How the Irish Saved Civilization

by Thomas Cahill - published by Anchor Books, Doubleday, 1995

A Book Review by Father John McCloskey

First, congratulations to Thomas Cahill for having pulled off a trick which I didn't notice until I sat down to write my review. He managed to identify "civilization" in his title with Rome and medieval Europe without specifying "Western" and still to have his book on the best seller list for weeks on end without any noticeable cry from the multiculturalists who have reviewed the book in the secular journals and given it high praise. This achievement may rank with the "defenestration of the homosexual" scene in the movie Braveheart, which did not prevent it winning an Academy Award for Best Picture. These may be signs that the tide is gradually turning in the arts to at least a half-hearted normalcy.

Cahill recounts wittily the charming tale well known to students of the West and Church History of how the evangelization of Ireland by St. Patrick and the founding of Irish monasticism lead both to preservation of ancient thought through the early Middle Ages and to the subsequent re-evangelization of the former outposts of the Roman Empire and the barbarian tribes that had conquered them. It is the story of saints , from Patrick through his spiritual sons and daughters such as Columcille, Columbanus, Brigid, down to Aidan, and Boniface. The lesson should not be lost on us as we attempt to build our own new civilization of love. It will not happen through think tanks, policy wonks, or the nomination of strict-constructionist Supreme Court justices. And it may take time, even centuries.

Cahill does a masterful job in tracing the character of the Celts through the ages and showing through their poetry and art the continuity of type in the present-day Irish people. However, he comes a cropper, in his clever but not altogether accurate setting up of an ecclesial conflict between Rome and Ireland, expressed in the conflicting personalities and, more importantly, theologies of St. Augustine of Hippo and St. Patrick. The faithful Catholic reader will be even more puzzled by claims in the book about the existence of women deacons, even women bishops, the practice of personal confession from layman to layman without the intervention of the priest, and the exaltation of hardy pagan lust, repressed by the Irish monks, but is now making a belated but welcome come-back in "modern" Ireland. In short, Cahill's theological outlook appears, to have more in common with Tyrrell, the early twentieth-century Irish modernist, than with any Irish saint, ancient or modern. Come to think about it, maybe that is a great part of the reason why the book got such laudatory reviews. Read the book and see what you think.

First appeared in Crisis Magazine in the December 1996 issue.