#irish catholicism

[irishironclad]

once again reminding everyone this is canon

[be-bhinn]

the line between irish catholicism and traditional irish polytheism is so small it's almost invisible. the church just could not break through our beliefs man

[declanscunt]

so obsessed with catholic guilt rn someone snap me out of it

[liturgical-lesbian]

reflections on my pilgrimage to Knock Shrine, home to Our Lady of Knock

my grandmother and i pilgrimaged to knock shrine this past october where God fulfilled our lifelong prayer—that we would be able to walk the holy ground where Our Lady appeared. the same holy ground that my great grandmother walked and her mother before that. my grandmother and i had hoped and prayed my whole life that we would be able to experience Knock Shrine together. i will be forever humbled that God heard our lifelong wishes and blessed us with the gift of sharing in Knock’s mysticism. 

my mom drove us there after we picked up my grandmother's sister in the neale. when we arrived, i’ll be honest, i was disappointed by the appearance of the shrine grounds. i had expected a grand, ethereal, and cohesive look to the place. i had always imagined, that at first glance of the shrine grounds, i would divinely transcend any earthly awareness. my need to be spiritually transcended by physical appearance alone was quickly humbled by the Spirit of the Lord and God’s Peace began to percolate within me. 

when we entered the Apparition Chapel i became so overwhelmed by the Peace of the Lord that i began to sob uncontrollably. i sobbed for so long and my grandmother just held me as i experienced healing. i am unsure of how much time passed but i felt fastened by God’s Peace—unmoved by space and time, suspended in the presence of my everloving Creator. i cried and my grandmother prayed, and i prayed and she cried too. every fear, anxious thought and feeling, every distraction, and every ounce of guilt was stripped away and i just sat there, in my grandmother's arms, tears spilling and the Spirit of the Lord overflowing.

i have been “drunk on the spirit”, i’ve been slain by Spirit, and i have certainly sat in the sorrows of lamentation and mourning with the Spirit. but never had i experienced the Peace of the Spirit so consumingly for so long. 

we left the Apparition Chapel, me still in tears, to make the 3 o’clock mass at the Parish Chruch. the mass was a plain one. it was full of locals (farmers and shopkeepers) as well as foreigners who had pilgrimaged there like myself. there was no choir, no organ, no special readings, no assigned hymns. but, my God, was it transcendental. many women, Spirit-filled women, uninhibitedly wove beautiful hymns and spirituals into the service and kept my tears flowing. to hear these old rural women, scattered amongst the pews, join together in one tongue to fill up the chapel with impromptu songs of praise and anguish, was humbling. they carried these songs in their hearts and probably received them from the hearts of their mothers before them, and kindly passed them on to my heart that day. i will not soon forget their reverent abandon in exalting Yah. 

i sat diagonally behind two older women throughout the mass. i believe they were lesbians. though i do not know it to be fact, my gaydar was yelling at me and so was something beyond that. i was in the midst of feeling trapped and alone in the closet, and something was gently whispering to me that these two women were a sign or at least a reminder of some sort. i sort of fixated on them off and on throughout the mass, wondering if Yah would somehow confirm my supposition and was curious if they saw the same in me. 

after distributing the holy Eucharist, the priest announced that he would be giving the sacrament of healing to anyone who wanted it. i had not experienced that blessed sacrament in almost ten years. i continued to cry as i approached the altar, as i was blessed with healing, and as i returned to the pew to pray. i had no words for Yah through it all; just physical response of tears streaming. 

at the conclusion of the service, the two women in front of me, who i had remained fascinated with, turned around and awkwardly greeted me, my grandmother, and my great aunt with a sign of peace. one of the women then discreetly pulled out an item from her pocket and told us it was a relic of st. padre pio. she gently placed it in the hands of my 92-year-old great aunt bridgie, a “mighty woman” as she is called in backcountry Mayo, who knew right how to handle it. i watched her as she kissed it, blessed herself with it, and then rubbed it on her body where she needed healing. she passed it to my grandmother who did the same. my grandmother then passed it to me and i took it in my hands and admired it slowly. it was a small oval reliquary made of a silver medal, no bigger than one of those elongated coins you can get from those machines at the mall. under the glass was a worn piece of fabric pressed over sapphire velvet. i closed my eyes and blessed myself with the relic and rubbed it against my mind and against my chest for my generalized anxiety in hopes of a miraculous cure. 

