A Human Being Fully Alive

Growing up we said a decade of the rosary in Irish every night. Me, my six siblings, my parents. Each of us, kneeling into a chair, turned away from whatever was in the centre of the room. ‘Sé do bheatha a Mhuire’, we’d recite. The nightly prayer time started after my parents joined a charismatic Catholic prayer group, around the time I was eight or nine. They made lovely new friends. Top of the Pops was suddenly banned because the American mother-group of charismatic Catholics didn’t approve of popular music. It was the smell of sex that was objectionable in pop music, as other music was sexless.