In Search of Something Mighty
A teenage visit to a Co. Wicklow seminary leads to unexpected reflections on faith, identity, and the changing role of the Church — from Ireland to California.
We were led through the long, echoing halls of Kilteegan Seminary by a tall, bearded priest with a booming voice and a fondness for one particular word: “mighty.” Everything was mighty — the weather, the breakfast, the rosary beads. “It’s a Mayo word,” he told us with a wink, clearly delighted with himself. And it surely is — a solid, broad word with a definite meaning of awesomeness back home in County Mayo. Mighty weather. Mighty tea. Mighty stuff. But hearing it from a Wicklow priest in sandals, echoing off the walls of a seminary on a cold autumn afternoon, made me feel a little… exposed.
I’d ended up in County Wicklow thanks to that same priest, who’d visited Gortnor Abbey secondary school in Crossmolina and extended an invitation to us boys who might be “feeling the call”. It was my second-to-last year of school and my friend Padraic McNulty and I had signed up — more for the chance to dodge classes than any divine inspiration. But on the morning of the trip, Padraic was not to be seen. I got on the bus alone — first to Dublin and then to Kilteegan after a nervous few hours in Busáras bus station, where the very patient Bus Éireann official answered my increasingly panicky questions of the bus’s departure time with “soon lad, I won’t forget you”.
Hours later, I was sharing a seat with an older, red-haired boy from the North who casually informed me the British Army had recently detonated his schoolbag. “Left it on the footpath to bunk off. They thought it was a bomb…the fuckers”. He didn’t seem overly bothered about it. Yet, I gripped the handles of my bag harder and cursed Padraic under my breath.
We arrived at the seminary — a big, lonely building where generations of missionaries had once trained before heading off to convert the pagans of Africa and Asia. The weekend ahead was meant to be a time of reflection, prayer and perhaps revelation. Instead, it mostly consisted of prayers, long silences, stiff walks around the grounds, more prayers and the kind of enthusiastic group discussions that make teenage boys wish for invisibility. The centrepiece of the retreat — aside from the obligatory prayers — was an evening with three young seminarians, introduced to us by the bearded priest as “the mighty priests of the future”.
One was worryingly obese and rather intense in his repeated insistence that “you could still have a girlfriend, up until ordination”. His friend was pale, wild-eyed and told jokes about Honda 50s. He smoked during the breaks and got on particularly well with the would-be IRA bomber. The third trainee sat apart from the others with a prayerbook in hand, quiet and watchful — with eyes that drilled into your skull and made you feel like you’d forgotten to return a library book — even if you’d never visited a library. We saw him in the early mornings, walking alone through the misty grounds, his lips moving in silent prayer. It should have been comforting. But instead, I remember thinking: I can’t imagine myself here. Not with these lads. Not in this place. I don’t even like Mass!
Kilteegan had once been full of life — young men ready to serve, to preach, to go wherever they were needed for the church. But by the late 1990s, the echo was louder than the song and the empty building reflected the coming crisis in religious vocations. I didn’t know exactly what I believed, but I knew I didn’t want to stay. On the Monday morning, as the bus idled and we waited to leave, the bearded priest found me again. “You never told me you were from Mayo, lad! So — how did you find it here?”. I didn’t know what to say. I smiled and lied, “It was mighty, Father”. He beamed and charged off for another suspect.
(Below: St. Patrick's Missionary Society, east of the village of Kiltegan in Co. Wicklow. The order was founded in Kiltegan in 1932. It used to be its HQ until it moved to Nairobi in 2015 - via Facebook - Ireland's Churches, Cathedrals and Abbeys )
To the present day and I am reading a recent study by Félix Krawatzek and George Moreton that explored letters from Irish and German migrants. They found that for the Irish, the Catholic Church played an even stronger role in America than it had at home. It wasn’t just about Mass — it was about identity, community, stability. In a strange land, the Church became a familiar presence, a kind of compass pointing toward home. Unlike the Germans, whose churches were often more cultural than communal.
But time moves on. The role of the Church has changed. Irish Americans, like the Irish at home, have drifted from the altar. Pew Research says that today, 36% of U.S. Catholics are now Hispanic. The Irish presence has faded — still there, but quieter now. The election of the first American Pope, Robert Francis Prevost, from South Chicago, now Pope Leo XIV, only reinforces the seismic shifts going on in Catholicism. His election, and that of his predecessor Pope Francis from Argentina, reflects that the leadership centre of the Catholic church is no longer solely European. It’s global — shaped by Latin America, Africa, Asia and the immigrant parishes of cities like that of Pope Bob in Chicago (yes, his old friends must call him that).
Here in North Glendale, California, is no different. I live within earshot of four churches. On Sunday mornings, the bells still ring in harmony — never clashing with each other. Sometimes I wander into Mass at the modern Incarnation Catholic Church nearby, though more often I sit quietly in the cool, gothic interior of old St. Mark’s Episcopal across the street. The light streams through high windows and the hush has its own kind of holiness. Occasionally, I walk in the soothing serenity of its adjacent open-air atrium.
The local Mormon church offers free English classes on Wednesdays. One evening, I passed the open door and saw a game of basketball going on inside. That surprised me having seen the expensive SUVs parked outside. Or maybe, on reflection, it didn’t. Farther down the same street is the Armenian church (being renovated), followed by the Baptist, Presbyterian, and Methodist churches, modest and each tucked behind trees or neighbouring buildings, happy not to be noticed unlike the prominent positions usually taken up by the churches in Ireland.
When we first moved here, I had the sudden urge to go to Sunday Mass. I found a seat at the back and as the 10:30 service began, I noticed that arriving late was not just an Irish trait. The congregation was largely Filipino and Latin American. A few European faces, but none that looked like they came from around County Mayo. The Mass itself was familiar, though lighter somehow — more celebratory than I was used to. Or maybe that was just me, no longer expecting to feel what I once did. Back home, the church I grew up in is mostly quiet now, except at Christmas and funerals. The congregation is older. Fewer young people, fewer priests.
Last Sunday, our energetic priest in a heavy Hispanic accent, welcomed us new visitors and then launched into the prayers and liturgical actions which I was all very familiar with, before suddenly gasping — “I nearly forgot all about our new Pope!” with the church erupting into shared, joyful laughter. As I grinned, I realised that I too was drawn here like so many emigrants before me. It wasn’t just about Mass — it was indeed about identity, community, stability. In this strange land of America, this Catholic Church was a familiar presence, a compass both pointing toward my former County Mayo home back in Ireland and also welcoming me here to Los Angeles.
As the bearded priest from Kilteegan would surely have said, “Its just mighty”.
Originally published in the Western People, 27 May 2025