Ireland Abandoning Religion Faster than Almost Every other Country
August 8, 2012 20 Comments
The Republic of Ireland is abandoning religion faster than almost every other country worldwide, a massive global survey on faith reveals.
Only Vietnam has seen a bigger drop in people declaring themselves to be religious over the past seven years, a period when the Catholic Church in Ireland has been rocked by sex-abuse scandals and a crisis of leadership.
Red C interviewed more than 51,000 people worldwide, including just over 1,000 people in the Republic.
An overwhelming 69% of Irish people declared themselves to be “a religious person” in the last survey conducted in 2005, but this has now plummeted to 47%.
Last night the Archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin, said the results of the global index required “closer critical reading” but he acknowledged that it highlighted the challenges facing the Catholic faith in a changing Ireland.
“The Catholic Church, on its part, cannot simply presume that the faith will automatically be passed from one generation to the next or be lived to the full by its own members,” he said last night.
There was a need for strong ongoing education in the faith, he said, with a growing need for adult religious education to stop people drifting from the faith as they got older.
Meanwhile, a spokesman for the Catholic Communications Office said faith was not a “numbers game”.
And it said the latest survey contrasted sharply with last year’s census in the Republic, which found that 84% described themselves as Catholic, and just 5% said they had no religion.
But according to the latest research, the Republic is now in the top 10 for the number of people declaring themselves to be “a convinced atheist”.
Although this is still a minority group at 10%, it puts the country high in the global league table, and is a stark rise from 3% seven years ago.
The poll asked people, irrespective of whether they attended a place of worship, if they considered themselves to be religious, not religious, or an atheist.
However, the nature of the question may have affected the results — something the pollsters themselves admit.
They said that while there had been a 9% drop globally in the number describing themselves as “religious”, most people still felt part of the faith they grew up in.
However, it will still come as a blow to the Catholic Church in Ireland, and is the second survey in recent months to show massive alienation among the population.
A survey in February by market research group Amarach found the public at odds with the church hierarchy on a range of issues, including women clergy and married priests.
That survey, which questioned more than 1,000 Irish Catholics, found that 77% believed women should be ordained.
Nine out of 10 said priests should be able to marry. It also revealed just 35% went to church on a weekly basis.
However nothing has been done to address the crisis in the church in the six months since the Amarach survey was carried out.
The Catholic Communications Office was asked what actions had been taken by the bishops since the survey was published.
But a spokesman declined to comment, saying the study had been commissioned by the Association of Catholic Priests, a group of 800 clerics who are critical of the hierarchy.
Asked about the new Red C poll, the spokesman queried the language used by the poll.
“The word ‘religious’, if left unqualified, is too general to be used as the keyword in a survey questionnaire — especially in the Irish context — where people prefer words such as ‘spiritual’. Being ‘religious’ is a very subjective measurement,” said a spokesman.
“For example, in the Catholic Church, someone who attends Mass on a daily basis may not describe themselves as ‘religious’, yet they are outwardly a person of deep faith.”
Fr Brendan Hoban, a spokesman for the ACP, said the Red C results were “predictable enough” given the fall-off in Mass attendance and the drop in interest in the Catholic Church in recent years.
However, he said Irish Catholic numbers were “holding up markedly” and pointed to the Census figures and the 35% attending Mass on a weekly basis.
He suggested that the Catholic Church was “almost traumatised” by the scandals of the last 10 to 15 years, and this was affecting its ability to take steps to address declining religious observation.
“It’s so difficult for the bishops to provide leadership because, on the one hand, if they speak out, they are criticised, and if they don’t speak out, they are also criticised.”
Meanwhile, Michael Nugent of Atheism Ireland said the Red C poll showed people were rejecting the idea that atheism was an “extreme position”.
He said the figure of 10% of the population being atheists could be an under-estimation, as there were still people who did not believe in a God, but disliked the “atheist” label.
