Loyola University Chicago Loyola eCommons Master's Theses Theses and Dissertations 1995 Contemporary Celtic Counseling: Envisioning Pastoral Counseling in Ireland Into the Twenty-First Century Maura Twohig Loyola University Chicago Follow this and additional works at: https://ecommons.luc.edu/luc_theses Part of the Religious Education Commons Recommended Citation Twohig, Maura, "Contemporary Celtic Counseling: Envisioning Pastoral Counseling in Ireland Into the Twenty-First Century" (1995). Master's Theses. 4140. https://ecommons.luc.edu/luc_theses/4140 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Theses and Dissertations at Loyola eCommons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Master's Theses by an authorized administrator of Loyola eCommons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License. Copyright © 1995 Maura Twohig LOYOLA UNIVERSITY CHICAGO CONTEMPORARY CELTIC COUNSELING: ENVISIONING PASTORAL COUNSELING IN IRELAND INTO THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY A THESIS SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL IN CANDIDACY FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS DEPARTMENT OF PASTORAL STUDIES BY MAURA TWOHIG DIRECTOR: RICHARD WOODS OP PH.D. CHICAGO, ILLINOIS MAY, 1995 © by Maura Twohig, 1995 All rights reserved. ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I thank the Creator of all that is for having placed in me a curiosity with regard to my own ethnic roots and an appreciation of the whole richness of the diversity in our world; my thanks to this same Creator for the opportunity to explore some of the implications of cultural difference for the ministry of Pastoral Counseling, most especially in contemporary Ireland. I thank my parents, Maggie (Lynch) and Jim Twohig, for having made me a member of the Celtic clan (ar dheis De a anamacha dilse), and my entire family for the richness they have brought into my life. I thank the Presentation Sisters, my second family, without whom these studies could neigher have been undertaken or completed. My special thanks to the faculty of the Pastoral Counseling Program at Loyola and in particular to Dr. Richard Woods and Dr. Frances Belmonte who inspired, encouraged, and supported me throughout this work. My warm gratitude goes to my friend and colleague Mary Daly who walked every step of the Chicago journey with me. Finally, there is one who stands in a category of her own, my dear friend and companion of many years, Erner Madigan, P.B.V.M. It was she who first brought the richness of our common Celtic heritage into my consciousness and who, more than anyone else, made it possible for me to complete this work which I now dedicate to her. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS iii Chapter I. INTRODUCTION . 1 Multiculturality 1 Spirituality .. 11 Relevance of American Experience of Pastoral Counseling to Contemporary Irish Context 11 II. THE EVOLUTION OF A PEOPLE: FOUNDATIONS OF IRISH MULTICULTURALITY . 12 Primeval Times to the Coming of the Celts (c. 15,000 B.C. -c. 530 B.C.) ..... 13 From the Arrival of the Celts to the Viking and Anglo-Norman Invasions (c. 530 B.C.- c. 1169A.D.) ......... 20 From the Beginnings of Colonialism to the Present Day . 41 III. SOME RELEVANT ASPECTS OF IRISH CELTIC SPIRITUALITY 50 General Characteristics of Irish Celtic Spirituality 51 Observations . 80 IV. PASTORAL COUNSELING: THE AMERICAN EXPERIENCE IN A HISTORICAL CONTEXT 81 Scope 81 Terminology 81 Historical Perspective 83 The American Story of Pastoral Counseling 95 American-Based Experiential Perspective 99 Graham's Psychosystemic View of the World 122 Personhood . 126 Caregiving in a Psychosystemic Context 127 Sacred Psychology . 129 iv TABLE OF CONTENTS.--Continued Chapter Page v. CONTEMPORARY PASTORAL COUNSELING IN IRELAND: CHALLENGES AND POSSIBILITIES 131 Irish Partial Self-Governance 132 Contemporary Irish Society: Some Dominant Features . 137 Counseling/Psychotherapy: Contemporary Irish Practice . 150 Possible Approaches to Contemporary Irish Pastoral Counseling 152 BIBLIOGRAPHY 158 VITA .... 164 v CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION I have been drawn to the task of envisioning Pastoral Counseling in contemporary Ireland by the existential circumstances of my own life right now. Upon completion of my present course of studies here at Loyola I plan to return to my native Ireland and reenter the ministry there as a Pastoral Counselor, a capacity which is new for me. This presents some challenges which I hope to explore in the thesis on hand. There will be three principal foci in my study: (1) the issue of multiculturality in the Irish counseling context; (2) the relevance of our native spirituality to effective counseling practice today; (3) the relevance of the American experience of Pastoral Counseling to the contemporary Irish reality. Multiculturality It seems to me that