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04 August, 2020. Tuesday of Week 18

04 August, 2020. Tuesday of Week 18

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12 comments
Does fear of clericalism keep priests like Pádraig Standún off the ACP site?
March 26 2013
Joe O'Leary
I just penned this review: Tadhg Ó Dúshláine, Pádraig Standún: Sagart ’a Rún (Maigh Nuad: An Sagart, 2022), 358pp. This very personal book is a full-scale response to Ireland’s best-known priest-novelist and more broadly a reflection on the state of Catholicism in Ireland today. Having known so many of the people it mentions and having lived through the events described, I felt that the book was constantly murmuring ‘tua res agitur’ and at the same time telling me that all this history has faded like a dream. It is a remarkably upbeat book, laced with nostalgia, and also breathing indignation about the ‘lost opportunities’ that another priest-novelist, Brendan Hoban, deplored at the time of John Paul II’s visit in 1979—the ‘last hurrah’ of a failing church. Maynooth College, in the mid-sixties of the last century. was a seminary housing up to 500 young men, all devoted to the ideal of the Priesthood, which they believed would always be cherished in Ireland and worldwide. In this sheltered world, the seminarian ‘takes pleasure in simple things: the company of his friends (comhluadar a cairde), concerts put on by fellow-students, the short trip to Dublin, the first film of the term, the first summer swim… The end of the road [priesthood] is the star of hope in the course of the seven years… This it is that makes the clerical students in Maynooth the merriest youths in Ireland’ (p. 16, not clear who is being quoted). In a video advertising the flourishing Maynooth University of today there is no mention of the ecclesiastical past and the historical seminary grounds are referred to simply as ‘the South Campus.’ History has advanced rapidly, with crushing strides, so that even this fascinating book seems a ghostly chronicle. In the class that entered Maynooth in 1964, to be ordained in 1971, the taciturn, brooding Pádraig Standún, then known as Pat Staunton, might draw attention by his striking good looks, fashioned by the wild landscapes of his native Co. Mayo, or by his poems in student magazines (including one on ‘The Spirit of George Moore’) that already struck the subversive notes of his later work. When he was ordained a deacon, he burst into speech, in sermons that disturbed the authorities (who had him submit them to his bishop), particularly one given in the town in which he warned the people to be wary of the College in some land deal. His comments on church affairs in various journals in the following years might shock, but they were unanswerable. While we were supposed to make a fuss about the inefficacious new rite of the Sacrament of Penance in 1977, he calmly declared that this sacrament was obsolete, and so it has transpired (in part because of the Vatican’s refusal to implement the theologically perfectly valid rite of collective absolution). I last saw Pádraig Standún in the later seventies when, on my way to see a classmate who was curate in Inis Meáin, I noticed a knot of workmen in a field, and one of them shot up his arm in salute—none other than an Standúnach himself! While Ó Dúshláine sensibly deconstructs the image of the Sagart Aroon, intensely evoked in the haunting 18th-century song ‘Fill, fill a rún ó,’ he presents Standún as a modern version of the beloved priest, close to his people, whose rights he has upheld in showdowns with civil authorities, and whom he engages in fictions that cut through the miasma of clerical silence and speak to people where they are, and where we all are if we are honest enough to say so. He wants ‘to rage from the clifftops, to roar in the wilderness… by churning out a novel a year for the non-élite market, the underground of the local radio services and the supermarket shelves’ (quoted, p. 51). Tadhg Ó Dúshláine’s study of Standún’s fiction gives pride of place to his first novel, Súil de Breith (1983), which was filmed as Budawanny (1987) and in an expanded version in the wake of the Bishop Eamonn Casey affair of 1992 as The Bishop’s Story (1994). The film might seem no more than an amusing tale of an island priest who gives shelter to a woman in need; she rushes to his bed during a thunderstorm, and next morning he remarks at breakfast, ‘So much for celibacy’ (in English in the text). Later he states at Sunday Mass (in the film; I have not read the book): ‘My dear people, soon you will have more than one reason to call me “Father,” but I intend to stand by this woman and I hope you will too.’ Hilarious, but the jesting cloaks a probing reflection on the problems of mandatory clerical celibacy, and has even been criticized for its urge to preach a message. Ó Dúshláine argues that any novel worth its salt must have a message in which the author has invested his whole being. Standún has never drawn ecclesiastical censure for his attack on celibacy, not only because it is rooted in Irish literary tradition, but because it is doctrinally impeccable (though the demand for women priests was artificially made into a doctrinal crime by John Paul II and Cardinal Ratzinger). Paul VI and Pope Francis tried to introduce the ordination of married men at the Synod sessions of 1971 and 2019, and Ratzinger as pope created a huge breach in the discipline by welcoming so many married Anglican clergy to join the ranks of the Roman Catholic presbyterate. Whether or not he has pursued the moral quandaries of celibacy, the potential for hypocrisy, to its last depths, it should be noted as another strength of an Standúnach, fully shared by an Dúshláineach, that he laces his most unsettling messages with an irresistible sense of humour. Cian Mná (1993) has a lesbian couple and provides Ó Dúshláine with the opportunity to celebrate the liberalization of Irish attitudes on the LGBT front. A. D. 2016, Standún’s favourite among his novels, published in 1988, is presented under the heading 'apologia pro vita sua.' Without chapter divisions, the novel has a long conversation between ‘Pádraig’ and ‘Stan’—the former a priest who holds forth with Bernanosian directness on the love of God, the latter a doubter. Thus musing on his marginal or contradictory position, Standún makes us feel that it is in fact central, as is confirmed by his popularity with his classmates (who asked him to preach to them at one of the Maynooth reunions held every five years), the connivence of his bishops, Joseph Cassidy who lauded him for exploring human experience, and Michael Neary who was his unlikely roommate during his third year in Maynooth. Ó Dúshláine himself blends the roles of literary critic, sociologist of religion, and prophetic messenger, as he traces prefigurations of Standún’s protest in three powerful novels of priesthood in crisis: Canon Patrick Sheehan’s Luke Delmege (1901), George Moore’s The Lake (1905; revised 1921), and Gerald O’Donovan’s Father Ralph (1913). Ó Dúshláine admires my mentor Fr Peter Connolly (1927-87) for his championing of the novelists Edna O’Brien and John Broderick, and for his incarnational vision enriched by study of D. H. Lawrence. I don’t think Connolly ever taught Lady Chatterley’s Lover, as suggested here. In 1967-69, at least, he took us through Lawrence’s greater novels, Sons and Lovers and The Rainbow (but not the terrific Women in Love). It is a matter of keen regret that Connolly never produced his projected book on Resurrection in Lawrence. Ó Dúshláine takes issue with Connolly for his failure to see beneath the ‘anticlericalism’ of Moore and O’Donovan to the truth and realism of their vision, and also for his failure to perceive the Rabelaisian dimension of Moore’s treatment of priests in The Untilled Field. He also deplores Connolly’s neglect of Irish language priest-novelists such as Peadar Ó’Laoghaire (1839-1920) and Pádraig Ó Duinnín (Dinneen, 1860-1934), but in fact the former of these wrote only one tale Séadna, which is hardly a novel, and the latter, a famed lexicographer, wrote only one novel, which is unknown. Another mentor, Fr Enda McDonagh (1930-2021), shares with Standún and George Moore a contemplative rapport with the Mayo landscape, which is another imponderable strength of the Standún persona. McDonagh kept his rooms in Maynooth through thick and thin, though the post-Vatican II liberalism which he came to personify was even more marginalized there than in Standún’s island outposts. Hence Mary Robinson’s lament that Enda’s latter years were so lonely. Morose in its decline, the Irish Catholic Church was never to know the festive joy that its prophets might have brought. This book is largely an avalanche of quotations, very interesting in themselves, and often in English, which is helpful to one who must plough through the Irish text with the help of the Gearrfhoclór Gaeilge-Béarla (Short Irish-English Dictionary) published in 1981 by An Roinn Oideachais (Dept. of Education). Standún’s novels are broken open one by one, not for close literary analysis, but in order to name the religious and social currents at work in them, enticing the reader to explore further. The errata (especially regarding the name of the great Mayo biblical scholar, Seán Freyne, not ‘Frayne’) can only be deplored. Even so, the book offers an illuminating contextualization and overview of a singular and fascinating literary oeuvre.
