REFOUNDING THE CELTIC CHURCH

A shorter version of this article was published in The AISLING Magazine, Issue 18.

Dara Molloy

The refounding of the Celtic Church will take place:
- as people switch from the clerical parish model of Church (Roman) to the local group model of Church (Celtic), and
- as people rediscover the nourishment to be found in the Irish spiritual tradition.

The Roman model of Church is hierarchical, patriarchal and clerical. At all levels of Church life the priest, bishop or Pope is in charge. The Celtic model of Church is communitarian, inclusive, and locally controlled. In this model, the people are the Church, and look after it themselves while drawing on the services of the priest, bishop and Pope.

 

Colmcille was the founder of the Celtic Church in Ireland. St Patrick’s role was to plant the Roman flag on Irish soil. His flag remained, but nonetheless, after his death, it was the Celtic Church and not the Roman Church that developed and flourished. While the Roman model saw bishops living like lords and housed in palaces, the Celtic model put them in monasteries as humble monks with a job to do.

 

It was the Celtic Church of Colmcille, Brigid and Columbanus that brought Ireland to its finest hour. After a period of growth through the 5th and 6th centuries, the Celtic Church flowered for the next three hundred years. Monasteries had sprung up all over Ireland, with pilgrim paths from one to the other crossing the land. The highest achievements in sanctity and scholarship went hand in hand with extraordinary achievements in many other facets of life, not least in Celtic art and craft. It was from this Church that Irish monks set sail for Europe, covering it with their monasteries and reaching as far as Kiev in the Ukraine. The Celtic Church of this time rescued Europe from its Dark Ages and laid the foundations for the Europe that is there today.

 

However, even while this glorious hour was taking its course, forces were at work to undermine and depower the Celtic Church. At the Synod of Whitby in 660 AD a decision was made that the Celtic Church should abide by the Roman date for Easter.

 

From about that time, there was a movement within the Celtic Church which sought to bring it into line with Rome. This movement was called the Romani movement and many Irish monks were part of it In Europe, the Rules of the Irish Monasteries were cast aside by the Papacy in favour of the Rule of St Benedict. In a similar way, the various local liturgies indigenous to different localities throughout Europe were brought into line with Rome. The Latin language was universalised and the Roman ritual alone was to be followed everywhere. All local liturgies were to cease.

The Romani movement was not the only cause of the demise of the Celtic Church. The Celtic Church also suffered enormously from the Viking raids and from internal corruption. By the 12th century it had seriously declined. In that century, St Malachy, as the first archbishop of Armagh, made a choice against reforming the Celtic monasteries. Instead he invited in the French Benedictines to Mellifont Abbey. His decision was to rebuild the Irish Church from the outside using foreign forces.

From then on, there began a continuous flow of European religious orders into Ireland. From the Celtic Church perspective they were colonisers. They brought with them a foreign spirituality and a foreign tradition. Most of these religious orders remain in Ireland to this day. There are relatively few indigenous Irish religious orders. This concentration of foreign religious and clergy in Ireland led to the promotion of spiritualities and devotions quite alien to the Irish heritage. Nonetheless they were taken up by the spiritually hungry Irish. These spiritualities included extraordinary devotion to foreign saints of very non-Irish character, while the inspirational and instructional qualities of the Irish saints were neglected.

From the 12th century on, the Celtic monasteries continued to decline and in the 16th century disappeared altogether when Henry VIII ordered the dissolution of all the monasteries. Today, Celtic monasteries are there only as ruins and place-names. There is not a Celtic monk to be seen.

Yet, through it all, the rich spirituality traditional to the Irish people has not been totally lost. It has been maintained outside the church buildings, in homes and on the landscape. During the penal times, when churches were closed and priests banished, it was this spirituality of the home and of the landscape which held the people together. This rich spirituality can be seen expressed in such traditions as the climbing of Croagh Patrick, the days of penitence on Lough Derg and the continued devotion to the Holy Wells throughout the country. The spirituality is still very much present in the Irish language, where it is an integral part of the way people speak. Many of the stories of the Irish saints are still with us, and there is a revival of interest in saints such as St Brigid, St Colmcille and St Brendan.