in a very real sense I have needed to apply myself to this topic in some form or another since the day I was born. I am the second last of seven children, the first four of whom were born in a Gaeltacht area of West Cork, while the remaining three of us were born in East Cork, an "English" town to the marrow bone. In this "alien" environment, our family inevitably opted for English as our first language. I became aware, however, from a very young age that in times of intense emotional stress, my mother in particular, always 1 2 expressed herself in Irish: "ls giorra cabhair Dena an doras" (God's help is nearer than the door), or "Is maith le Dia cabhair d'fhail" (God helps those who help themselves), or again, "Ta Dia laidir agus Mathair maith aige" (God is strong and has a good Mother). All were sentences uttered with such fervor and conviction that they bespoke far more than the immediate circumstances seemed to warrant, even to a child's way of thinking. They were, of course, culturally loaded and the culture which inspired them was not the prevailing one. Questions which I could not so much as articulate to myself began to formulate in my young mind and I have never let them go. They are all culture-focused and they lead into exciting territory as I hope to indicate in the course of this bit of writing. One benefit which I began to acquire very young and have never had to relinquish was an intense love for Anglo-Irish literature. Felix culpa, for sure! Being born in the late 1930s, memories of the recent declaration of political independence on the part of 26 of our 32 county country, were fresh in every Irish mind, with all that that entailed. The 1916 Rising was followed by a bitter Civil War which divided households in a manner more painful than even the British oppression over a period of close on to 800 years had succeeded in doing. Many Irish homes, and mine was among them, were faced with the choice of drawing a veil of silence over the painful past--with all the psychological unhealth that the practice of secrecy is known to breed--or quarrel endlessly as to whether De Valera had betrayed Michael Collins or whether, in fact, Collins and Griffith were naive in the extreme in their "unsuccessful" efforts at negotiation with Lloyd George "the Welsh Wizard" who 3 consolidated Partition--the "six counties" reality of today--under cover of the "Boundaries Commission." Tension was in the air and its tone color was unmistakably multicultural! In our home we experienced a blend of the two options as my father, being a high extrovert, regaled us endlessly with stories of the fight for freedom--for his part in which he proudly sported a medal--while my mother, highly introverted, preferred to get on with life and leave the painful past behind. Both were agreed on one issue: the superiority of our native culture, inextricably linked as it was with the Catholic faith, over anything the Sasanach (Englishman), had to offer. This is the background out of which I moved into a consideratioh of the multicultural dimension of Pastoral Counseling here at Loyola two years ago. Little wonder, then, that I welcomed insights shared by such writers as Corey and Corey, Sue and Sue, Augsburger and a host of others whose acquaintance I have made somewhat less deeply in the course of my studies. Before appropriating some of these insights and applying them to my native scene, a working definition of culture, or more precisely, "multicultural" would help. Contrasting this term with "cross- cultural," Corey and Corey observe: It more accurately reflects the complexity of culture and avoids any implied comparison. The multicultural perspective ... take into consideration the specific values, beliefs, and actions conditioned by a client's ethnicity, gender, religion, socioeconomic status, political views, lifestyle, geographic region, and historical experiences with the dominant culture (Wright, Corey, & Corey, 1989). It seeks to provide a conceptual framework that recognizes the complex diversity of a pluralistic society, while at the same 4 time suggesting bridges of shared concern that bind culturally different individuals to one another (Pendersen, 1991). 1 It may, at first sight, appear rather pretentious on my part to apply the term multicultural to the Irish scene. After all, our little patch of ground is very small indeed and, even when we embrace the inhabitants of the entire island, our people number no more than five million at most! By touching into the evolution of the modern Irish Celt, from the dim distant days of prerecorded history right down to the present day, I hope to establish the appropriateness of the term "multicultural" in the contemporary Irish context. Suffice it to say here that, though the blood in our veins is predominantly Celtic, transfusions of other varieties have come our way with the onward march of the centuries.