A Cryptic Traditional Catholic Travelogue 5: Recalling Ireland

 

Introduction 2013: This is the fifth part of a perhaps overly cryptic ‘travelogue’ I wrote in the summer 0f 2010 whilst travelling through Frances, from Lourdes in the south to the Vendée and Pontmain in the north.

Catholic France is a scene of desolation now and that tragedy is at the heart of this little series.

In this fifth part, I am actually recalling my life in Catholic Ireland and how very different the Faith still is there.

The first part of this series is here. (It is clearly the best place to begin.)

From 2010:

Very personal fragments, whilst I travel through the wilderness:

Eucharistic Adoration in a French PARISH Church!

Every weekday  in a French Church!

Such a rare thing. Such a very, very rare thing.

I sit in the silence before the Blessed Sacrament and the importance of this seems to impress itself powerfully on my soul.

In Ireland, I recall all those as-yet-still open chapels of daily Eucharistic Adoration.

Everywhere in Ireland.

As-yet-still-open.

In once-Catholic France, outside the lonely, isolated islands of Paray, of Lourdes, such are almost nowhere to be found.

What does it mean that in Ireland still – one lone place in all of Europe? – one finds people being bathed, day after day, by the Presence of the Blessed Sacrament?

Is there anywhere else in Europe akin to this? Poland perhaps?

I know not.

All I know is that I never found this in all the European countries in which I lived: Britain, Spain, Germany, Switzerland and France.

But in Ireland in Limerick, every day I heard the people praying: Hail Mary …

In Limerick and Clare and Dublin, one could find people bathed, bathed daily in the Presence of the Blessed Sacrament.

How to measure the immeasurable?

One cannot of course.

One cannot measure all that I saw being threatened and destroyed, whilst I lived on that Blessed Isle …

Josephin Péladan, I feel like you sometimes.

Josephin Péladan, I think I feel something like what you felt a hundred years ago, as you saw the Catholic France you loved, being destroyed by aggressive secularisation and propaganda.

All those prayers in Ireland. You cannot measure them.

All those daily Masses. You cannot measure them.

All those chapels of Eucharistic Adoration. You cannot measure them.

But they serve, they serve to make Ireland such a different place from the rest of those dry and secular British Isles …

And from nearly all of Europe.

Forces would have you turn Ireland, from your Faith, turn into just one more Anglo-American society.

I pray, I pray …

To Be Continued …

From Roger Buck. Click to buy from Amazon worldwide!

Next Installment:

A Cryptic Traditional Catholic Travelogue 6