The Red C global poll also found that the richer you got, the less religious you defined yourself. Religiosity was higher among the poor, with people in the bottom-income groups 17% more religious than those in the top-earning groups.
About Fr Stephen Smuts
With atheism, Ireland is aiming to be a country that progressed from a state of barbarity quickly into a state of decadence with little amount of civilization. (And what little civilization it has, it is gloriously affiliated with the Roman Catholic Church. Worthy of praise!)
When engaging with the common atheist, it is usually their tactic to us specious and sophomoric reasoning such as “Durrr Hurrr! Well, there’s no evidence of God’s existence!”
But for Ireland, one cannot discount other factors such as the cultural force of their godless neighbors to the East.
I reckon that this is merely something that has been cooking up since around Vatican 2, but has been started by the embers of socialism and other sorts of political ideologies that have infected formerly Catholic countries, promising heaven on Earth, and the perfection of people.”Progress” becomes the glorification of the individual without the role of God- it will only lead to riots perpetrated by anarchists who talk of “freedom” while engaging in base, animalistic actions. No different from when the Bolsheviks or the French Republicans entered convents, raped the nuns, killed them along with all other religious and clergy, destroyed the places dedicated to God, murdered the anointed Sovereign, and plunged society into upheaval. Meanwhile, those who have lead and perpetrated these movements quickly try to place themselves into positions of power.
Going back to Ireland- I don’t think these atheists know what they’re trying to wake up by subscribing to what is essentially a materialistic philosophy. (For if one denies the greatest example of metaphysical and supernatural Idea, and all ideas and spirits are of equal value, then no idea and spirit is worth mentioning, hence the only, truly functional philosophy followed would be that of materialism, which is what is experienced through the senses and what becomes the greatest object of desire for a living human being. What sort of false idols atheists worship specifically, however, I do not know, but I can list a few suspects.)
Here’s a traditionalist Catholic’s piece on this particular situation.
If you saw the poor religious education ( nay abysmal) offered in the Irish schools..you would understand the decline. Plus improved living standards,hedonism and a lack of preaching about sin and Hell.If you are not conscious of sin, you don’t need a saviour
Do you think it might not have something to do with the uncalculable breach of trust by the Irish bishops, in respect of the abuse of children and vulnerable people over the last several decades? It’s hard to listen to preaching about hell by someone who is buggering his altar servers.
That’s a symptom, not a cause. The cause is much deeper and probably formed during the 19th century. (And ultimately traced back to the Garden of Eden.)
I’d say that Ireland is now, very comfortable.
Asceticism of people like St. Columban is largely ignored when it should be followed, especially, ESPECIALLY by the clergy. By asceticism, I do not speak of doing things to be seen. It doesn’t matter if there is a Eucharistic procession or a parade, or whatever, if the people do not make ascetic practice.
I agree. But do you think that if the clergy were to start preaching hellfire and damnation, it would have an effect now?
The Catholic Church in Ireland is still led by bishops who do not believe that they did anything wrong when they failed to act to remove known abusers. You suggested (I think) that Australia be placed under interdict for the horrible sacrelige of feeding a dog Holy Communion. Would you not agree that the acts (and failures to act) of the Irish hierarchy need similar sanctions?
I am not the judge of a bishop, nor will I leave Rome because of sinners at the helm of Peter’s Barque- There have been WORSE bishops, and WORSE popes, and Catholicism has faced WORSE challenges. But I would consult what the Apostolic Fathers would do in this situation. I refuse to believe that in its 2,000-year history, the Church has nothing about sexual abuse by clergy and how it is treated.
I believe in the forgiveness of sins. And so, those bishops, even if they will always be hated and reviled by the world, they can be forgiven by God through the Sacraments no matter what they have done, if they are sincere. If they are not sincere, even if the confessor unwittingly absolves them, then they blaspheme the Holy Spirit with the spirit of rebellion (i.e. of Satan) and they damn themselves.
