What happened to the Church in Ireland? w/ Mattie Harte

[Music] those questions that hunger is there in everybody and for many of us particularly in ireland we get such a for one of the better term a watered-down nonsense version of the faith there's no other way to describe it could we move to that kind of topic you know just the state of ireland in general i mean so many people have commented on this that it was once the land of saints and scholars yeah well what is it that we've or you have traded your halos and manuscripts in for yeah so so what is the state of catholicism yeah on today uh is it okay if you give a better context can you go back a bit further please yeah um so it was it was the land of saints and scholars it was a phenomenally fruitful um land of catholic faith of real piety um and a real contribution to the church i mean we'll skip right up until um you know the 14th 15th century um that's what the irish church was okay then you have the political wars in europe and the reformation and then ireland was a guinea pig in that many ways because there was a back door to england and the french landed there the spanish landed there so the british and the protestant regime really tried to quash it and we had a couple of hundred years of real persecution real suppression of the faith like a you know a significant tell us what that looked like for those who aren't aware yeah so um when when the reformation happened in england became protestant uh ireland was under english british rule so then that suppression that closing of monasteries that taking of church lands that hanging of the priests from the nearest tree that um jailing of people if they didn't swear an oath of loyalty to the you know to the king as the head of the church the denouncing of polish loyalties the announcing of published priests the the um the like for a long time the oath to be a member of parliament and included you know denouncing the blessed virgin mary the mass and the church as adulteress um so they took those types of things how that was manifested on the ground um no churches that would be built mass was illegal um people would literally have to hide their priests um so like in different times they go to mass rocks do you ever visit a mass rock whenever you're in ireland yeah so phil's you don't know it was there was no churches mass was legal so they went into the forests and they found a flat piece of stone a nice place that was secluded usually with maybe a position to lock out to see were there any authorities coming they would have had to walk in ones and twos in complete silence somebody would have carried a candlestick somebody would have carried their breather lecturing somebody would have carried the vestments somebody would have carried something else only then whenever people were arrived and looked around and everybody knows everybody then the priest comes out and he says mass sometimes even behind the screen so the faithful wouldn't actually see his face and be able to give him away um but that was the the depth and strength of the irish faith and irish priesthood where these priests and bishops were martyred like hung and while they were still alive disemboweled you know um and brought to england put on trial for false charges in many respects in ireland trial without jury was done away with um and they really tried to quash the catholic faith in ireland giving incentives that you know if you if you dropped a certain irishness in your name and you became protestant will give you more food and money you know literally trying to coerce people into the faith but through that how long did that sort of persecution last for you're talking 1640s right up until uh mid 1700 mid 700s to maybe early 1800s you know um so roughly because there was wars but previous that there were different rebellions different times you know that was the depth and strength of the irish priesthood though they were prepared to lie under bushes in the caves in fields to come and feed their flock and give them the sacraments and keep the strength and the burning fire of faith alive in ireland that's our heritage that's a big part of what i think needs to happen in ireland is a reclaim reclaiming of our narrative because our narrative is a tired old scandal-ridden ineffectual and unconvincing church that's what i what i understood that's what i was brought up with yes i was 26. who wants to be a part of that absolutely absolutely i was 26 before i met a real on fire catholic and he just changed my life because we have the answers to questions like i said previously i had this image of you know sort of smoldering fire that it just needs to be fanned into flame things like you happen in ireland you know when a holy man comes along i mean uh who was it said that uh like one christian being fully christian or one catholic being fully catholic and changing the world yeah you know um and like ireland ireland has 28 bishops for a population one million less than the archdiocese of los angeles wow okay now they're ancient and there was you know there's different reasons for why that's the case but the minute we we have i think maybe like maybe maybe 30 seminarians we've probably seen about the seminarians we have bishops there might be even less uh seminarians and bishops but a reclamation of our narrative and i never got taught in school the history of the irish church what saint patrick did and who he was what the irish monasteries did and how they ultimately re-evangelized and saved western civilization by re-advancing whole swales of europe after the fall of roman empire of the the martyrs who persevered who went through persecution who knew the love of god and lived it to the point of shedding their blood that's that's the heritage we have you know i agree that we yeah we have you guys have to reclaim that narrative but of course i think in order to do that you have to look squarely at the abuses that have taken place and how bad things are in ireland right now yeah i mean do you agree with that as a lovely espresso i mean as opposed to obviously you don't want to sweep anything under the rug you don't let's stop looking at the reality of ireland let's look back to the glory days yeah absolutely absolutely i mean yeah i mean i just just share a story here i remember my wife and i lived in ireland for three years and um while we were there we were going to run a retreat at a particular retreat center and i remember you know showing up and i think it was a benedictine monastery or something but you've got these priests in their clerics you know call me john you know okay father john and that sort of thing and i remember going into their chapel and being surprised because there were yoga mats you know all over the floor and the tabernacle wasn't present i wasn't really sure what was going on and i remember going next door to the library and in the corners looking at the books and in the corner on the floor was a tabernacle and i thought that can't be the tabernacle that was surely maybe this is an old tabernacle and i i bent down and i i opened it up because it wasn't locked and sure enough the blessed sacrament was there i fell to my knees and kind of made an act of faith and realized that okay someone has removed the blessed sacrament from the chapel in order to teach yoga like that was what that was my kind of impression of where much of catholic ireland is now there's pockets of hope and tremendous faithful people a hundred