Community and the Soul of Ireland: The Need for Values-based Change - Softcover

Bohan, Harry

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1904148220 ISBN 13: 9781904148227

Publisher: The Liffey Press, 2002

Synopsis

Fr Harry Bohan, Founder of the Ceifin Institute, is recognised as one of the leading social commentators in Ireland today. An innovative and original thinker, Fr Bohan contends that the economic success of recent years was hugely important, but it has come at a considerable cost. The rapid changes in Irish society over the last decade - including a decline in the authority of the Catholic Church, the revelations of political corruption, a widening gap between the haves and have-nots, and a breakdown in the family and community as social units - have created a sense of unease despite our increased prosperity.
Fr Bohan argues that people are becoming disconnected from institutions that shaped them and provided leadership in the past. Our current social model emphasises individualism and consumerism to the extent that child-rearing, for example, is seen as another "cost", to be met by both parents working, often meeting their children for a few brief, exhausted hours in the evening.
The key question then remains if the family and institutions are losing their authority, who will raise the next generation? Fr Bohan believes that there is an urgent need to re-form society through values-based change, because it is values which mobilise a society, not facts or laws. This book, the result of a lengthy interview with journalist and playwright Frank Shouldice, is a provocative, timely and significant analysis of contemporary Ireland.

Edition details

• Publisher: The Liffey Press
• Publication date: 2002
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1904148220
• ISBN 13: 9781904148227
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 150