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Periscope by Niall O'Dowd

Holy Week brings back Good Friday memories in Ireland

Posted on Sunday, April 17, 2011 at 12:36 PM

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The start of Holy Week brings a flood of childhood memories.

Ireland of the 1960s was a very strange place. The power of the church was absolute, never more so than in Holy Week. For weeks beforehand we were preparing for the worst -- Good Friday and the death of Jesus.

We were pretty much responsible for that death we were told, our original sin had apparently been because we were born and had therefore caused Jesus more heartache.

Weird wasn't it, we were born with a sin to begun with.

If we loved God we could atone, if we didn't we were bound for hell.

I could never figure this all loving Jesus who would turn on me if for some ridiculous reason I didn't quite take to him--- this all loving man would take incredible offense and he would banish me to hell fire for all eternity.

God, the brothers and nuns loved discussing hellfire. Purgatory was pretty bad, but hell was the Big Kahuna, the last stop on the road to damnation.

We parsed and analysed venial and mortal sins, which ones we could avoid hell and settle for purgatory -- just a few years of roasting, as against Hell

Good Friday itself was a long exercise in church attendance and penance.

As a six or seven year old you attended a Good Friday ritual that lasted for hours. The town and cities were closed down, I don't even remember radio or television being on the air. Everyone wore black.

We did the stations of the cross, each station more miserable than the last as we reenacted the death of Jesus.

Judas and Herod became villains in our lives, worse than any black clad cowboy at the local cinema.

Holy Saturday we were in a state of suspended animation, Jesus was dead and we didn't dare go outside and play but the thought of Easter Sunday and the Easter Eggs was a thrilling one.

Finally, the great day dawned that Jesus rose for the dead and we got to celebrate and be kids again.

What a strange joyless world it seemed back then on that week.

When I talk to American Catholic friends, it seemed far more joyful over here.

With a kid in the Catholic school system I see how much better things are nowadays and the lessons that are thought are about love not penance.

Thank God for that.

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mamaginnty | Apr 23, 2011, 08:10 PM EDT

Hollabackgurl.. the church of America did exactly the same thing, and the catholics in America did exactly the same also. In whatever parish in whatever country, the " victims " were there to answer to the clergy, America more than others, bowed and gave millions to the church. I visited St Patricks in Manhatten years ago, and the boxes placed around it were overflowing with $100 bills. You would not see that it Ireland. Now as years have passed I actually believe we were brainwashed.

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Gearoid4 | Apr 21, 2011, 05:19 PM EDT

I suppose that the Irish Church did serve up rather more the 'Fear' of God rather than His love. Then this developed into the classic Irish 'guilt'. But this is not real Catholicism and is more related to the pessimism of Calvinism. But nowadays the Church has played down the guilt aspect and emphasizes in sermons and pronouncements God's love. But has this in a sense made more recent generations lose a sense of the consequence of sin by the pendulum swinging too far to the opposite side? It is a question worth pondering.

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tredagh | Apr 21, 2011, 12:00 PM EDT

Yea it didnt help that Teddy Reillys on Scarlet Boulavard was closed for the day.

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Tisovertheglen | Apr 20, 2011, 07:19 AM EDT

Can't fault Holy Week. Growing up in Ireland it was lucrative. Like a Wedding or Funeral that brought a ten shillings tip afterwards from the bereaved or best man. We altar boys fought in the school yard as to who would carry The Processional Cross, Paschal Thurifer, and Brass Incense Boat (all cumbersome stuff) during the Holy Week ceremonies. For the Sodality Fund gave three tenners for the ones with 'important duties at the front'. The eight or nine others with little to do but genuflect handed a small holy medal of Dominic Savio 'the boy saint' the size of a sixpence after the Easter Vigil. Invalid coinage to buy a bag of crisps but some would try. It was worth the scrap in the yard, and hours of looking solemn yet miserable at all the goings on around Herod just to see that ten pound note..Alleluia!

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aloistmartin | Apr 19, 2011, 08:20 PM EDT

Holding on to Yesterday ~ Ambrosia

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dogbytes | Apr 19, 2011, 12:28 PM EDT

@seamusmoore, you sound like a bitter old man, with allot of anger to let out.

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dogbytes | Apr 19, 2011, 09:01 AM EDT

Sorry to disappoint you @jacersagain, but Jesus was in fact the son of Mary and Joseph. And thank you for your thoughts. You are free to continue to burry your head in the sand and hold on to these primitive ideas, if they give you comfort. But there's always going to be that knowledge right at the back of your head that you're fooling yourself.

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seamusmoore | Apr 18, 2011, 07:48 PM EDT

niall, why was it a "good Friday" for you, because they killed our LORD? One thing puzzles me, though, WHY don't you ever mention your mama? Was she a mean and nasty Irish witch like your sister, the little "o". BTW, she never attends Queen of Angels,is she a communicant @ st Sebastians or St. Raphaels? Just curious. For the record, you are a soup slurping Godless neo-Brit. Enjoy ND this fall, it will be last session as the Sycamore trees will devour you. BYE BYE Love.

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jacersagain | Apr 18, 2011, 07:45 PM EDT

If I could, in my sense of hopelessness and yet in hopeful deliverance, restitute for all the wrongs I did the every Friday before the every Easter Sunday, I might have reason to take gksmithlcw, dogbytes and hollabackgurl on a fly-away runway, back to God and His Son Jesus Christ. But, y'see, I'm a sinner and they will have to look to Jesus for saviouring. Like me did. It works well. Have a Happy Easter Resurrection, you three.

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hollabackgurl | Apr 18, 2011, 11:00 AM EDT

Good article. The note of suffocation in this article is very understated, instructive and moving. The Church in Ireland then even expected children to show it absolute obedience. It's incredible to me that the Irish fought off British colonialism to suddenly and reflexivly embrace Rome. What a short sighted disaster that was for the country and in a way it created as many victims as the Brits misadventure in Ireland did.

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dogbytes | Apr 18, 2011, 08:49 AM EDT

I was brought up an Irish Catholic, but in my twenties I faced up to that reality that religion is based on faily tales and outlandish fictional characters. What baffles me is that people want the church to "evolve" into something that they find more pleasing. Why not just leave religion to the dark ages and live in the real world? You're talking about an organisation that's based on the interpretation of a far fetched book written and re-written by people over two thousand years. Seriously, think about it. The God of this book acts like a spoilt angry child. It was somehow necessary that we should be born with original sin, which this guy Jesus must then be sacrifised for. A man born to a virgin and who comes back from the dead like a zombie ? Oh Please, just give us a break. Why would you want to enroll your child in a school that thinks it's acceptable to believe this utter junk ?

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dogbytes | Apr 17, 2011, 12:51 PM EDT

Well it's good to know that the church has evolved a little bit, anyway...

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