when i opened my eyes, i met the eyes of the woman who gave it to us. we held eye contact in a deeply spiritual way. she then leaned over the pew, grabbed my arm with both of hers with an unforgettable intensity. she said to me, holding my eyes and my arm and my soul, “you caught my eye... you caught my eye and i felt that i had to say something,” with a gentle urgency. my grandmother burst into tears and my heart welled up with joy. we maintained eye contact while my grandmother and great-aunt muttered to each other in awe. i knew that she knew. God heard my cry. 

my grandmother, my great-aunt, my mom and myself left the parish church and walked to gift shop and cafe. my aunt, a poor farming woman, was so humbled by my interaction with the woman in the parish church, she insisted on gifting me with a matted celtic print that read,

“Let us be renewed by God’s mercy and let us become agents of this mercy, channels through which God can water the earth, protect all creation and make justice & peace flourish.” ~pope francis

i was so honored by this gesture and will never forget the day i received it. 

the four of us women then nestled ourselves in the cafe over vegetable soup, brown bread, and pots of tea. the walls were almost entirely glass and let in the warm rays of the golden hour. i sat there, my tummy full of soup and tea, my heart filled with the stories of my ancestors, and my soul filled with the Spirit of my God, and i gazed out the window at the green earth Our Lady, st. joseph, st. john the baptist, and christ the lamb came down upon.

my grandmother and i pilgrimaged to knock shrine this past october where God fulfilled our lifelong prayer

for those of you who are unfamiliar with the apparitions of mother mary, often called “our lady”, here is a good place to start, it just has brief descriptions, history, and context of her many apparitions. 

[ravenslynch]

“Scratch a bit at the thin topsoil of Irish Catholicism,” the saying goes, “and you soon come to the solid bedrock of Irish paganism.”... paganism and Catholicism in Ireland are joined twins that can not be separated. They are not opposites, as archaeologist Proinsias MacCana has pointed out, for in Ireland pagan ways and beliefs formed an “extraordinary symbiosis.” ...paganism and Christianity in Ireland need each other to live.

Patricia Monaghan, The Red-Haired Girl from the Bog: The Landscape of Celtic Myth and Spirit

[socialismwithasmile]

I do not deny that Socialists often leave the church. But why do they do so? Is their defection from the church a result of our attitude towards religion; or is it the result of the attitude of the church and its ministers toward Socialism? Let us take a case in point, one of those cases that are being paralleled every day in our midst. An Irish Catholic joins the Socialist movement... He looks around and he finds the press full of reports of crimes, murders, robberies, bank swindlers, forgeries, debauches, gambling transactions, and midnight orgies in which the most revolting indecencies are perpetrated. He investigates and he discovers that the perpetrators of these crimes were respectable capitalists, pillars of society, and red-hot enemies of Socialism, and that the dives in which the highest and the lowest meet together in a saturnalia of vice contribute a large proportion of the campaign funds of the capitalist political parties. Some Sunday he goes to Mass as usual, and he finds that at Gospel the priest launches out into a political speech and tells the congregation that the honest, self-sacrificing, industrious, clean men and women, whom he calls 'comrades,' are a wicked, impious, dissolute sect, desiring to destroy the home, to distribute the earnings of the provident among the idle and lazy of the world, and reveling in all sorts of impure thoughts about women. And as this Irish Catholic Socialist listens to this foul libel, what wonder if the hot blood of anger rushes to his face, and he begins to believe that the temple of God has itself been sold to the all desecrating grasp of the capitalist? While he is yet wondering what to think of the matter, he hears that his immortal soul will be lost if he fails to vote for capitalism, and he reflects that if he lined up with the brothel keepers, gambling house proprietors, race track swindlers, and white slave traders to vote the capitalist ticket, this same priest would tell him he was a good Catholic and loyal son of the church. At such a juncture the Irish Catholic Socialist often rises up, goes out of the church and wipes its dust off his feet forever. Then we are told that Socialism took him away from the church. But did it? Was it not rather the horrible spectacle of a priest of God standing up in the Holy Presence lying about and slandering honest men and women, and helping to support political parties whose campaign fund in every large city represents more bestiality than ever Sodom and Gomorrah knew? These are the things that drive Socialists from the church, and the responsibility for every soul so lost lies upon those slanderers and not upon the Socialist movement.

James Connolly (Socialism Made Easy) 

[aztec-religion]

Sheela na Gig Church of St. Mary and St. David Kilpeck, England c. 11th-12th C.

[irishironclad]

Our Lady of Knock, Queen of Ireland