Irish Times journalist Patsy McGarry's memoir traces the social earthquakes in Ireland

Patsy McGarry, the Irish Times' long-time religion correspondent, is Ireland's conscience. In Well, Holy Lord, McGarry writes about many themes, particularly three decades of sexual abuse cover-ups and state investigations, the tainting of the lives of bishops and cardinals, the elevation of survivors as national figures, and the shaking of the sense of Irish identity.

“All churches, all religions, are essentially tribal,” McGarry writes in this soul-searching novel. “At their best they serve as a repository of the highest moral and spiritual values ​​of their tribe, which they carry from generation to generation.”

At worst, the tribal psyche concealed a criminal sexual secret of clergy abusing young men and religious sisters tyrannizing girls in reform schools, two searing narratives that emerged in the 1990s, thanks to documentaries on state television and investigative reporting by McGarry and others he addressed. Gives generous credit.

The Republic of Ireland was once the most Catholic country in the world. Éamonn de Valera, the long-serving Prime Minister and hero of the Irish Revolution that won the country's independence from Great Britain, ceded supreme power to the Archbishop of Dublin, John MacQuaid. The church allowed priests to take infants from unmarried mothers or transport children from troubled marriages to their warehouses in orphanages that decades later turned out to be horrific displays of psychopathic abuse.

In We Don't Know Ourselves, an admirable history of modern Ireland, Fintan O'Toole writes of villages in the 1950s as “almost stiflingly cohesive and static: Catholic, nationalistic and rural”.

Thus begins McGarry's story. “I was sent out to the moor to watch our cattle as they grazed in the summer, and I would lie on the rough heather for a whole afternoon and explore the seas and the great nations in the clouds while I chewed a sweet piece of tall grass—me and only God and his creation were bliss, and it all made sense.

He was ten years old when his father got a good government job. The growing family moved 8 miles away to Ballaghaderreen. “The journey spanned centuries as we left behind an ancient way of life of electricity, running water, stairs, a roof, and space. We were on our way to a large city of 1,200 people.”

McGarry's primal desire to feel close to God led the boy to practice reciting Mass at the table. As we reach adolescence, questions arise. “How could men of the cloth be physically cruel, even unjustifiably, in the classroom? How could all the relative wealth and worldly power of the church be justified? I realized early on that my greatest difficulty in becoming a priest would be in taking a vow of obedience.”

An excellent student who survived abuse, McGarry entered a world of ridicule. The social gospel of service to others has left a profound mark. However, in high school, “I began to have great difficulty with the entirety of redemption theology, the teaching that Jesus came to Earth to propitiate God, his Father, over rebellious humanity by bearing the burden of human sin on his own head and purifying himself through his death to restore his Father’s favor.” Seriously?

The questions have followed him through college and into journalism, demonstrating the seriousness of his heart in his coverage of the abuse crisis, seeking the nuances between predators and survivors.

His section on Bishop Eamonn Casey of Galway resembles Graham Greene's anecdote. Casey fathered a son with the frail young man Annie Murphy from Connecticut. The bishop paid $115,000 in installments for her silence until she came out publicly in 1992, amid coverage of an early scandal of predatory priests in America and Ireland. Annie's son, Peter, was 17 years old. Casey, a voice for human rights, fled Ireland in disgrace.

McGarry tracks him to an Ecuadorian village, and obtains a bottle of Bushmills whiskey as a symbol of peace. His account of an encounter with a bishop who refused to go on the record is a primer on reporting the uncitable. They drink whiskey over two days. McGarry describes Casey's Mass in Spanish.

At the end, McGarry wrote, “I said I hoped to see him again. His voice cracked, and tears appeared in his eyes. 'Thank you for your respect,' he said, then quickly turned to the priest. He was 'not alone in moving.'

Casey's years spent in a hospital with Alzheimer's disease, and the funeral without a bishop officiating add a surreal tinge. McGarry profiled Peter in 2013, then 38, and described himself as a “fat white guy, with a cat,” selling media equipment near Boston. He was 15 years old before he met his father, and the early encounters were traumatic, he told McGarry.

Over time things changed. “Did you have a relationship? Did you like the man? Sure. But in the end we were never father and son. We were two people getting to know each other. He, in the twilight of life. I, when I was a young adult, became very good friends, and that's all I wanted from him.” “.

McGarry has a poignant profile of Mary Collins, the courageous survivor who rallied public opinion against the Irish bishops. She later served on Pope Francis' Commission for the Protection of Minors, but resigned, criticizing Vatican bureaucrats for obstructing the commission's work, and Francis for not supporting his own agenda.

Retired Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin appears in McGarry's lens as an honest man who denigrated priests for championing the cause of survivors, a man damaged by the backlash of tribal politics.

McGarry's coverage of Ireland's social earthquakes reveals a quest.

“You could say that Jesus made me a social democrat,” he writes in an afterword. “This led me into journalism. … The media was merely a conduit… to see the meek inherit truth and justice.”

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