Christian Ireland's Gates of Hell - PG

Nov 02, 2013, 09:22 AM

Speaker: Sean McMahon RIP

St. Patrick’s Purgatory is still used by thirty thousand pilgrims between June and August each year. The cave that started it all has been closed since the 25th October, 1632 and covered over by the Basilica. No longer is the ostensible mission to frighten the ignorant into submission, but rather to allow the converted to submit themselves to God through penance, suffering and reflection via all night fasting and prayer. The philosopher Alain de Botton observed that ‘the church has wisely insisted that we are inherently flawed, incapable of lasting happiness, beset by troubling sexual desires, obsessed by status, vulnerable to appalling accidents and always slowly dying’.

Read the full article on St Patrick's Purgatory on the Racontour blog piece.

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