Where the stags don't stray

Meet under a statue exceedingly bare,

And if you want a cathedral, we've got one to spare....

THAT was about Liverpool, of course, homespun by The Spinners and said to have 300 verses, though the Internet - mercifully - offers only the first four.

It's Dublin's neighbouring cathedrals which today's column explores, however, and the extraordinary fact that in a country where 95 per cent of the population is Roman Catholic, both cathedrals are Anglican.

The sonorous and splendid choral Evensong at Christ Church attracts just 16 to mark the £300,000 restoration of the cathedral organ, a Sunday congregation smaller than we'd encountered in the tiny Weardale village of Thornley a couple of weeks earlier.

It is a country where the Church's influence is decreasing, like sales of Guinness and cigarettes, and where the best known priest may soon be Father Ted.

"The Catholic Church is still a huge power broker, but its day has gone," claims Dublin born author Roddy Doyle; the Irish Times describes parishes as "sometimes moribund".

Dublin is also a city in flux, an increasingly cosmopolitan place, homogenised save for the lucky shamrock and the complete leprechaun outfits, where UK stag weekends have become rutting routine.

Doyle, who once claimed that James Joyce needed a good editor, suggested in a Guardian piece last week that Dublin was "a big con job".

"We have sold the myth of Dublin as a sexy place incredibly well, but it is a dreary little dump most of the time," he added, and was saluted by a columnist in the Irish Independent.

"Finally someone with the courage to say this in a country which has pulled more con tricks than Lourdes and Knock combined."

Even the guide books are cautious. "Visitors cannot help but notice that the city looks a bit dirty," concedes one. "Dublin will not appeal greatly to those for whom cleanliness is next to godliness."

Another laments that classic streetscapes have been destroyed by unscrupulous developers who still get away with murder; Irish author Frank McDonald describes O'Connell Street - Dublin's main thoroughfare - as a "honky-tonk freeway".

Natives may recall with increasing consternation the city's original name. Dublin is Gaelic for Blackpool.

We were there two Sundays ago, and while reports of Dublin's demise may greatly have been exaggerated - all Ireland is riding on the tail of the Celtic Tiger, an unprecedented economic boom - the centre is curiously cloned.

In O'Connell Street a film crew was recreating downtown Manhattan, big yellow taxis and all, because it's more easily done in Dublin than in New York.

In Temple Bar, a temple now to Bacchus, the stags stagger from Saturday night to Sunday afternoon; on the corners, eyes averted, beggars offer empty polystyrene cups in the hope that they may be refilled with human kindness, or for preference a couple of euros.

An optimist, female, holds a bucket.

The Sunday Independent carries a piece on Neil Horan, the Irish Roman Catholic priest who hijacked the Olympic marathon and who now (says the Sunday Independent) believes that Christ will return as an Israeli trooper and may be doing little to help the cause.

"It shows how far he has drifted from conventional Catholicism," the paper adds, a little superfluously.

Christ Church and St Patrick's, the other cathedral barely a quarter of a mile away, are among the city's top ten visitor attractions though neither may rival the Guinness Brewery, standing by the River Liffey but no longer using its water. The Liffey was considered iffy.

Ireland's population this year passed four million for the first time since the potato famine, 1.4m said to like a drop of Guinness.

St Patrick's, where Jonathan Swift was dean in the early eighteenth century, is Ireland's largest church and a "national" cathedral; Christ Church, where the pretender Lambert Simnel was "crowned" king of England, is the cathedral church of the archdiocese of Dublin and Glendalough.

Built in the 11th century, it was substantially restored in the nineteenth. "There is an atmosphere of friendly rivalry," says the Very Rev Desmond Harman, the hospitable Dean of Christ Church.

"If I'm in a bad mood I call St Patrick's the Other Place, or the Chapel in the Valley."

The Roman Catholics can only boast St Mary's pro-cathedral, "pro" meaning "in place of". Even that is said to have been built in a side street in 1825, for fear that a prominent position might upset the English.

There have been more worshippers, 100 or so, at Christ Church in the morning. This is 3.30pm, evensong, sightseers hurrying from the cathedral lest they be tainted with religion. Many more sunbathe on the grass outside, many more are likely to be in any of Dublin's 3,000 pubs and bars, than in Christ Church Cathedral.

It's also the annual commissioning of the choir, vowing that they will be "reverent and attentive" in leading worship. The choristers double the number of those present.

Described in the order of service as essentially a time of reflection, evensong isn't so much led by the choir as dominated by it, though they - like the restored organist - are magnificent.

The 55 minute service has no sermon and just one congregational hymn, Praise My Soul the King of Heaven, during which a collection is taken. It's unlikely, we reflect, to pay the electricity bill during the service.

The prayers recall the scripture about two or three being gathered together. It seems somehow appropriate.

The dean afterwards offers a personal tour of the 1,000-year-old crypt, points out treasures including the 17th century stocks - "I haven't been put in there, not yet" - vows that the Christ Church traditions will live on.

"There may not always be large numbers, but it is a focus for the city," he says. "There is an affection for this place even among those who don't come here. It is not always easy, but it is vital that we continue and we shall."

More information on Christ Church on www.cccdublin.ie

www.thisisthenortheast.co.uk/features/