To what end

Over on the Emerald Isle I spent more time inside places of worship in eleven days than I have since I was an adolescent. As a general rule I try to act as if Santa Claus is watching, though I know he’s not, and coincidentally one of the places I visited was named for St. Nick. I probably wouldn’t have even noticed except a sign at St. Nicholas’ Collegiate Church pointed it out. They say it’s the largest Irish medieval parish church that’s seen continuous use in the last 700 years, though when I went in there nothing much was going on. I was, as a matter of fact, the only visitor. In another, Saint Mary’s Cathedral in Limerick, a woman in vestments offered a service for a single aging worshiper. She intoned biblical passages while I followed the paper signs of the self-guided tour. A lot of the churches were like that — filled from buttress to buttress with displays and indicia — cluttered, in my opinion, with explanations to go along with the artifacts and monuments. I couldn’t really get a sense of what it might have been like in those places centuries ago: cold, stone sanctuaries kept aglow by candlelight as howling storms drove in from the Atlantic, and men in service of the queen and Cromwell hacked each other to bits in savage battles just outside the city walls.

So many churches and historical buildings in Ireland are buried behind redevelopment and repurposed as tourist destinations. St. Patrick’s Cathedral is like a cavernous souvenir shop. Christ Church has signs pointing guests to the facilities amid the memorial statuary. The lesser known St. Michan’s offers tours of its crypts, though to my disappointment the church was closed when I visited “due to unforeseen circumstances,” a phrase I hope alluded to an awakened mummy. Only John’s Lane Church, off to the left of the city center, seemed quiet and untrammeled on a Thursday morning, and I felt guilty taking photos, so shot only a couple with furtive embarrassment. The church’s interior was, I think, the most beautiful I saw, and because of its lack of commercial chintz the only one that offered a hint as to why people might feel something, whatever that is, when standing or kneeling amid its columns and ornaments.

But my skepticism is fairly locked in place, and I failed to succumb to the elevated architecture and atmosphere. A passing glance at history, not unique to Ireland, reveals a continuous chain of fervent, murderous belief systems that meant the suffering and deaths of millions of people for no worthy purpose. One could argue that resistance to such brutality and barbarism led in its way to the Magna Carta and eventual recognition of our natural rights as human beings. But does one credit superstitious zeal for the truths revealed by reason? Thank the worms that churn the soil for the flowers that bloom above the ground?

Because I’m a mouse, I would have been among the millions slaughtered and left to rot upon the bogs. Or I would have hidden myself away in some damp cave and starved to death waiting out the latest war. I’m not a joiner of mobs, but I’m not smart enough to have been locked up in a tower as a symbolic prisoner or courageous enough to have been martyred. Even today I fear the social equivalent of failing to join the collective, and when confronted with the processed baloney people continue to come up with I mostly just clam up or act polite. Though it proves nothing to anyone, I refuse to join in on principle, and so in a way I’ve exiled myself.

When I was ready to leave the Santa Claus church in Galway I spoke to a young African student behind the table about getting a program because when I’d entered the building and paid my five euros, a rather harried bespectacled instructor told me they had run out but promised to make copies and bring me one. He’d disappeared, however, so I thought I’d try again as I finished looking around. In words vaguely resembling English, the student asked me which program I wanted. “The one for the tour,” I said. “Which one? This?” He handed me a program, but it was in Chinese. I laughed a little and said, “No, not that one.” I reached out and picked up the freshly printed English version. Then I asked him if the red door behind us went outside. It had an inviting handwritten sign that said “open,” but it was closed. He nodded and said “yes,” so I thanked him and opened the door to find a man about my age with small, silver hoop earrings painting the opposite wall the same bright shade of red. He looked up with an annoyed expression, and I apologized and told him the student had said I could exit that way. He said, “Maybe you should punish him.” “Punish him?” “They need to be punished,” the man said, “or they don’t learn.”

Uncertain of what my response should be, I backed away and let the door shut. Outside the main entrance I met my sister who’d opted out of yet another museum and spent her time in a small store across the street. We walked away in an alley adjacent to the campus of the collegiate church and passed by the nervous professor who’d earlier promised to deliver me a program. He’d taken off his glasses and stood in a small alcove under the eroded gargoyles smoking a cigarette, and the pained weariness of his expression contradicted the morning sun. A few minutes later a cloud drifted overhead, and it again began to rain.