He recently presented a tv show entitled The Last Priests in Ireland? and he is best known for playing Fr. Dougal Maguire on Father Ted.
The show is seen by some as an attack on the faith while one of its creators recently said that it had ‘humanised’ the church at a time when it was enduring demonisation and scandal.
Its star actor Dermot Morgan died young, but O’Hanlon has lived to be a family man. His relatives include at least one prominent and influential Catholic.
He has described himself however as an agnostic, though he has said that he had his children baptised and his interest and respect for religion was apparent in his recent television show about priests and nuns in Ireland.
He met Pope Francis this week alongside other comedians such as Conan O’Brien, Jimmy Fallon, Patrick Kielty and Tommy Tiernan.
Interestingly, he was the only one spotted asking the pope for a blessing, likely for Rosary beads given to him before the audience.
One ‘journalist’, writing in sanctimonious pro government outlet The Journal, wrote that he was engaging in ‘comedy washing’ by meeting the pope. Incidentally, a charge that the pro government media in Ireland would never level at someone for meeting an Imam or the King of England.
One thing is for certain, since such voices have become the dominant force in Ireland, the humour has dried up in the public sphere. It is not only hard to imagine a show making fun of authority like Father Ted on Irish television today, it is even harder to imagine the current liberal authority ever forgiving them enough to welcome them to a private audience in future.
The sign of a good religion, as GK Chesterton said, is that you can make fun of it.
Which is why, of course, modern Ireland, could never be termed a ‘good religion’, as dogmatic as it has become under its secular woke would be utopia.
