As Irish Flee the Church, a Push For Reform

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http://www.religiondispatches.org/archive/atheologies/6935/as_irish_flee_the_church__a_push_for_reform/

March 18, 2013
As Irish Flee the Church, a Push For Reform A report from Dublin
By DIANE WINSTON


St. Patrick's Cathedral wears the green. Photo by flickr user An Lionsa1 COMMENT AND 22

DUBLIN – Here at Ground Zero of the Catholic Church’s collapse, the first Sunday of the new pope’s tenure coincided with St. Patrick’s Day.

And what better symbol of secularization’s subversion of the sacred, the central challenge facing Francis, than a picture of Ireland’s patron saint sharing a pint of Guinness with a leprechaun that I saw in a pub window.

Recent surveys show Catholics in the Republic of Ireland are deserting their faith faster than believers in almost any other nation worldwide. According to Irish and Vatican analysts, the current crisis was precipitated by revelations of widespread clergy sexual abuse but also fueled by the post-1960s spread of secular values, upending forty-plus years of a postcolonial, faith-based society. (After the establishment of the Irish Republic in 1922, the Church provided cultural cohesion for the new state.)

Statistics are one way to tell the story: In 1984, 87% of Irish Catholics went to weekly Mass. In 2011, Archbishop Diarmuid Martin said 18% of Dublin Church members attend services.

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