Derek Scally
Autor/a de The Best Catholics in the World: The Irish, the Church and the End of a Special Relationship
Obres de Derek Scally
Etiquetat
Coneixement comú
Encara no hi ha coneixement comú d'aquest autor. Pots ajudar.
Membres
Ressenyes
Premis
Estadístiques
- Obres
- 1
- Membres
- 33
- Popularitat
- #421,955
- Valoració
- 3.3
- Ressenyes
- 1
- ISBN
- 5
I understand why Scally took that particular tack, and why he tries very hard not to turn the book into a hatchet job on all Irish religious or on Catholics more generally. I have to admit that I don’t think I’d be able to be so even-handed if I were writing something like this—see the number of epic arguments that I (as an Irish person roughly a decade younger than Scally) have had with my dad over the years over whether people are too harsh on the religious orders in Ireland because after all they provided an education that the state couldn’t or wouldn’t have during much of the 20th century. This, for me, is an argument which edges perilously close to “but Mussolini made the trains run on time”, and there were parts of this book that I did think edged away from “even-handed” towards “both-sides-ism.”
Scally gently chastises many contemporary Irish people for not having moved past anger with the institutional Church to a place where they can instead think about reconciliation practices and appreciate the “glories” of Catholic Ireland. This is a tad patronising, and seems to be built on an unexamined (and deeply culturally Christian) assumptions about the desirability of forgiveness. There are a number of points in the book where his phrasing or assumptions make plain the fact that he’s not a religious studies scholar or a historian, and I found myself wrinkling my nose a bit as I read. There’s also one bit where he implies that people living in largely secular societies seem to lose the ability to think abstractly or in metaphors, which was deeply weird.
These reservations aside, this is still an important and challenging read. Scally’s series of interviews with Cardinal Seán Brady alone are worth the price of admission, as are many of the moments when Scally is interviewing people one-on-one or thinking on a local scale as opposed to making big-picture pronouncements. There are many questions posed here which more Irish people of all ages would do well to grapple with.… (més)