The hallelujah weekend of Ireland
This was the papal visit of 1979 which boosted Irish fertility. John Paul II's exhortations to the women of Ireland to be fruitful like the Virgin Mother, managed for a time, to recall them to their reproductive duty to the Church — until a tragedy led many to reconsider what they had been taught.
They called it "The hallelujah weekend of Ireland" and its timing was no coincidence. In the summer of 1979 the Irish legislature made the first tentative step towards legalising contraception. [1] That autumn John Paul II paid a visit. There the pope’s homilies insistently extolled the Virgin Mother, whom Irish women had been taught to take as their role model. He visited the shrine of the Virgin in Knock, whose statue is demurely but unmistakably fruitful.
- At her shrine in Knock the pope intoned three times the biblical verse about Mary, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb".
- He then exhorted them to bear children for the sake of the Church: “to build up [Christ’s] Mystical Body by living with the life that he alone can grant us”. [2]
- Finally, the next day in Limerick he urged Irish women not to be sidetracked by any other goals. They should “not listen to those who tell them that working at a secular job, succeeding in a secular profession, is more important than the vocation of giving life and caring for this life as a mother”. [3] He emphasised that this meant “a good Christian mother” and that the aim was not only the production, but the evangelisation of children.
For a time it worked. The number of births recorded in 1980 was the largest in Ireland in more than 80 years. “Ireland hit a perfect demographic storm.” [4] Members of this population bulge are known as “the pope’s children” and many of them are named "John Paul".
However, it didn't last. The Irish were shocked by several tragedies which bright home to them the costs of living in a society controlled by the Church. Just five years after the Pope's visit a fifteen-year-old was found dead at a grotto dedicated to the Virgin Mother. With nowhere to turn, she had bled to death in the bitter cold after delivering a dead baby all alone. [5]
The Irish decided that things must change.
Postscript: Another papal trip scuttles freedom of choice in Poland
On 28 May 1997 the Polish Constitutional Tribunal, in a ruling which was criticised by three of its judges, confirmed the very restrictive "Anti-abortion Act", despite the fact that the Small Constitution then in effect said nothing about abortion. The justices were under great pressure not to uphold the liberalisation of abortion and thereby insult His Holiness, who was due to arrive in three days' time. In fact, when John Paul II began his fifth papal visit to Poland the Members of Parliament lined up in the Sejm to kiss the papal ring. Everyone understood the ruling as a gift to the pope. [6]
Notes
For an update, see Patsy McGarry, “How Ireland Lost Its Faith”, Financial Times, 27 February 2010. http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/02/26/how_ireland_lost_its_faith
1. The first Health (Family Planning) Act was passed on 23 July 1979. http://www.irishstatutebook.ie/ZZA20Y1979.html
For a more general account see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Irish_solution_to_an_Irish_problem
2. “Homily of Pope John Paul II at [the Marian shrine in] Knock, 30 September 1979”, The Pope in Ireland: Addresses and homilies, (Dublin: Veritas, 1979), pp. 53-54; p. 59.
http://www.catholiccommunications.ie/popejohnpaul-1stanniversary/popeirelandtexts.pdf
3. “Homily of Pope John Paul II at the Mass for the People of God, Limerick [Racetrack], 1 October 1979”, ibid., p. 86.
4. David McWilliams, Dublin economist and author of The Pope’s Children: Ireland’s New Elite” (2005). Quoted in the New York Times, 25 January 2007.
5. Nialler, "Ireland: A Country Deconverts", 19 January 2008. (A superb summary.)
http://nontheistnexus.com/index.php?option=com_contact&task=view&contact_id=6&Itemid=103
6. On 30 September 1996, the so-called "Anti-abortion Act" had been amended to allow abortions on socio-economic grounds. The ruling of the Constitutional Tribunal of 28 May 1997 http://www.trybunal.gov.pl/OTK/teksty/otk/1997/k_26_96.doc stated that this was unconstitutional, despite the fact that the temporary Small Constitution, then in force, said nothing about abortion, as it was essentially the Communist constitution.