Were I the Pope, I’d send those Irish bishops to Communist China or Saudi Arabia and Iran, armed with nothing but a Bible and the ability to turn bread and wine to the Body and Blood of Christ, to build the Church that they have harmed and face what it means to be a real Christian. If it is beyond doubt that those Irish bishops are guilty.
Yes, I agree that it is too late to preach hellfire and damnation. In fact, that’s probably the worst way to preach now- people have the Attention Deficit Disorder and their heads filled with pornography and other parasites of the passions, and they will laugh at whatever a believer says, no matter how true, how right, and how good it is- they will debate, argue, and pretend to be deaf and accuse us of stupidity when it is convenient to them. But “Fire and damnation” is probably just one side of the same coin, the other side being “Jesus Loves You anyway and so you don’t really need Him” that is the current vogue. Preach by self-sacrifice, by asceticism; for the sake of Christ, undergo the purifying fires of hardship wherever and however it may present itself on Earth. It will make one move mountains. If I do this even unto death, I believe that I would have died the right way, even if the Lord sends me to Hell for my sins or forgives me and sends me to Heaven.
I believe that Asceticism, along with monasticism, are the metric by how fruitful the Church is. When people renounce the world and see how God is the sole satisfier as all else turn to dust and become bitter and forgotten, atheism doesn’t have much ground to stand on. (Atheism appealing to the sensual, to a life without grace, to unfettered liberty and freedom, etc.)
First, before I forget, evidence of child abuse goes back several decades before Vatican II, when hell was still regularly preached from the pulpits.
Secondly, forgiveness of sin does not excuse the penitent from the consequences of their sin (something I know only too well). A murderer is not excuse prison because he made a good confession. A bishop, though, only needs to say sorry and everything is fine.
What people in Ireland (and I am a regular visitor to Ireland, having family who have lived there for nearly 30 years) feel is that the Church – by which I mean the local Church – is not repentant. It says the right words and makes the appropriate gestures, but on the ground, it is no different.
As a scientist, I know very well the dangers of citing anecdotes as evidence, but nevertheless I do know people who have lost their faith (and these are good, educated people who have a mature and orthodox understanding of the Church that is the Bride of Christ), and who put that down in no small part to their perception that the Church – their priest, their bishop – really does not seem to care about the atrocities that were committed under the cloak of clerical secrecy. They have not lost their faith through modernity, or through an obsession with the zeitgeist. They have lost their faith because they look at the Church and see an institution which claims to be the supreme repository of Truth and yet is swollen with its own filth and detumescence. This may not be the actual case! But it is a very common perception in Ireland. “Out of touch” does not even come close to describing it.
My own departure from the Catholic Church was as a consequence of my own relationship with two priests, whom I believed to be wise and holy – and orthodox! – teachers of the faith, and whom I subsequently discovered had abused children, the revelations coming within a few months of each other. In one case at least, the local diocese was aware (it kept a file, and paid his pension!). In the other, it seems highly probable that his order was also aware. He was, for many years, my spiritual father. That I did not become an atheist there and then (I teetered on the brink for such an awful long time), but instead found Orthodoxy, is something that I consider to be a miracle.
Irish people are abandoning their faith for many reasons, but a significant one is that the local Church has done very little to SHOW that it acknowledges its guilt, and seeks to make reparation. Preach the Gospel. If necessary, use words. There have been too many words.
People are losing their faith because they no longer trust the Church, and therefore do not trust the Gospel. And that is a terrible, terrible thing.
I am glad that you are still a believer. (An Eastern Orthodox?)
There is still the issue of the internal Asceticism of a Bishop or a priest that may have been a cause of this behavior. I don’t think that everyone who wears a clerical collar is a pedophile. It would be an evil, evil thing to condemn even the innocent. I certainly wasn’t there to say “That really happened!” or “That never happened” and just hope that people aren’t just making things up. Some people believe that the Catholic Church is so immensely rich that they can cash in easily by claiming to have been sexually abused. (This DOES happen. No one talks about this because people would rather read about hypocrisy in the Church leadership rather than commonplace sinfulness.)
