The Effect of the EU on the Culture of Ireland.
Maggie Gallagher in a YahooNews article, IRISH EYES ON EUROPE, frets over Europe's influence on the Emerald Isle: "Europeanization has brought and will bring many advantages to the people of Ireland. But at what cost?" She likens the cultural influence of Europe to British colonialism, but notes that the Brits were always resisted, while the "Europenization" seems to mostly be docilely accepted:
Gallagher sees the U.S. as an alternative cultural influence: "For the Irish resistance, American civilization has clearly emerged as a counterbalance to European cultural prestige, on moral and religious questions." She sees Europe as affecting religious observance in Ireland. Although, according to a poll reported in The Christian Science Monitor, the Irish have the highest religious observance in Europe, 56% attending religious services at least once a week (followed by Poland at 54% and contrasted with France at 8%).
There are reasons to believe that the Europeanization of Ireland will eventually wane. Mark Steyn, who in the Telegraph reiterated his assertion from two years ago that America and Europe are "engaged in a new Cold War", agrees with a new prognostication of the CIA which "predicted the collapse of the EU within 15 years". That may or may not be the case, but regardless, there are signs that secularism has reached its high-water mark in Europe. Another Monitor story, In a secular ocean, waves of spirituality, notes that this is the case:
Accounts like the following, Atheism worldwide in decline and The Twilight of Atheism, don't bode well for secularism either, even in Europe. So perhaps Ireland is not doomed to the fate of secular France. Indeed, France itself and the rest of secular Europe may be reevangelized in this century.
A country that was ruled for 800 years by the British but never conquered is now ambivalently succumbing to both "modernization" and "Europeanization." By the former, I mean the economic processes transforming a predominantly agricultural economy into a post-industrial "Celtic tiger."
Europeanization, by contrast, means the insistent pressure to adopt the moral values promoted by the dominant civilization: in this case a rabid secularization and sensualization of Irish life, as well as the transfer of moral authority into the hands of a techno-bureaucratic aristocracy.
Gallagher sees the U.S. as an alternative cultural influence: "For the Irish resistance, American civilization has clearly emerged as a counterbalance to European cultural prestige, on moral and religious questions." She sees Europe as affecting religious observance in Ireland. Although, according to a poll reported in The Christian Science Monitor, the Irish have the highest religious observance in Europe, 56% attending religious services at least once a week (followed by Poland at 54% and contrasted with France at 8%).
There are reasons to believe that the Europeanization of Ireland will eventually wane. Mark Steyn, who in the Telegraph reiterated his assertion from two years ago that America and Europe are "engaged in a new Cold War", agrees with a new prognostication of the CIA which "predicted the collapse of the EU within 15 years". That may or may not be the case, but regardless, there are signs that secularism has reached its high-water mark in Europe. Another Monitor story, In a secular ocean, waves of spirituality, notes that this is the case:
"God is back among intellectuals," says Aleksander Smolar, a leading European thinker who heads the Stefan Batory Foundation in Warsaw and teaches at the Sorbonne in Paris. "You can feel there is a problem of soul in Europe; people are conscious of a void and there is a certain crisis of secularism."
Accounts like the following, Atheism worldwide in decline and The Twilight of Atheism, don't bode well for secularism either, even in Europe. So perhaps Ireland is not doomed to the fate of secular France. Indeed, France itself and the rest of secular Europe may be reevangelized in this century.
posted by BarbariansAtBay at
1:49 PM
