The Surprising Future of Irish Christianity
Beatrice Institute, one of the sponsoring institutes of Genealogies of Modernity, produced this exciting podcast episode. The episode discusses how for some, Ireland is the archetype of Christianity’s decline in the wake of modern secularization. But is it possible that there is a resurgence of theological and philosophical fervor in this traditionally Catholic country?
Gaven Kerr, a lecturer in philosophy at St. Patrick's Pontifical University in Maynooth, Ireland, recently hosted a conference called "The Future of Christian Thinking." Gaven has a surprisingly optimistic, up-to-date, on-the-ground evaluation of Christianity's prospects in Ireland. In this episode, he and Ryan ask: What caused the loss of Irish Catholic identity? What role does Irish superstition and folklore play in the country’s Christian faith? In the world of head and heart, modernity and tradition, what is the future of Christian thought?
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07:15 - Many Americans believe “it's just a sociological fact” that Ireland possibly is in the “quickest process of secularization in modern history.” And yet, in the youthful and well-attended conference, "The Future of Christian Thinking,” there seems to be evidence of a resurgence of theological and philosophical interest.
07:35 - “Irish people like to do things in the extremes. We're extremists. There's no middle for us.”
07:59 - Irish individuals’ Catholic faith suffered after the Partition. During this transition, the Catholic Church helped rebuild the country, which led to an over-identification of the Catholic Church with the state.
11:03 - While Catholicism was a general phenomenon, Irish religiosity was based more on superstition than on “a deeply committed faith.”
11:31 - “Now what we're seeing is that people who are Catholic in Ireland choose to be so. They're intentionally so, either because [...] they're just cradle Catholic, fell in love with God, wanted to be a saint and have just remained that way or they maybe just fell away from the Faith and came back to it in a massive way ”
12:26 - Rather than eradicate the pagan traditions of cultures, the goal of Christianity should be to transform them and thus illuminate the pagan world with Christ, as St. Patrick did in Ireland.
19:02 - Is reviving Christian faith through openness to these “nature religions” opposed to reviving it through philosophy, such as Thomas Aquinas’s “Five Ways”?
19:42 - The mind and the heart aren't separate from each other. The mind rests in the truth and the heart is the mind’s desire for that truth.
21:00 - “My goal in life is to be a saint. And in order to be a saint, I've been drawn to this academic life.”
21:31 - “And I always find that when you listen to God and you kind of do what he wants you to do, things aren't easier, but you're just more content. We're called to follow the Lamb. And you're in Ireland here - have you ever tried following a lamb in a field? It doesn't go in a straight line. It goes everywhere.”
22:07 - When teaching philosophy, it is essential that the teacher does not lecture, but rather is authentic and draws out the student.
24:13 - “When it comes to the future of Christian thinking, the future will always be a creative retrieval of the past to see how it will allow us to face the challenges that we are facing today.”
25:35 - “It's very much a shoulders of giants approach, I think. I think only when we have come to understand and see what the great figures of the past came to understand and see, then that's when we can transcend them. And when we own them. That's what I think of the future.”
26:57 - Christianity will never die out, because Christ has given the Spirit, who enlivens the Church.
30:10 - Ireland is receiving vocations not only in the diocesan priesthood, but also to religious orders, resulting in a “thriving Catholicism with different strands and different tapestries.”