I agree that a culture of secrecy is an issue, but what is the limit of the larger Church’s ability to know what is going in among bishops and cardinals, and other clergy? It’d be nice if we have a sort of C-SPAN in the Vatican or something. (C-SPAN, for everyone’s information, is an American cable television network that offers coverage of federal government proceedings and other public affairs programming) But even if we install CCTV on every place a priest can go, will that really stop them from committing a crime or sin? Will that stop them from giving communion to dogs?
What is it that people really want? To grab pitchforks, drag the entire Irish Catholic Bishops’ Conference into the town square and enact soviet-style torture and execution and to dismember them all and feed their remains to pedophile priests before throwing them all to some dungeon to be tortured by their victims? That’s certainly more honest, if internet rhetoric is a great way to measure people’s honesty due to anonymity.
People want the Pope to apologize, and I believe he did, personally to the victims themselves (I’m not sure if they were Irish, but I know for a fact that he had private audience with abuse victims) But it seems as if the general public would want the Pope to apologize even for things he knows nothing about, to crawl naked around the world begging forgiveness from everyone, even if he eventually says something about the entire scandal in Ireland in one of his addresses.
I seem to remember a bunch of atheists who wanted to make a citizens’ arrest of the Pope on his visit to the U.K. And I imagine a lot of angry Irishmen would do the same. Or even kill the Pope, because I suspect that no one is really above that sort of thing. That makes me unsympathetic to them and their grievances if anything. It’s not so hard to find anti-Catholic rhetoric on the internet, and they’re ineffectual in actually doing anything consequential. (Unless you count the entire incident in which the Vatican website was hacked by self-righteous teenagers who think they know what the Church is all about.)
When we sacrifice to the altar of public opinion, it’s never enough. People want more meat in the grinder, and more blood to satisfy their need for entertainment. Something to talk about in blogs or the water cooler. I think that’s why things like the Salem Witch Trials happened even before the age of mass media. People are just -bored- and a simple apology probably will not do. No. Hate is a very addictive narcotic. Directing anger in their lives goes with that. So what would be the point of jailing bishops- are they really evil, evil people? Are they sick people who need help? Are they people who don’t know what to do? I don’t know,, but atheism isn’t going to do anything better. Probably increased suicide rates and talk of how enlightened they are.
I’m sorry if I seem to be defending the bishops too much, but if your own experience is sufficient to try and find reason to jail these bishops, why can’t I use my experiences with -my- own bishops, and -my- own archdiocese’s efforts in rooting out sexual deviants in the Church, as a reason for supporting bishops and clergy? No one wants to talk about how Archdiocese X has implemented a program for reporting abuse to the authorities. They have become people who can never do right. Even in just sitting at a confessional to hear confessions, they are morally suspect. I wonder why we can’t do the same for ourselves?
Ioannes,
Please don’t get too hyperbolic. One of us is quite bad enough.
I’m not asking for bishops to be burned at the stake. The people I have spoken to are not angry at the Pope (some of them were, but are grateful for his apology). I’m also not talking about those people and organisations that spend their time looking for reasons to criticise the Church. This isn’t about them.
The problem lies in the local Church. There have been many fine words spoken by bishops, but there is little sense of real sorrow from many them (re-emphasis: local Church). There are bishops still ruling their sees now, about whose judgement very grave and substantial questions have been raised, by several reports, both internal and independent. And yet they shrug off these questions as if they are of no import, or only of historical importance. The allegations of poor judgement made against them may, of course, be unproven and unprovable, but some bishops seem to think that it’s all over, and business can go on as usual. It cannot, because the average Catholic in (or leaving) the pew is inclined to believe that the contrition of the bishops is not sincere. That’s where the rot sets in.
I have my own opinions about what could be done to demonstrate a sense of sorrow. It was not THAT long ago that public penance was still prescribed for the most egregious sins. Since my opinions are not relevant, I will keep them to myself.
