It would be fair to say that I approached Derek Scally’s book, The Best Catholics in the World: The Irish, the Church and the End of a Special Relationship (Penguin/Sandycove, £16.99), with a good deal of trepidation. I put off reading it for as long as possible. I mean, how depressed did I want to be? Actually, the book is a good deal more nuanced than I gave the author credit for – he’s the Irish Times’ Berlin correspondent – and the tone is more valedictory and elegiac than aggressive and secular-triumphalist.
But the one chapter where I sniggered in recognition was where he talked about the religious education textbooks he had as a pupil in 1980s Ireland, the “Children of God” course for primary schools and “The Christian Way” series for secondary schools.
10 March 2021, The Tablet
Children will at least have something to build on, or reject
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