It wasn’t just priests or politicians who kept Catholic Ireland alive. It was also us, the Irish people’. It
is Christmas Eve Mass in St Monica’s Catholic Church in Edenmore, on
Dublin’s northside. Around me are more memories than people.
So much has changed since I was an
altar boy here in the late 1980s: the dwindling, ageing congregation
and the appearance of the long, functional building. It was built in
1966 as a temporary church, but by the 1990s it had become permanent.
Inside, roof tiles were added and the carpet tiles removed, replaced by a
more luxurious pink carpet and blond wood pews.