The underlying problem is that whatever the reasons and justification for the apparent lack of genuine contrition on the part of the bishops, even if that is only a public perception, it is still having a dreadful impact on the faith of the rank-and-file Catholic. If all the clergy, bishops down, decide that they will wear nothing but sackcloth vestments for the next 20 years as an acknowledgement of, and reparation for, the evil acts that have been committed, then that may be an injustice to them. But if that were to help the average Catholic (and I’m not talking about those people who simply want to use abuse as another stick to beat the Church with), then surely they will have their reward in heaven.
I don’t have answers, but I do know that the sex abuse scandals have had a deadly effect on a nation which had the utmost trust in its clergy, and that breach of trust is spreading like septicaemia.
Yes, sorry, it is an emotional issue- a hyperbole for me is unavoidable.
I’d actually recommend bringing back the practice of wearing of sackcloth in general. I would LOVE the idea of bringing back public penance for anyone, including bishops.
In the Early Christian Church absolution for sin was granted after a public confession and intense penance. Well! I’ll tell you this, if I were an Irish bishop, I would do the old Roman style of public confession and wear sackcloth myself and resign, or something. Or even willingly go to jail, depending on how proportional my offense was. Though I don’t think I like the idea of -forcing- the bishops to do the same. Maybe because they are weak and afraid? Maybe they need encouragement to do what is right?
If such things happened, will it reverse anything, I wonder? I have a feeling that everyone thinks we “religious people” are hypocrites anyway, and people would go about their godless ways regardless of what anyone does. As for the local Catholic Church; who would replace the bishops? Those who would replace them will have to deal with the mess left behind by the previous bishops, and it’s never a guarantee that they’re effective in administration, much less in trying to re-evangelize Ireland.
You’re right, of course, such things cannot be forced. In any case, I’m afraid that the damage has now been done, and no amount of public penance will undo it.
As to who would replace the bishops, that is a very good question. However I do think that there is less risk of damage if structures are made more transparent. Of course there are certain things which must never be revealed, but the structure and organisation of the local Church can be made transparent: finances, clergy deployment, and so on. This is already starting to happen and may stem the flow of blood.
Lord have mercy!
Indeed the only thing that will stay the tide in the whole Church Western, will be the “spirit and truth” of the Gospel (kerygma-message) of Christ Risen-Ascended & Crucified! The Risen Christ reigns from the Cross! Not “theologia gloriae”, but “theologia crucis” – “In Christ’…”Christ Jesus”!
The Land of Saints, Scholars & Kings has fallen prey to the depth of secularism, and note the great influence of Pelagianism here, even in the RCC! The doctrine of original sin; and baptism does not remove the aspect and reality of man’s Divided-Self, as even Augustine taught from Rom. 7: 13-25. The Law of God shows us our sin, and only the Grace of God can set us Free! But, in this life, we are always in the tension of the ‘already but not yet’, even as Christians. But, the true Christian lives in victory by ‘faith, hope and love’, ‘In Christ’! – The Christian will persevere until the end! (Jude 1:1 ; 24-25)
May GOD send the renewal of ‘Law & Gospel’ (in the face of Christ), yet once again to the land and people of Ireland! And in reality, the godly ‘Catholic as Protestant’, rely!
I agree with you one hundred percent – Sola Gratia – Soli Deo Gloria
It certainly hasn’t helped that the hierarchy there were very anti-Roman after the Council until our day. They wanted to “do their own thing” – and boy, did they ever!
The essence of the pastoral part of Vatican II, eh?
In my experience, the 60s dictum “Let it all hang out!” was bad for everyone – for the clergy it is grotesque!
I somehow survived the 60′s! But with almost a year with the American Marine’s (attached RMC) in the Nam! (’68). GOD was very gracious! Now “the Nam”, that was really “grotesque”, but I see now over a generation (40 years, etc.) of now American Vietnamese. So from that perspective, it was worth it, i.e. their lives and freedom!
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