Irish or Celtic spirituality offers a way of expressing our faith that is connected to place and to time. God is present in our landscape and in our history. It is a spirituality that connects us also to each other, touching as it does the soul of Ireland where our individual identities are rooted. In this it is no different than the Jewish and Biblical tradition where the people’s history and land were integral to their expression of faith. In this sense, Ireland has its own Old Testament – including a creation myth, the story of a flood, and many invasions. Our ancient stories contain the archetypical battles between good and evil, light and darkness. The many faces of God are depicted in the gods and goddesses who manifested themselves in the rivers and mountains, forests and animals of our landscape. The Irish Old Testament is not something to be dumped or chased off the land like the snakes of old. This collection, or Biblia, of myth, legend and folktale contains the roots of the Irish spiritual identity and was the soil on which the Celtic Church grew. Traces of this pre-Christian spirituality are to be found preserved in such practices as the mask-wearing of Halloween night, the bonfires of St John’s Eve and the rounds of the wells.

 

In recent times, there has been a revival of interest in many of the traditional expressions of Irish culture. Irish traditional music is more popular than ever, set-dancing has made a huge comeback, Irish poets and dramatists have achieved worldwide recognition. The enormous success of the show Riverdance has given a new confidence to Irish people to claim their unique identity and be proud of it. All of these artistic forms touch into the soul of Ireland and its people. Their roots and the sources of their success are to be found way back in our past. The Celtic Church will come alive when these artistic traditions find an integrated expression within the context of faith and worship. At present, the atmosphere at a Sunday Mass in a typical Irish parish church and the atmosphere that evening at the set-dancing session in the parish hall, perhaps beside it, are centuries apart. Until they come together, the soul of Ireland and its people will not be healed.

 

It is time for the Celtic Church to be refounded in Ireland. The time for universal uniformity in the Church has now passed. In the late 1960s the Latin language was dropped. Now it is time to drop the word ‘Roman’. The imposition of a uniform model of behaviour across cultural boundaries is a bad idea. The world over it is plain to see the destruction caused by it. Western development, as such an idea, has bulldozed its way through the beautiful diversity of the world. The diversity of species, cultures, and languages has been catastrophically reduced in this century alone. Soon nothing will remain only the western way of life, a certain range of protected species and a handful of languages. The signs of the times clearly signal the apocalyptic dangers of uniformity. A prophetic stand is required to protect and reestablish diversity. The Irish people are well placed to make that stand.

The Celtic tradition offers a model of Church that would appeal to the majority of Irish people . Its spirituality could be central to our expression of faith instead of being marginal as it is at present.

 

I am not advocating a split from Rome. What I want is a return to the indigenous expression of Christianity that once prevailed in Ireland, in union with Rome. Unity is not the same as uniformity. It is possible to have unity in diversity. The Celtic Church lived comfortably enough with Rome until political and historical reasons led to the imposition of Roman uniformity.

 

It is not a question of putting the clock back. What I am advocating is a reconnection with that period in our Church history when we got things right, when we became known as the island of saints and scholars. We have in our past a rich reservoir of spirituality and tradition which has been all but obliterated by the imposition of a foreign way. The focus of our struggle over the centuries until now has been to achieve political freedom for our country. But we have left undone the task of achieving spiritual freedom for our people – the freedom to express our Christian faith in a way that is true to our own identity, that is true to our very soul.

The Celtic Church was a Church from the inside out. The seed of the gospel was planted in the rich soil of Irish tradition, culture and spirituality. It took on the shape and form of that society in which it was set. It was an organic church, an inculturated Church, a Church that was rooted in place and inseparable from place.

There is a world of difference between the Roman Catholicism we now have in Ireland, and the Celtic Catholicism we could have.

 

In Ireland today, at the level of the local people, we have a parish structure. In this structure the priest is paramount. He is in charge of the church, the liturgy, the sacraments, the finances, the schools and so on. If a parish gets a good priest, things can go fine and people can be relatively happy. But if the parish gets an unsatisfactory priest there is very little the people can do except complain. One priest can do a lot of good work, build up a participative structure, get things going – the next priest can dismantle the lot. The people have no say as to when a priest comes, how long he stays or when he is to leave. Practically everything to do with the care of the people’s souls at a communal level is outside the people’s hands.

