Role of tradition in contemporary Ireland

While our prosperity is to be celebrated, we need to shift emphasis from attaining wealth to reflecting on the old values of …

While our prosperity is to be celebrated, we need to shift emphasis from attaining wealth to reflecting on the old values of community, writes Eamon Maher

Desmond Fennell (May 28th) asks why there is so much talk about modernity in contemporary Ireland. In his view, "modernity" is just the latest label to describe what has been happening in Ireland for centuries.

But the view that sees modernity and tradition as diametrical opposites is not the best way of understanding the concept. The American sociologist, David Gross, argues in his book, The Past in Ruins: Tradition and the Critique of Modernity, for the "reappropriation" of tradition. "My contention is that the best way to accept modernity and yet maintain a critical attitude towards it is to return to tradition - not, however, in order to stay there, but rather to bring tradition forward in such a manner as to disturb, not affirm, the clichés and complacencies of the present."

Gross sees tradition as part of modernity. "Many traditions continue in the nooks and crannies of modern life. They exist privately even when they have been eroded publicly." I think this is particularly applicable to Ireland.

READ MORE

In the midst of the furore surrounding the Celtic Tiger, two of our best-loved writers, John McGahern and William Trevor, locate their fiction in "traditional" Irish settings. McGahern's lyrical evocation of rural Ireland in That They May Face the Rising Sun lets readers "commune with" a landscape and a civilisation that are on the verge of extinction. The telephone poles that obscure the view of the lake at the end of the novel are a sign that this rural community (where there is no inhabitant younger than 50), in which customs and traditions have changed very little in decades, is not safe from the invasive nature of modernity.

But the tone is not one of lament, rather, one of celebration, as can be seen in descriptions. "The night and the lake had not the bright metallic beauty of the night Johnny had died: the shapes of the great tree were softer and brooded even deeper in their mysteries. The water was silent, except for the chattering of the wildfowl, the night air sweet with the scents of the ripening meadows, thyme and clover and meadowsweet, wild woodbine high in the whitethorns mixed with the scent of the wild mint crawling along the gravel on the edge of the water."

How removed this idyllic scene seems to be from the frenetic noise of the city traffic and Temple Bar revelry, symbols of late modernity.

McGahern told me in an interview that he thinks that Ireland's new-found prosperity is a great thing. His experience of friends and neighbours having to emigrate to find work reflects the reality that there are positive as well as negative sides to the Celtic Tiger.

The church, which in the person of Archbishop John Charles McQuaid, had McGahern fired from his teaching post for having written what he himself humorously refers to as a "dirty book" (The Dark, in 1965), enforced a negative attitude to sexuality and ruled with an iron hand.

Now it has become one in a line of many victims of "progress" or "modernity". (Significantly, McGahern is grateful to the Catholic Church for introducing him to ritual and a sense of the sacred. He thinks that the mad rush away from religion at the moment is a sad development).

It is notable that Dr Vincent Twomey, a well-known theologian working in St Patrick's College, Maynooth, should have recently published a book with the title: The End of Irish Catholicism? The question mark is not an attempt at being facetious. There is a serious danger that Irish Catholicism as we knew it may be on its last legs.

Things are changing rapidly in Ireland, to the extent that many people feel demoralised, downtrodden. If everything is so good, why is it that so few feel elated? Why are so many young males taking their own lives? Why is drink a precursor to blind violence? It's as if alcohol is now fuelling a pent-up frustration that finds an outlet in gratuitous brutality. The carnage on our roads seems a corollary of the same blind quest for excitement.

Discussion of the conflicting features of "modernity" and "tradition" seems a futile exercise in intellectual posturing when one considers the problems "on the ground".

But commentators have a role to play in highlighting problems and suggesting remedies, although the latter is far more difficult than the former.

There needs to be a shift in emphasis away from acquiring material wealth (not in itself a bad thing) at all costs and a reflection on what constitutes "community". The characters in McGahern's novel, while they don't always get on with each other, are nevertheless neighbourly and supportive of each other. The marginal figures such as Bill Evans, the product of an industrial school who comes to work as a glorified slave on a local farm, are looked after and given a meaningful role.

This type of solidarity and neighbourliness is all too absent in most of our urban sprawls. There is an urgent need also for more serious cultural debate of the kind recommended by Desmond Fennell where all sides have their say.

Dr Eamon Maher is a lecturer in humanities at the IT in Tallaght, Dublin