[Marxism] Faith of our fathers...

[gary.maclennan at gmail.com]

Faith of our Fathers….



I am lined up to do a review of Larry Browne's *Hammered by the Irish* – the
story of the brave Catholic Plowshares activists who took  hammers to a USA
war plane parked at Shannon Airport.  The stationing of the plane at Shannon
was of course a clear violation of Irish neutrality.  So while I wait for
the book to arrive me thought that I would warm up with another round of
reflections on things Catholic.  All this is partly inspired by my recent
trip back home.

Firstly *matters mystical*:  While at home in my native Omagh, I picked up a
book by Larry Cummins.  It is available on the web at
www.pleaseprayforus.com.  Cummins is the classic Irish peasant (farmer
please!).  He is also a mystic who channels directly to the Blessed Virgin.
She gives him messages regarding who or what he should pray for.  The book
is a series of loosely connected anecdotes relating Cummins' encounters with
the forces of evil.  All extraordinarily interesting if you have as I do a
fascination with mystics.

Cummins addressed while I was there a little group of Catholic charismatics.
Unfortunately I did not go to meet him.  That would have been my very first
encounter with a live mystic.  What intrigued me however was the very fact
of Cummins.    The Church I grew up in would have silenced Cummins
absolutely and very publicly too.  That he was now allowed to speak in the
church and gather followers, is something that amazes me.  He repesents of
course a potential challenge to the authoritiy of the Catholic Clergy.  After
all here is someone who is in direct contact with the mother of God.  There
was a time when he would have paid with his life for daring to make such a
claim.

Now the clergy must grit their teeth and allow the Cumminses of the world,
and there are of course an increasing number of them,  get up and preach the
word of their God. A monopoly has been broken.  However they do endeavour to
keep a close eye on their rivals in the trade.  Thus Cummins' book has an
introduction by a Father Dwyer.  He assures his fellow clergy that

"Personally I want to testify to Larry's deep love and respect for the
Church.  He has an extraorodinacry understanding of the necessity of the
ordained ministry of Bishops and priests for the spiritual well-being of the
People of God.  His deep respect for the clergy is so self-evident" (Dwyer
in Cummins, 2005, p2).

This is if I ever saw it an classic instance of esoteric communication.  Do
not fear Cummins is what Dwyer is telling his compatriots in the clergy. He
is not challenging our authority.  Therefore he is harmless and useful.



So what do I make of all this?  Well it speaks to me of a double level
crisis.  Firstly in the Church – falling attendances, a seemingly endless
series of scandals, and a collapse in recruitment to the clergy have all
dinted the confidence of the core Church – that is the clergy.  In
desperation they are forced to allow the peasantry to assert themselves in
the way that peasants usually do - through visions, rituals, miracles,
pilgrimages etc.



The second level of the crisis is of course among the peasantry itself.  It
is incidentally an absolute no-no in Irealnd to describe the farmers as
peasants.  But peasants they are and peasants they wish for ever to
be.  However
the hammer blows of modernity are like the dialectic, unremitting and
remorseless. Modern farming has Ireland by the throat.  One has only to
breathe in the smell of the slurry that they spread over all the fields to
get two crops of grass for the ubiquitous farting cows to know the truth of
this.



Ireland too is having its long postponed rendezvous with modernity.  But
this is not the modernity that could have been inspired by the Great
Presbyterian Enlightenment of the 18th Centrury. The British drowned that in
slaughter.  NO Ireland's modernity is governed above all by the norms of the
neo-liberal free market.  It is thoroughly capitalist and thus lacks
anything that could be thought of as even vaguely spiritual.



So that wonderful abstract quality of the Irish; their addiction to ideas
and scorn for matters material have been drowned in consumer goods.  The
Church of Rome which should have acted as a bulwark against the crass
materialism that now holds sway was too rotten and corrupt to the core to
make a stand.



So it is left to the Larry Cumminses to attempt to articulate the values of
a world that is vanishing ever faster. His in Gramsican terms is the church
of the peasants or poor.  Their devotion to ritual and their total lack of
interest  in doctrine have traditionally made them easily manipulatable by
the clergy.  But the crisis within the church is very deep.  Across from the
house where I live are two buildings.  One used to house the Loretto
nuns.  They
have all gone.  The other used to house the Irish Christian Brothers.  They
too have vanished. What has been will not be.  There is even talk of the
need to import priests from Africa.  The Empire strikes back indeed. No
wonder the peasant mystic has made a reappearance.



(See < http://www.truepeace.com.au/medjugorje_story.html> for a comparable
experience among the Croatian peasantry.)


The second part of these ramblings will deal with the crisis among the
Church of the intellectuals. Currently this is centred would you believe on
a church here in good old Brisbane.  I love it when the dialectic makes the
periphery the centre of a significant upheaval.

regards

Gary