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15 comments
Gerry O’Connor CSsR and ACP Leadership Weekly Sunday Homily
July 3 2025
DOM
Sean in (1) makes a key point "the dignity of service rather than the arrogance of power" and this is very necessary in the Church going forward. A simple example, in a cluster of five parishes all the Saturday Vigil Masses have been suspended for the Summer. The Vigil and Sunday Masses are official Masses for the whole parish, weekday Masses are devotional in nature. It is clear that so many parish clergy need some respite but the needs of the laity should also be considered. An arrangement is needed to balance the needs of the clergy and the parishoners. The balance might be achieved by suspending some weekday masses leaving the Vigil Masses in place.
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8 comments
Killala diocese may have only eight priests by 2032
July 19 2012
Mary Judge O Dwyer
Thank you for the very informative reflection on the situation of the Diocese regarding the Priesthood. Could it also be that the Holy Spirit is calling others to the Priesthood? I am reminded of Jesus' words, "the harvest is great but the labourers are few". The harvest begins in every family. Please, God, let us focus on passing on the faith to others and hope for a bountiful harvest. What better year to start than this year, the Holy Year of Hope and Renewal of Devotion to the Sacred Heart, which embodies the love of God. I believe the family is where it all begins. I have found in my own life that Small groups, such as Lectio Divina groups, are a great way to grow in faith together. "We can not give what we do not have". I want to thank God for the great priests we have and have had. Deo Gratias.
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15 comments
Gerry O’Connor CSsR and ACP Leadership Weekly Sunday Homily
July 3 2025
Sean O'Conaill
This strikes a welcome note for me - but do we need to stop using the same word - 'pride' - for two utterly different attitudes - self-respect on the one hand and egotism (or 'superiorism') on the other? Perfectly compatible with respect for others, self-respect is utterly different from egotism which is always a search for acknowledged superiority and is therefore born not of self-respect but of anxiety about one's own status and need for the flattery of others. Everyone probably remembers a certain world leader elbowing his way to the front row of a photo-op for heads of state at a NATO conference in Brussels on May 25th, 2017. It was the most vivid demonstration of status anxiety and neediness I have ever seen - on the part of someone who would have earned far more respect by staying graciously in the second row, confident that his height alone would make him visible. Well done Gerry for getting to grips with this task of disentangling these 'affects' - especially at a time when the superiorism that tarnished too much of Irish Catholicism in the 20th century has been flattened by decades of scandal and loss of prestige. This is part of the 'rethinking' (i.e. repentance) that is needed to restore our self-respect in the inverted pyramid that the Irish church needs to become - based upon the dignity of service rather than the arrogance of power. There is a greater game afoot than the (no doubt) noble pastime of Gaelic football? This distinction of 'just' from 'sinful' pride is grist to the mill of the 'conversion' we are undoubtedly undergoing, driven as much by circumstances as by conscious intent. Is 'sin' even mainly about egotism rather than sexuality - as suggested also by a remark of Pope Francis in December 2021, when asked about the admission by a French archbishop to an affair with an adult woman: “… the sins of the flesh are not the most serious. The gravest sins are those that are more angelic: pride, hatred. These are graver." Surely the 'pride' he was referring to then was that of those he called 'fixated' on sexuality and determined to undermine Amoris Laetitia on the grounds of its compassionate discernment on divorce and the Eucharist. That 'pride' too was not the self-respect that is perfectly compatible with respect for others. There was precious little respect in the verbal assault launched by then Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano on Pope Francis at the World Meeting of Families in Dublin in August 2018. The vindictiveness was all too obvious. Given the danger posed by the ongoing rise of chauvinistic Christian nationalism, the nailing of sinful pride should surely be a preaching priority? (The Catechism is seriously underpowered on this theme.)
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