For much of the twentieth century, Catholics in
Ireland spent significant amounts of time engaged in religious activities. This
book documents their experience in an Irish city between the 1920s and the
1960s, and explores the connections between that experience and the wider
culture of an expanding and modernising urban environment. Topics covered
include ritual activities in many contexts: the church, the home, the school,
the neighbourhood and the workplace; the supernatural belief underpinning these
activities is also important, along with creative forms of resistance to the
high levels of social control exercised by the clergy in this environment. The
author uses a combination of in-depth interviews
and historical ethnographic sources to reconstruct the day-to-day religious
experience of Limerick city people during the period studied. This material is
enriched by ideas drawn from anthropological studies of religion, while
perspectives from both history and ethnology also help to contextualise the
discussion.