Growing up without religion in a fairly religious country
Early impressions of Catholicism (I was a kid in eighties Dublin), all seem to centre around clothes.
My beloved grandmother trying to convince that I could still make my holy communion at the age of ten, and my horror at the idea of an awkward and ungainly me having to wear a wedding dress, in amongst all the much smaller seven-year-olds.
The day some of the kids in my class made their holy communion, me in the audience, so to speak, with most of the kids from my class, what I wore: a much loved tartan red skirt, a hand me down from an older cousin. A friend’s communion dress, a lovely white cotton with a pink ribbon sash that in retrospect must have stood out amongst all the satin and lace.
Another early memory in the school yard, telling a friend why would I believe in God if I’ve never seen him. Her reply. Why would God be bothered coming down to appear before you, just to prove he exists? Fair, I thought. But remained unconvinced.
The often asked but don’t you want to believe in something afterwards? Sure. I’d rather think we were all meeting up afterwards in something that warranted being described in heaven. But just because I wish it were so etc. That struck me as wishful thinking rather than belief. Like being scared into believing.
It isn’t such a big deal now, but not being a Catholic in Ireland at that time was unusual, the Central Statistics Office figures for 1981 show that around 93% of the country professed their faith to be Roman Catholic.