KILDARE OPINION: When the church ruled the roost in Rathangan and other towns

Maybe it’s the height of it; churches are generally so tall they are the outstanding pieces of architecture in most Irish towns, with the steeples often visible from some distance.

Rathangan’s Church of the Assumption has a slightly forbidding look. It sits on an elevated site with a prairie of a car park out front.

The sight of people out demonstrating in Drogheda over a suggestion that the name of the local hospital be changed from Our Lady of Lourdes brought to mind just how diminished the influence of the church has become in less than three decades.

About 1,000 people took to the streets of the County Louth town before Christmas. Depending on your point of view, this protest is a quirky throwback to the days when women wore head scarves and every house had a picture of the Pope, John F Kennedy and the Sacred Heart.

Or, less likely, it’s the faint beginnings of a counter revolution by people who feel the church has been pushed around too much and for too long. If you’re old enough it’s hard to get your head around just how rapidly and inexorably the church’s influence has waned.

The church in Rathangan is probably the biggest building in the town and it’s not unique in that.

Certainly it’s the most imposing. Back then it was located between the Convent of Mercy and the primary school, which, like most primary schools is managed to a Catholic ethos. Added together, the three buildings amounted to a mini Vatican republic.

It’s hard to imagine that churches were not built deliberately to create an impression of power, to be approached with sense of foreboding.

There are many simple churches dotted around the place but the Catholic churches were generally impressive affairs with no end of marble and expensive wood and metal.

There was a time in Rathangan when two priests worked or served there, and sometimes one would come home from the missions, generally in Africa, and there would be three.

There were three masses on a Sunday and one on a Saturday and a daily mass.

Children were forced out of their homes to attend one of these, and to go to confession at least once a month, a daunting enough task for an 11-year-old.

The priest would visit the schools, the primary schools anyway. The pupils would be warned in advance that the priest was coming and to be on their best behaviour. Even as a child you sensed that the teachers were a little nervous about the arrival of the ecclesiastical visitor.

The parish priest then in Rathangan was Fr William Kinsella, an austere figure who nevertheless lived a simple life. He’d ask you a question or two about religion but mostly he felt he was fulfilling a duty. One of the more interesting questions he asked us was if our eyes ever lied. Of course not.

They do, he said, because if you look at a railway track it narrows into the distance when in fact it’s the same width all the way.

Religion as a subject on the curriculum was important.

So important that we were taught a foolproof way to remember how to spell Catechism correctly every time.

We learned a poem using the first letter of each word in sequence to get it right — Call Adam Tell Eve CH Is Selling Meat.

For CH you inserted name of someone in your class with those initials. In Rathangan we had two, blessed as were with a Christopher Harhen and a Cyril Hackett.

And the parochial houses in Rathangan and elsewhere were generally impressive homesteads.

They had to be supported and this was done by the parishioner every week and at least once a year with an envelope contribution.

The amounts paid into the envelopes were announced from the altar on one of those Sundays when the mass seemed to go on for six hours as the priest read out every name in the parish as well as the amount they paid.

It was a crude but effective way of ensuring that everyone contributed. Some people interpreted the donations of others as self-aggrandizement.

It also confirmed the identities of families you thought might be struggling

There’d have been no need for a protest then about dropping of Our Lady from the name of a public building — it wouldn’t have been a runner.