percent but i think by and large it it feels like that it's it's almost like a new paganism i heard somebody say that it's as if and i'm not making this statement so you can correct it if you think it's incorrect it's as if ireland was like a child who grew up under an abusive parent and then just decided to rebel and just say okay we're old enough we're done with this thing so yes speak to that so well i mean we could trade stories back and forth about horrendous things that have happened but we don't want to scandalize anybody um the abusive parent thing um i think has has truth to it uh so we had this incredible faith we had this persecution we had the strength 1930s 1920s 1930s ireland gets independence this southern 26 gets independence again i'm from the north so i still think we were left behind they get independence and the church had such good will and such a standing with the people such uh you will bad for me you've got my back you will come and give me the sacraments even rest your life you will support the catholic emancipation movement in 1920 19 20 18 20s where we get the chance to vote for and put members of catholics into parliament you will support the repeal of the act of union where we want our own government and we want a catholic nation we want to be able to practice our faith you'll support us on that you'll come to us and you'll stay with us through thick and thin new government brings and the irish church was given an incredible level of deference an incredible level of authority and social standing so i mean the nuncio of the pope was given one of the former estates of the british administration that's where he was this is our this is our guy now you know that the crown and the english are gone type thing um and it comes to schools they're all catholic schools universities catholic universities hospitals catholic hospitals politics people take their cue from the bishops okay so that context explains the kind of abusive parent thing we get where it's like our trust was so deep and the status of the priest in our society was so high that the fall then went so far i moved to america in august 18. right after the the grand jury reports right after the cardinal mccarrick and i was like god what am i from one place to the other it's like jeepers what are we doing here you know i don't want to compare scandals but because ireland is small and virtually everybody had a priest or a nun or religious in some part of their family that felt that hurt was so much deeper and because of the status of the priest the fall was further and then there was a real reaction and the church almost took the place of the british and the oppressor in the interest you're the one that's holding us back from our freedoms you're the one because coupled with that there was a tendency towards jansenism in the irish church and clergy you know the fire hell brimstone nobody's worthy you know legalism and um a real uh you know do this or else type thing i mean that's what my my mother grew up with that she grew up almost afraid of the sacred heart image because she was like oh god's watching this and i'm gonna you know i'm gonna do you know which is obviously the opposite of what that was meant to be um so that's what they grew fact the sacred heart was a response to jesus exactly exactly so um that's what they grew up with and there was a higher too much political power too much socialist standing too much difference there was a clericalism there was awful horrendous abuses i've never heard it put like that before and that just really hit the nail on the head for me that the the irish people view the catholic church today the way the irish people once viewed the english yeah that that was that's really profound you're the ones holding us back we have to throw you off you're the oppressor yeah wow yeah um and because of the the sixth stage which happened all over the world um and because ireland was kind of slower to get into that i mean like divorce legal divorce was still illegal in ireland until 1985. i mean that's like people voted in in 1983 an amendment to the constitution to protect the unborn they voted in two to one glory to god but then they removed it yeah were you there i was that's what that was like and just kind of recap for people watching who are like what happened in our yeah yeah so um because there was there were two referendums in correct succession in ireland um and then in the after the scandals um there was a real sense in which the church corporate not just our bishops not just their priests not just late catholics church had lost its moral authority and lost its ability to talk on things um and and you're you were holding us to this standard but you guys are all doing this like how dare you try and speak to us about morality how dare you speak to us but what we're supposed to do not to that couple then the report coming into that so there's like ground jury type reports into this yeah and a friend of mine says he remembers whenever they released the next day at sunday mass it was like people weren't there and he thought oh they'll come back in a few weeks and they didn't and you had mass attendance from 1980s 90s of like 78 80 percent up until 2015 which is like 33 percent now maybe city yes so that culmination of scandals and and and move away and secularization i mean like my parents grew up with electricity so that secularization brought about a set of circumstances that the church wasn't ready for i still think we're not equipped to deal with it we had a very pious people a people of faith deep faith but as far as vincent toomey says there was an anti-intellectualism they weren't a thinking church they weren't a church able to respond to the questions and to the the challenges of of society and even speak on moral issues to give arguments and they weren't used to defending their faith do you know what i mean like you'd ask somebody a question why you believe that oh either believe it you don't don't ask questions and that that's not going to satisfy somebody who's coming through a modern secular culture where they're youtube atheists and you know these different exposed things and movies and agendas and things like well obviously it's not true obviously it's not real you know thank you for watching this clip you can click here to watch the full episode and i want to say a big thanks to our sponsors and to our amazing patrons for making all of this possible please do us 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Channel: Pints With Aquinas

Views: 56,370

Rating: 4.9547119 out of 5

Keywords: aquinas, catholicism, catholic, pints with aquinas, matt fradd, theology, debate, religion, st. thomas aquinas, thomas aquinas, philosophy, mattie harte, ireland, irish catholic, catholicism in ireland, watered down catholicism, dr. taylor marshall, dr. scott hahn, fr. mike schmitz, bible in a year, catholic answers, bishop robert barron, word on fire, jimmy akin, david wood, acts17, jordan b. peterson, jordan peterson

Id: 6mgTEu56dqc

Length: 14min 15sec (855 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 07 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/fevich]

If anyone is on the fence about watching a video this long, watch it. It's worth it. Even if you're not irish.

[u/bellku]

Sts Patrick, Columba, and Brigid, pray for us...

[u/Alex4F]

Once Ireland sent out missionaries to the rest of the world, now the rest of the world needs to send missionaries to Ireland