The model of local church one would have found, let’s say, in the 7th century is very different. Here the church was not centred on parish and on priest, but on monastic community. The monastic community was filled with local people, the abbot or abbess also being a local person. The monastic community created a focus, in the rural society of the time, for the spiritual aspects of life. People lived around the monastery and participated in it at various levels. Monasteries grew into towns. All who lived there were called manaigh or monks, even though not all had taken vows. However, they lived the life of the monastery and that qualified them. Married and single, children and celibates, all mingled. In that monastic community it was often the case that the abbot was not a priest. The priest, or bishop, was often a member of the community, subject to the abbot. The role of the clergy within the community was to do with the sacraments and teaching. It was not necessarily to do with administration or leadership.

 

There are groups in Ireland today which resemble this Celtic model of local church. These groups are of people who have taken the initiative to come together in Christ’s name outside of the normal parish structure. In some cases, these are prayer groups of various kinds. In some cases they are groups that incorporate study, workshops and discussion alongside prayer. There are also groups that combine prayer with works of mercy or work for justice or work for healing. In practically all cases they meet outside a church building, using a local hall, a school, or their own homes.

 

The Celtic model is of a dedicated few who share a vision and are prepared to live it out. They gather around them others who will go along with them. All are local people with a local leadership, creating church in their own locality. This is how the Irish monasteries began, and this is how these local groups begin. They may have a priest as a member of their group or they may not. Where they do not have a priest, they usually have a few they can call on when they need him to celebrate Mass with them or to perform some other priestly function. In all of these cases, the priest is at the service of the group, doing what the group asks of him. But the group itself develops skills among its members in all types of ministry: leadership, teaching, healing, counselling, administration, organisation, hospitality, and so on.

I was at an occasion recently where a local group in a town was celebrating its 21st anniversary. On this rare occasion, the group gathered in the cathedral in the town. They issued an invitation to all the people who had been part of the group at any stage in the 21 years, and they also opened the occasion to the public. The bishop was there, as were about fifteen priests – they had been invited. It was a celebratory Mass – but was very different from the normal parish Mass in that it was totally organised by the group themselves. The Mass began with a welcome from the lay leader of the group, a married man. The choir and musicians numbered about 20 people, and they led the congregation in the singing – songs they all knew well because they were used to singing them at their meetings. The whole congregation sang along. From beginning to end, this celebration was an expression of the people - their banners, their songs, their gifts in the offertory procession (about 30 people took part), their intercessions, their bishop and their priests. The bishop and the priests had a part to play in this celebration, but it was not ‘their’ Mass. In fact, before they went on the altar they were not sure what was going to happen. They were assured they would be told what to do. At communion time, lay people organised the distribution of communion, sending priests and Eucharistic ministers to various stations throughout the church to administer communion under both species.

 

It may have been the same cathedral building, it may have been the same bishop and some of the same priests. It may even have been more or less the same congregation. But this was a totally different celebration of the Eucharist to the normal Sunday parish Eucharist, or even to the special celebrations organised for Christmas or Easter or for Confirmations … because this celebration inverted the normal procedure and put the people themselves in charge.

 

The priests and bishop were there at the invitation of the people. They had a part to play, and outside of that they were told what to do. Far from being an alienating experience for the clergy, this procedure included them into the wider community. At one stage in the celebration a lay speaker focussed on their contribution and this led to a prolonged round of applause for them.

 

It may be that Rome will continue its stand on clerical celibacy and its exclusion of women from the priesthood, but this need not stop local groups from making their own decisions. For example, there is nothing to stop a local group from inviting a married priest to celebrate a Eucharist for them, even though he might not be allowed celebrate it in a church. There is nothing to stop a local group from recognising the priestly gifts to be found in some of their female members and making use of these gifts in their own rituals, liturgies and prayer sessions. This is the way many groups have gone already, without any censure or controversy.

For the celibate priests and bishops themselves, this model of church will draw them back into community, instead of leaving them always on the outside. The word mainistir in the Celtic tradition carried the sense of muintir meaning intimacy. Muintearas was a means of gathering everybody, priest and people alike, into the one fold. This, after all, is how it should be.

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