What does it mean to be Irish today?

What does it mean to be Irish today? In the increasingly multi-ethnic nation that Ireland now is, that’s a question that will be pondered over. Olympic athletes like Rhasidat Adeleke and Daniel Wiffen demonstrated that a person representing Ireland may now have come from backgrounds not traditionally rooted in Ireland. (Wiffen’s family were from Yorkshire, and Adeleke’s from Nigeria.)

Identity

National identity in the past was based on a kind of tribal, or clan, identity. My parents would have identified their Irishness from  remembered family traditions linked to clan and soil – usually of a particular county. Language, faith and patriotic allegiance were all parts of the threads of our national identity – as were surnames.

Even at school, I once learned: “By Mac and O, you’ll surely know/An Irishman, they say/But if they lack that O or Mac/No Irishman are they!”

But it’s no longer like that. Irishness now may be attested through a document: a new Irish diaspora has emerged through the grandchildren of Irish people accessing Irish passports. Some have an affectionate attachment to Ireland – one Englishman I know waxes lyrical about Kiltimagh, his grandmother’s home place – while others have scant knowledge of Ireland. For some, the passport is just a flag of convenience.

Yet there are also residents of this country who have earned their Irish citizenship and feel proudly part of their adopted land.

“Being Irish is changing: but the foundations of national identity must still have stable roots”

If the old tribal identity is no longer valid, then what is the definition now of Irishness?

I would say it is this: a meaningful awareness of Irish history and culture over the development of the nation. An intelligent appreciation of how a sense of national sovereignty grew and flourished, through music, poetry, prose and art. A grá for the Irish language, even where proficiency isn’t always attained. And a grasp of the 1500 years of Irish Christian tradition.

You don’t have to be Christian or Catholic to be Irish, but you should understand how deep Christianity is in the collective DNA. The best book I always recommend for this is Kevin Whelan’s “Religion, Culture, Landscape and Settlement in Ireland from Patrick to Present.” Every square mile of Ireland bears the mark of its past.

Multi-ethnic societies can be united in a shared identity – America has been – but they must agree, broadly, on the national narrative, which usually includes respecting the host religion. Being Irish is changing: but the foundations of national identity must still have stable roots.

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I have seen it suggested that only well-educated people should have the vote – because ignorant, under-educated people make bad choices. (This suggestion had some traction in the wake of Brexit, which indicated that better-educated folk voted against the Britain’s EU exit.)

Yet the historian Richard Evans’ new study of the Nazis – “Hitler’s People”, for which he researched the lives of the most significant characters in Hitler’s circle – reveals that the top Nazis were often well-educated, refined and brainy personalities.

Many of the leading Nazis had PhDs – Goebbels wrote his thesis on romantic drama and was dedicated to the performing arts. The odious Nazi governor of Poland, Hans Frank, was an outstanding pianist. Joachim von Ribbentrop, the foreign minister, was an accomplished violinist, a cultivated French speaker and a figure-skating ace.

The truly awful Jules Streicher, publisher of hateful anti-Semitic propaganda, was a lyric poet and painted sensitive watercolours (and was an uxorious husband). Goering was highly intelligent and had a refined appreciation of art – he looted mountains of it from the Nazis’ victims. Leni Riefenstahl, film director and actress who adored and promoted Hitler, was a clever, talented and progressive feminist.

The historian’s theme is that the Nazis, who perpetrated some of the most terrible crimes of the 20th century, were not stupid thugs or mindless yobs. They were mostly from cultivated, educated, middle-class backgrounds and had benefited from Germany’s excellent educational opportunities.

But education is worthless without a moral compass. That has to be imparted by an understanding of moral values, and the awareness of right and wrong. A person can be very brainy and clever, yet devoid of any moral framework – as the history of the Third Reich’s personalities evidently shows.

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A woman in Dublin told me she attended a funeral for a neighbour who was an atheist. It was held at the Unitarian Church in St Stephen’s Green, and the secular service was performed gracefully. I was aware that the Unitarian Church “does not have a set of beliefs or doctrines”, as it states on its website, and religious belief is not a condition for services. To be honest, there are now very few Unitarians (originally, Protestant Christians rejecting the Trinity), so it makes sense to open the church to anyone who wishes to use it.

And maybe it does provide a kind of spiritual space even for an atheist’s departure.