spectacle and theatricality of that event. Bringing the Eucharistic Congress to Dublin in 1932 was like winning the Olympics, she said. For the poor especially, entering into the visual sumptuousness of the public spectacle was enormously important in a highly ritualised era. The miles of festooned streets, and the shrines and alters built in every area were a source of pride. They connected the small streets not only to the universal body of the Church on Earth but to the eternal in heaven.
What is most conspicuous about the Eucharistic Congress that begins on Sunday is that it is a largely contained and ticketed event. The RDS and Croke Park are the venues for the main ceremonies. In 2012, religion is not spilling out onto the streets or likely to become a source of either popular enthusiasm or civic pride. A deritualised public will largely ignore it. Where in 1932 the Eucharistic Congress was a key stepping stone in enunciating Ireland’s independence, now Ireland makes a political point of enunciating its independence of the Catholic Church.
The new government of Éamon de Valera saw the congress, its Papal Legate, and retinue of prelates as the affirming symbols of both his government’s and Ireland’s arrival. Next week’s congress, the most important event in the Catholic world in 2012, is seen by the Government as none of its business and by the wider population as a niche event. Media discussion of Catholic faith when it is not centred on scandal is based on a premise that it is a crutch for the aged or intellectually infirm.
If the nearly 50 years between the 1932 congress and the 1979 Papal visit were a time of power and triumph for the Church, the intervening decades have been one of trial and trouble. Scandal has imploded its reputation; politicians who once cleaved to it now queue to denounce it. Ireland which at the time saw association with the Vatican as an affirmation of its independence, has now affirmed that independence by closing its embassy to the Holy See. If some saw that decision as evidence of an illiberal political bias, for others it was the culmination of a crusade. Nobody seriously believed it was a costsaving measure.
Last weekend, while a Britannia that once ruled the waves was swept along in euphoria by a shrewd little old lady, Ireland counted the votes of her citizens in the fiscal treaty. The poor and discontented voted no. Catholicism, populism, and nationalism had successfully held down a left-right, class-based politics for a century. In 2012, for the first time since the lockout in 1913 it emerged again, if less dramatically. The tally on the treaty is mirrored in the Church. Older and more middle class than the general population, the faithful are more likely to be culturally conservative and less likely to be economically afflicted.
The fact is that the most acute collapse of religious practice is in urban working-class areas.
Scandal ridden, uninspiring, and deeply divided, the Irish Church has adopted renewal as its theme in this congress. Even reputationally diminished and institutionally decaying, it has resources commanded by virtually no other Irish voluntary body and certainly no political party. The Church is based on the premise that what matters is not what we think of God, but what God thinks of us.
In Finnegans Wake, James Joyce portrayed the prelate “having girded his sable cappa magna as high as to his cherubical loins, at solemn compline sat in his sate of wis-dom, that handbathtub”. The Papal Legate Cardinal Ouellet will open the International Eucharistic Congress at the RDS on Sunday. Renewal of the Catholic Church may or may not begin thereafter.
Pomp, piety and a sense of patriotic purpose were evident at the 1932 Eucharistic Congress. Here is a brief outline of what can be expected when the event returns to Dublin on Sunday.
* What is a eucharistic congress?
A eucharistic congress is a gathering of clergy and the faithful laity to bear witness to the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist. They usually involve large open-air Masses, adoration of the Blessed Sacrament and other ceremonies held over several days.
The first international congress was held in Lille, France on June 21, 1881. Since then, 49 have been held. The 47th was held in Rome between June 18 and 25, 2000.
* Dublin 1932 congress
The 31st international congress, held in Dublin between June 22 and June 26, 1932 was one of the largest ever held. The chosen theme was ‘The Propagation of the Sainted Eucharist by Irish Missionaries’. Two days before the Congress, Time magazine compared its theme to that of others: “Previous Congresses have had their characteristic notes,” wrote Vincent de Paul Fitzpatrick.
“In Chicago there was the Enthusiasm of the Americans; in Rome The everlasting glory of the Church; in Spain The love of beauty and gallantry of the Spanish; in Carthage The memory of the martyrs. In Dublin, undoubtedly, it would be The Faith of the Irish.”
* The finale
The final public Mass was held in the Phoenix Park on Sunday, June 26 and was celebrated by the Archbishop of Baltimore, US, Michael Joseph Curley.
More than a quarter of the population attended and half a million gathered on O’Connell Street for the concluding blessing.
* The Dundalk Democrat described the event
“Here men and women are proud to give evidence of their Faith: proud of being sons and daughters of the dead and gone Catholics who kept the flame alive in evil days of persecution and spoliation...The men and women of long ago... from the high place in Heaven won by their heroic piety... must have looked down upon this glorious scene with serene happiness and benediction.”
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