It’s probably fair to say that hearing the phrase “getting the ride” in the same sentence as the words “1932 Eucharistic Congress” would come as a surprise to most people.
But in telling what he described as his favourite story relating to that seminal gathering of the upper echelons of Catholic hierarchy, 85 years ago this week, historian Diarmaid Ferriter managed just that. He was speaking to Cormac O hEadhra on the Today programme.
“In 1978, the new current affairs magazine, Magill, was very interested in tracing the evolution of changing attitudes to various things…. they did a survey in 1978 on changing attitudes to sexuality. There was a lot of debate around that time around contraception… One Dublin publican was asked when he last had sexual relations with his wife. He paused, and thought about it, and said, I think it was around the time of the Eucharistic Congress.”
“That devotion to the faith was not incompatible with getting the ride in 1932. But for that particular individual, there was to be a very long famine of the flesh thereafter.”
Diarmaid certainly can tell a story.
The Ireland of 1932 was, of course, a vastly different beast to today’s outward looking, largely secular republic. And the clerics who descended on this little island for arguably the most significant event since the foundation of the state were, in Catholic Ireland, nothing short of superstars.
“This (1932) wasn’t a time when there was questioning mentality in relation to the faith. Remember, the environment that they were growing up in when practising their religion, there is a very strong emphasis on obedience and mass attendance…..”
Diarmaid Ferriter is Professor of Modern Irish History at UCD, and he joined Cormac to look back at the significance of the event both at the time and to assess its legacy. Remember, that Ireland was not just overwhelmingly Catholic in itself, but was looked upon internationally as “jewel” in the Catholic world, according to Diarmaid.
Here’s how he summarised the legacy of the event.
“I think the legacy is the extent to which it demonstrated that church and state were hand-in-glove. It demonstrated that Irish Catholicism could punch above its weight, despite the small size of the island, and the small numbers, that Ireland was a serious and a significant part of the international story and evolution of Catholicism.”
The past is, indeed, a different country, and it’s difficult to know how anyone in power in the Ireland of 1932, the Church and State powerbrokers, would react to the country that would emerge in the final decades of the century. The Eucharistic Congress, a five-day event, was unrivalled in its significance until the visit of Pope John Paul II in 1979. The final-day mass alone is estimated to have attracted up to one quarter of the population of the Free State at the time.
To listen back to Diarmaid Ferriter’s appraisal of that period in full, click here.
Photo credit: Topical Press Agency/Getty Images. Commander Mariania, the Italian consul (in uniform) with Captain Cosulich at the reception meal for the guests attending the ‘Eucharistic Congress’ of 1932 in Dublin on board the ‘Saturnia’.