Having
grown up Catholic enough to be an altar boy (and having gotten some of my
education in a Catholic school), I am as fascinated as I am gratified by what’shappened in Ireland.
As you
probably know by now, the Irish Republic made history the other day when it
legalized same-sex marriage—by popular vote.
Yes, the Irish people themselves chose to legalize unions between two
people of the same gender. In every
other nation or other jurisdiction in which it’s been legalized, the feat was
accomplished by the vote of a legislative body, an executive decree or—as in
the case of most US states in which same-sex marriage is legal—a judge’s
order.
What’s so
fascinating to me is that, not so long ago, Ireland was regarded as one of the
most resolutely Roman Catholic societies in the world. The Irish were considered to be as devout as
the Poles, Spanish and Quebecois. Now,
of course, gay marriage is legal in Spain and Quebec (as it is in the rest of
Canada). Some of the nuns in my Catholic
school came from Ireland; the same was true of many other Catholic schools in
the US at that time (the 1960’s and early 1970’s). Also, as I recall, two of the priests in my
parish were Irish.
Now, in
Ireland as in much of the west, the young are not pursuing vocations as priests
and nuns. Many explanations have been
offered for this phenomenon, one of the most plausible being increased
prosperity. Many priests in the US (and,
as I’ve discovered, elsewhere) are coming from India, Nigeria, the Philippines
and other impoverished countries where Catholic missionaries have been
active. Piety seems to pair much better
with poverty than with prosperity. As
someone smarter than I am remarked, “Give them MTV and they’ll never go to
seminary!”
That point
is certainly valid. However, one way in
which Ireland was different from those countries (and others when they were
turning out lots of priests and nuns) was that it was—and is—one of the world’s
best-educated countries. Probably the closest
parallel we have today to pre-1990s Ireland is Cuba: Nearly everybody is literate but also poor.
One
difference, though, between Ireland past and Cuba present is that in Eire,
education was controlled, directly or indirectly, by the Church. Early in its history, about the only way an
Irish person could get an education was to become a priest or nun. They, in turn, would open most of the
schools—and control the curriculum—in their country.
In the
1990s, young Irish people finally found opportunities to use their
educations. They seized upon advances
in technology and the business world to turn their country into a center for
research and financial services. That,
of course, furthered young people’s opportunity for education, both in their
own country and abroad.
Given what
I’ve described, however sketchily, it seems less surprising that Irish
attitudes about gender and sexuality have changed as quickly as they have. On the other hand, it’s more surprising that
abortion is still illegal there. Perhaps
that will be the next change in the Emerald Isle.
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