.

These are not just odd beliefs, but ideas contrary to the Faith. So the question we're trying to figure out is, why would Catholics believe in ideas contrary to the Faith if they believed in the Catholic Faith?

Since James Joyce didn't claim to be Catholic, I don't think this is relevant.

It is most certainly relevant and central to the subterfuge of the article. I did not wave away those pagan beliefs that are indeed contrary to the Faith. My criticism of the article followed from those highly suspect opening paragraphs and their unexplained implications. Do those opening paragraphs not raise red flags? Following from that, the influence of the likes of anti-Catholics such as Joyce does indeed trace down to the current condition of Catholicism not only in Ireland but in the USA as well. Please note pasted below from the article in question (emphasis added):

The New Age cult has found fertile ground in modern Ireland, and the Church has not escaped its influence. Many people have been introduced to the use of enneagrams, centering prayers and transcendental meditation through Catholic institutions. One of the most troubling examples of this made its way into religious education in Catholic schools. In 1993, the Irish Bishops’ Conference launched a new RE program with the title Alive-O. Among the worst feature of this curriculum was a project called “Little Beings”. In a detail analysis of the program published in 2019 by Dr Éanna Johnson, he wrote the following:

Then follows a description, readable in the OP, of what was assigned to these innocent children whose parents were not to be told of this classroom activity. Sounds familiar to what is going on right now in classrooms locally too.

Who is it exactly who wrote and approved these curricula? Not the children's parents but rather the do-what-thou-wilt academics "Enlightening" their little pupils, and at the direction of the Irish Bishops Conference. If these educators even claim to be Catholic, it's not of the St. John Bosco sort. Do these children's parents, dad possibly tattooed with tribal runes and mom possibly a doppelganger for the stylings of Stevie Nicks, with elven Celtic home decor knickknacks made in China, have an accurate and coherent understanding of the Faith? Why not? Are we to blame their peasant forebears long since forced to leave the countryside for urban life, or do we blame the intelligentsia within the conciliar hierarchy that determine what passes for truth?

It's not as if the sheep were given a fair choice between true shepherds vs. hirelings. The Irish were fed enneagrams and Alive-O and Little Beings, in the USA we have the charismatics, elsewhere there are various other sorts of insidious false "enculturation". Did the flocks demand this, or was it served up to them for other motives? The Fogarty video and the Horvat article have the answers here.

I was pretty sure that you were French. I must have confused you with someone else. Forgive me.

If fairies are just "cute" legends or actually demons is not the heart of the matter in my opinion. The mais problem is that people believe in them and are afraid to upset them or whatever. This attitude shows a lack of true faith.

Brazil has always had influence from several non-Catholic groups. Even though the country was something like 99% Catholic until the 1960s or so, there have always been the practise of "Folk Catholicism" along with true religion.

The first ѕуηαgσgυє of the Americas was built in Recife, Northeast Brazil, in the 1600s. We know how these folks like their superstitions.

Plus, there is a massive influence of African native religions. There are many groups similar to the Mexican Santeria or to the Voodoo of the Caribbean.

Even my mother, now in her 60s, tells stories of people getting "blessings" from old ladies. And we are talking about people living in medium sized and big cities, not in the countryside.

I imagine that most Catholic countries out of Europe are like this.

Some place like Portugal or France might be different, where there was less external influences, and they had more than a thousand years to wipe Paganism and superstition out.

Interesting. I am thankful for your response and the information you've provided.

Not Irish, only commenting on the logical premises of the article. Whatever valid points about the deliberate sins against the Faith by Irish politicians and NuChurch, the author makes no clear link whatsoever between the first three paragraphs and the main topic about which he writes. Thus, I'm a little skeptical. Why drag in and drop on the table those first three paragraphs?

Further, there's a bit much of the educated gawking at the odd beliefs of quaint country folk and nowhere near as much at the intellectual heirs of James Joyce. Easier to blame the culchies than to blame the swells, it seems.

Though Joyce did not believe in faeries, I think you are on to something here, considering William Butler Yeats (aka W.B. Yeats), the major figure of the Irish Cultural Revival of the 20th century, was a firm believer in them (a quirk among several others which invited many to poke fun at him). He was raised Protestant and later became an occultist. Notably, he was quite anti-Catholic his whole life—one poem of his called The Ballad of Father Gilligan, however, does stand out in how it positively portrays a priest giving the Last Rites.

Some more information about Yeats and his friend Lady Gregory, who I mentioned in a previous post:

His co-foundress of the nationalist Abbey Theater, Lady Gregory, learned Gaelic and collected and translated many books of folktales but herself was Anglo-Irish. Once she admitted to Yeats that her identification with the country people had made her think of becoming Catholic, but she thought that to be closer to the peasants, it was better for her to remain a kind of neo-pagan.

She accepted all the ghost stories and faery tales of the country people as true, as did Yeats. But Yeats went a bit further than her because he was bewitched, according to Chesterton, by the extravagant Madame Blavatsky, a spiritualist fraud of international renown.

Chesterton knew and admired Yeats a great deal. He wrote of the Irish revival in his essay, “Celts and Celtophiles” in his book “Heretics,” and of his friendship with the poet in his autobiography. In fact, he knew the poet’s whole family, and praised the eloquence of John Yeats, William’s father, an artist and a famous talker.

Chesterton saw in Yeats a kindred spirit and applauded his romanticism, and his belief in the supernatural spirits and faeries that the Irish country people considered a part of their cosmos. Nevertheless, Chesterton realized that Yeats had gone too far in his swing away from Victorian materialism.

The Catholic writer loved Yeats’ play, “The Land of Heart’s Desire,” in which a faery tempts a newly married woman away from husband and home, but said at the end he was surprised he was more on the side of the family than the faery folk Yeats was extolling. “There is only one thing against ‘The Land of Heart’s Desire,’ ” Chesterton wrote. “The heart does not desire it.”

https://angelusnews.com/arts-culture/yeats-ballad-of-father-gilligan/