Tracing the Cultural Legacy of Irish Catholicism

Eamon Maher is Director of the National Centre for Franco-Irish Studies in IT Tallaght, where he also lectures in HumanitiesEugene O’Brien is Head of the Department of English Language and Literature at Mary Immaculate College and Director of the Institute for Irish Studies

• Introduction - Eamon Maher and Eugene O'BrienPart I: Tracing change and setting the context1. 'The times they are a changin'': Tracing the transformation of Irish Catholicism through the eyes of a journalist - Patsy McGarry2. Revisiting the faith of our fathers ... and reimagining its relevance in the context of twenty-first-century Ireland - Louise Fuller3. Dethroning Irish Catholicism: Church, State and modernity in contemporary Ireland - David Carroll Cochran4. Refracted visions: Street photography, humanism and the loss of innocence - Justin Carville5. Contemporary Irish Catholicism: A time of hope! - Vincent TwomeyPart II: Going against the tide6. The poetry of accumulation: Irish-American fables of resistance - Eamonn Wall7. Prophetic voices or complicit functionaries? Irish priests and the unravelling of a culture - Eamon Maher8. Tony Flannery: A witness in an age of witnesses - Catherine Maignant9. 'Belief shifts': Ireland's referendum and the journey from Gemeinschaft to Gesellschaft - Eugene O'BrienPart III: Challenges in the here and now10. Faith, hope and clarity? A new church for the unhoused - Michael Cronin11. The people in the pews: Silent and betrayed - Patricia Casey12. Irreconcilable differences? The fraught relationship between women and the Catholic Church in Ireland - Sharon Tighe-Mooney13. The Catholic twilight - Joe ClearyIndex

‘A new book on the issue, Tracing the Cultural Legacy of Irish Catholicism, is highly readable…this timely study is to be recommended.’Mark Patrick Henderman is a monk of Glanstal Abbey in Limerick, The Irish Times, 27/05/2017‘We’ve heard the constituent elements of the process denied and exaggerated ad nauseam but this book provides them with a context and an analysis that raises the debate to another level y providing thirteen articles, mainly by academics, that help to interpret what’s happened, what’s happening and what may happen in the future to the ‘lost legacy’ of a Catholic culture…For anyone interested in the cultural legacy of Irish Catholicism, this book is a must-read.’Brendan Hoban, priest of the Diocese of Killala, The Furrow, Vol. 68, No. 9, September 2017‘Maher and O’Brien, who lectures in English Language and Literature at Mary Immaculate College in Limerick, have assembled a fascinating series of contributions. In most chapters, the writing and argumentation are accessible to both popular and academic audiences.’Gladys Ganiel, Slugger