Berkley Center

The holiday lights are officially lit on Grafton Street and the stores are decked out in red and white. The Christmas season is fully in swing through central Dublin because there is no equivalent to Thanksgiving to put off the holiday adornments and songs. With the commercialization of the holidays clearly present, I find it strange to be surrounded by exclusively Christmas decorations, rather than seeing representation of other faiths. Nonetheless, the joyous atmosphere is inviting, and as it represents my semester coming to a close I want to reflect on my other encounters with religion throughout my time in Ireland.

During my first weeks at Trinity College I was startled to learn just how much religious conflict has affected Ireland; in particular, how it was used to literally separate Ireland into what is now the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, which has caused violence into recent history. But it was in one of my first tutorials that the presence of this tension really struck me. The professor asked us to shout out words that we associated with Ireland and he wrote them up on the board. Most of our suggestions referred to traditional Irish stereotypes, such as rain, shamrocks, Guinness, and sheep. I don’t even think that we mentioned Catholicism, which is a large part of Irish culture, but not something that we, as Americans, were used to stating as a category of an entire nationality. The part of this that was remarkable to me was when our professor said that had anyone from Britain been in our class, Catholicism would have been one of the first characteristics mentioned. The fact that, to this day, religion is such a tender subject in Irish-United Kingdom relations emphasizes the prominence that those religious and political differences hold over each culture.

What I was expecting and has also been significant to my experience abroad is the sheer number of churches, cathedrals, and monastic ruins in Ireland. From traveling across other parts of Western Europe, I knew that I could expect to find beautiful architecture that is centuries old. Seeing the monastic site of St. Kevin in Glendalough, the churches in Galway and Cork, and the great Christchurch Cathedral that is just a 10 minute walk away from campus is truly a humbling experience. I have enjoyed visiting all of these religious places of worship from an art and architectural point of view; however, this is exactly where I experience a great contradiction about religion in Ireland. The churches are beautiful and historic, but they are becoming increasingly reliant on tourism as church attendance dwindles. In a 2011 census, 84 percent of the population in the Republic of Ireland identified as Catholic, but only 18 percent of those regularly attended Catholic Mass, in contrast to 90 percent of Catholics who attended Mass in 1984. That is a drastic decline in practicing Catholicism, which is often attributed to the general secularization that can be seen across Europe and to the sex abuse scandals. Even in this Catholic country that weathered much sectarian violence, that history and the stunning religious artifacts cannot stop the secularization of its people.

In thinking about these two opposing experiences of religion in Ireland, I tried to unite how the Irish are, on one hand, so influenced by their religious history, yet, on the other, increasingly non-spiritual. It seems as though the religious discord has simply become a scapegoat to cover a deep-seated political struggle between Ireland and Britain. Though both countries have made strides toward peace, innocent comments, such as the one in my first tutorial, betray that bitterness still exists. I think that it is important to recognize, though, that Ireland is not fixed in the past with respect to religious divides. Though some would argue that the decline in religiosity is undesirable, Dublin fits the general trend in that it feels rather secularized and thrives on the commercialization of Christmas.