In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. But now we have Knorr. Where once people listened to St John, today more and more cool Celtic cats prefer the word of Peter Owens. Or some other advertising agency.
It was the Peter Owens agency which prepared the advertisement for Knorr you may have heard on radio recently. You know the one. Harassed mother intoning "after years of searching I've found the place to achieve complete serenity and peace - the supermarket. There on a Knorr taste break packet was my path to tranquillity," went this thoroughly modern young-sounding Irish mother of 2.5 (probably).
What the packet offered was the chance to win a competition to send her children and their schoolfriends to Holyhead for a day with Stena Sealink. "Instant peace, instant deliciousness" (the content of the Knorr quick-lunch packet!), she remarked. It's an improvement on St Jude. Or on "as God is my judge . . ." Mothers of my generation were given to such declamations: "As God is my judge if you don't stop that (etc.) I'll kill/murder/beat the living daylights out of you/tell your father." Today kids are offered the prospect of ferry trips across the Irish Sea in exchange for a little peace. Truly times have changed.
Writer and director Peter Sheridan tells a story from the making of a new short film, The Breakfast. It centres on a young boy in an industrial school in 1950s Ireland. He cast children from Dublin's Sherrif Street and East Wall in the film. There was a dormitory scene, where all pretended to sleep before jumping out of their beds and dropping to their knees to say morning prayers. He cued them to bless themselves.
"Half the group were unsure what to do," he writes in the current issue of Studies magazine. "It was a confusion that would have been unimaginable when I was their age."
Heaven and earth, as they were once understood, have passed away. But where is the grief? Increasingly Irish people, too, are in agreement with Father Joseph Vives, a Spanish Jesuit. He said "what truly characterises the present moment is that God is missing but not missed". It is a situation "which has never existed before in the world," he remarks.
As if to illustrate the truth of his observation more and more Irish people take their families to the shopping centre rather than the church on Sundays. It is a new way of keeping holy the Sabbath. That and/or sport. And, as if in recognition of this, our newer shopping malls and stadia increasingly have the scale of great cathedrals with an emphasis on height and uplifting the spirit. But where once these prayers in stone were intended to raise the mind and heart to God, nowadays they seem content to just raise the mind and heart.
What has happened? Writer and broadcaster Dr Sean MacReamoinn, who has been a commentator on religious affairs for over 30 years, believes that the institutionalisation of the community, which has been the feature of the Christian world for two millennia and which everywhere in that world was underpinned by a local cultural "scaffolding", has collapsed, as has the cultural support. In Ireland this process began in the 1960s with greater affluence, international/inter-cultural contact, more travel etc. "There is no doubt whatever that there has been a dilution and decline of the religious elements in our culture, including of the inner core of faith," he says. As to whether this represents wholesale abandonment he is unsure. "The answer is not quite clear yet." He believes the future for Christians is in small groups "who share in sacramental life and are themselves the signs of faith, hope, and love in the community. It may sound Utopian, but Christianity was always that," he adds. The Rev Paul Colton, Church of Ireland rector at Castleknock in Dublin, attributes the falling away to a general distrust of commitment in a world which is changing so fast and which itself offers little commitment. There is also the post-modern distrust of all forms of institution, whether political, financial, or ecclesiastical, with people no longer having a sense of "the all-embracing story which gives meaning to life". Instead there are many and multi-faceted stories, "which are a direct challenge to all churches". They have to enter into a dialogue with the post-modern world at every level, he says, to establish how the gospel can be told effectively in these times.
Writer Joe O'Connor believes "we thought the text of our Irishness was set in stone but it turned out to be carved in ice, and it's melting fast. We live in a culture which is changing more rapidly than any in Western Europe." Also writing in the current issue of Studies he says: "It sometimes seems we now live in a culture where people believe in Mercedes Benz and Moulinex the way they used to believe in God", but he believes "the longing for existential meaning" remains.
People, he feels, are increasingly turning to the creative arts for answers. "This is, after all, a country where serious poetry now appears regularly on the best seller lists," he says. Writing in the same magazine, its guest editor Father Michael Paul Gallagher SJ wonders: "is there a major shift in sensibility?" taking place in Ireland, "are we losing our spiritual roots?" Using the World Cup as metaphor, he says it is as if Irish Catholicism finds itself drawn against Brazil but suffers an "own goal" in the opening minutes of the game.
"The own goal signifies not only the impact of shameful scandals but the fruits of a longer story of spiritual non-creativity." The Brazil of his metaphor "stands for emerging cultures in Ireland. It points to a new freshness and diversity in Irish life, reflected in a priviliged way by creative writers. This culture is flourishing, while an older way of life seems confused and in retreat." But the issue goes deeper. He wonders whether it is possible to foster mutual exchange between the Christian tradition, that "carrier of a rich humanism", and these new Irish voices. "What is at stake is a quality of imagination, as well as its generosity and range," he says.
Nor is it the case that church leaders have not attempted to meet this new culture head-on. Going forever, it seems, are the days when "the world, the flesh and the devil" were equated in a pantheon of evil.
Last May the Archbishop of Dublin Desmond Connell officially opened an oratory in the new Blanchardstown (shopping) Centre. "Why, one may ask, open an oratory at the very heart of a market?" he asked, anticipating everyone's question. He also supplied the answer. ". . . to provide a sign that the market, too, has its place in the designs of God for our welfare". The oratory was "a sign of deeper needs than the market itself can supply . . . a place of quiet where people may rest for a while and open their hearts to the presence."
It is also, then, a place where any thoroughly modern youngsounding Irish mother of 2.5 (probably) could find complete serenity and peace having done her shopping in the supermarket.
"Come for the shopping and stay for the prayer," was how they headed a press release announcing the opening of the oratory. Obviously it's a place where the Word and Knorr can meet in instant peace, while St John and Peter Owens compare notes.
A special autumn edition of Studies is currently on sale. Its theme is "Cultural Change in Ire- land - intuitions from creative writers".
