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Colm Tóibín · Among the Flutterers: The Pope Wears Prada · LRB 19 August 2010

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In 1993 John McGahern wrote an essay called ‘The Church and Its Spire’, in which he considered his own relationship to the Catholic Church. He made no mention of the fact that he had, in the mid-1960s, been fired from his job as a teacher on the instructions of the Catholic archbishop of Dublin because he had written a novel banned by the Irish Censorship Board (The Dark), and because he had been married in a register office. Instead he wrote about the great gift of being brought up in the Catholic Church: I have nothing but gratitude for the spiritual remnants of that upbringing, the sense of our origins beyond the bounds of sense, an awareness of mystery and wonderment, grace and sacrament, and the absolute equality of all women and men underneath the sun of heaven. That is all that now remains. Belief as such has long gone. In considering a future in which the Church in Ireland would have no power at all, a future that has, due to the antics of its leadership, very quickly come to p

Vol. 32 No. 16 · 19 August 2010 Among the Flutterers Colm Tóibín Share on Bluesky Share on Facebook Share Email Print 7684 words The Pope Is Not Gay by Angelo Quattrocchi , translated by Romy Clark Giuliani . Verso, 181 pp., £8.90, June 2010, 978 1 84467 474 9 Show More Show More In 1993 John McGahern wrote an essay called 'The Church and Its Spire', in which he considered his own relationship to the Catholic Church. He made no mention of the fact that he had, in the mid-1960s, been fired from his job as a teacher on the instructions of the Catholic archbishop of Dublin because he had wr

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