The Ireland of my youth was a land of almost mythical wonder, as I think it was for many Irish-American millennial children, who experienced it through children’s books, cinema, and St. Patrick’s Day celebrations with extended family. The art, the music, and the language possessed an ancient, even prehistoric pedigree pulsing with magic, beckoning to an island of leprechauns and banshees. And, of course, we all knew it was a deeply religious place, imbued with a transcendent spirituality that seemed to surpass anything we possessed in America.
Certainly, there were some indisputable facts to support Ireland’s status as a curiously religious society, as most of the rest of Europe unashamedly embraced secularism. In the 1990s, there were more than one thousand Catholic priests of Irish birth serving in the United States — for several years, one such priest at the parish my family attended shared my name (motivation enough for me to show up!). More than half of Irish residents attended weekly Mass, numbers that far exceeded those of other predominantly Catholic European countries.
