Knock is a decidedly unfashionable place if by fashionable we mean whatever happens to be the latest thing. But Knock is also a decidedly popular place, which only goes to show that somethingdoesn't have to be fashionable in order to be popular, writes David Quinn

I spoke at the two Masses in Knock Basilica last Friday. Knock's parish priest, the redoubtable Msgr Joe Quinn, told me that the crowds this year are the biggest since he was appointed to the post back in 2002.

He said that normally for the afternoon Mass the basilica is about half-full, which is to say, a 'mere' 2,500 people attend that Mass, whereas the night-time Mass is full.

This year, he remarked, the afternoon Mass attracted a close-to-full crowd.

That means that both Masses attracted close to 10,000 for each day of the annual novena. To this number should be added several thousand more who drift in and out of the shrine during the day.

'Plain people'

Knock attracts what Jackie Healy Rae might call the 'plain people of Ireland', who he memorably defined as those who 'have their dinner in the middle of the day'.

They are mostly women, and mostly over 60. That's to be expected. The Marian devotions have always attracted more women than men. The novena mostly falls during the working week which would also push up the age profile, and Mass-goers tend to be on the older side in any event.

But as I said at both Masses, voters tend to be on the older side as well. So do members of political parties. So do members of trade unions. So are newspaper readers and listeners to RTÉ radio one, and even radio two. The fact is that rising individualism is stripping many institutions of younger adherents, and not just the Catholic Church.

Down-to-earth

Their unfashionability also makes Knock's devotees utterly unpretentious, unaffected and down-to-earth. Their religion helps them keep their two feet planted firmly on the ground, whereas the fashionable types, because they are fashionable, are the ones who act like the True Believers, the ones in touch with the times, and therefore they feel they have permission to lord it over the less fashionable.

Strange to say, while at Knock the person who kept coming into my mind was the singer Daniel O'Donnell. Like Knock he is as unfashionable as the day is long and like Knock he is very popular, and probably many of the same people who like Knock, like O'Donnell.

It also struck me that all those women at Knock are about as likely to heed calls to boycott the Mass over the issue of women priests as they are to listen to a record by The Killers.

Boycott

It would never occur to them to boycott an act of worship in order to make what is essentially a political point.

In addition, it occurred to me that just down the road the annual Humbert Summer School was taking place, and was calling on Catholics to rise up against their 'Roman masters'.

The keynote speaker was Robert Kaiser who reported on the Second Vatican Council for Time magazine and who has spent the decades since then misinterpreting that Council for anyone in hearing range.

Kaiser tried to compare 'Rome rule' with British rule. The irony didn't seem to strike him that it was precisely the unionists who wanted British rule to continue who warned that if it didn't, we would end up with 'Rome rule' instead.

In any event, as Michael Kelly, deputy editor of The Irish Catholic told him, the vast majority of Irish people never accepted British rule, but they did accept the Catholic faith, or to be more precise, the One Holy Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church.

But by the time Kaiser got through his 'reforms' of the Catholic faith I'm not sure whether even one of those words would apply to it anymore.

In any event, the Humbert Summer School and all comparable events could only dream of attracting anything like the crowds who attend the annual Knock novena or for that matter, even small parish novenas that take place up and down the country and still manage to attract hundreds of people, especially in rural areas.

But it was Bob Kaiser who attracted the attention of the media because rebellion against the Church is much more fashionable (to use that word again), than fidelity to it.

Which is the real Ireland, the one usually portrayed and promoted in the media or the one found at places like Knock, but not just at Knock? The answer is that both are.

They occupy almost parallel universes, remote from one another. But there is one difference. The people who go to Knock are well aware that another, much more secular universe than their own exists.

However, those who occupy that other, more secular reality, are frequently totally unaware that many hundreds of thousands of people still live in that other, more religious universe. This in turn gives rise to the question, who is really out-of-touch in modern Ireland?