Why is the Irish Catholic Church so much out of kilter with the booming, worldwide picture of that church internationally? Listed among the usual suspects are secularism, commercialism, materialism, the media, a weakening of the link between Catholicism and Irishness, and a new-found zeal for that child of the Enlightenment, the Northern World culture, where affluence has cultivated agnosticism/atheism, a divine ignorance bred of excessive rationalism.
Others suggest that, with development, Ireland is simply coming into line with its neighbours where religious practice and belief is concerned, while the more metaphysical say that an improved standard of life lessens our need for religion. To bolster that argument some point to parts of the world where religion is strongest and where Catholicism is growing rapidly. Religion, they say, is for the South, the Third World, the poor and the suffering - a rather limited view of religion.
There are as many opinions on the decline of religious practice in Ireland as there are bearers of opinion. It is said that in 1967 the late Donogh O'Malley remarked, when as Minister for Education he talked the government into introducing free secondary schooling for all, that the decision was the death knell for Fianna Fail. But Fianna Fail adjusted and survives. It is arguable however that the institution to suffer most from free education in Ireland was the Catholic Church. Combined with changes following Vatican 2, and in 1968, Pope Paul VI's Humanae Vitae, which prohibited the use of artificial means of contraception, free education set Irish Catholics on the road to individual conscience. It made "Protestants" of them, in that they sought thereafter to make up their own minds about issues, rather than follow unquestioningly diktats from Rome, the bishop's palace, or the presbytery.
In their tens of thousands Irish Catholic couples ignored Humanae Vitae. They were assisted spiritually in this by some priests and doctors who advised that women use the contraceptive pill as "a regulator" rather than a contraceptive. Thus, in conscience, they could be said not to be "in sin". Such ethical cleverness, and its moral effectiveness, set many Irish Catholics wondering about church teachings in general.
They were provoked into doing so by other matters which had already greatly lessened the authority of the church in their eyes before 1968 and which had helped create the climate that allowed the "disloyal" use of contraceptives. In the immediate years prior to Humanae Vitae, and following Vatican 2, Hell had quietly disappeared, as had Purgatory, Limbo, fast days, even Satan. Not long afterwards attending Trinity College in Dublin no longer warranted eternal damnation, as it had since 1929, nor did attending Protestant services, funerals, marriages. Even the Ne Temere mixed marriages decree was softened so that a written pledge that all children of such a union be brought up Catholics, ordained in 1907, was no longer necessary. A verbal promise would do. In general mortal sin was not what it used to be and, whereas in the past eternal damnation beckoned everywhere, suddenly it seemed to have disappeared entirely.
All that panoply of fear, which had done so much to make difficult lives harsher, evaporated. Gone too were such beloved saints as Christopher. Priests were no longer to be saluted or deferred to. The laity was now the church, not just the clergy. They said Mass, in English, facing the people, and assumed a more "democratic" role.
But people remembered the old days. They recalled the vehemence and certitude with which the truths of the past were pronounced and promulgated; the detailed geography of Hell with its more than tropical climate; their unbaptised offspring forever drifting separated and stateless; the many November church visits to get dead relatives, friends, or neighbours out of Purgatory; the terror of Satan that froze their innocent hearts, and the many casual cruelties of a church triumphant, so sure of its absolute truth. They remembered all that fear which dominated their lives for so long and began to wonder whether an institution which could have been so wrong could be right now either. They asked many questions, but got few answers - fewer that were satisfactory.
"Because the Pope/bishop/priest says so," was no longer sufficient reason for doing, or not doing, anything. A cleavage began to emerge between the Irish Catholic laity and church authority.
Almost three decades later, 78 per cent of Irish Catholics follow their own conscience rather than the teaching of the church when it comes to "serious moral decisions", according to an Irish Times/ MRBI poll last December. Though it has taken just a generation, we are a long way from the days of "the long 19th century" of the Irish Catholic Church, which continued to the late 1960s, and saw it assume such absolute control over the lives of a majority on this island. That Catholic Ireland is dead and gone.
If the church and priests once prompted reverence, now the reaction is often hostility - a hostility very much related to perceptions of how the church handled recent child sex abuse scandals here. It is unlikely that the Catholic Church will ever be as powerful in Ireland again as it was in the past.
That same Irish Times/MRBI poll of last December asked respondents to look into the future. Just 27 per cent believed "the great majority of people in Ireland will still practise Catholicism in 20 years time".
What is likely, given the character of the Irish people, is that a Catholicism of the southern European variety will emerge. Church will remain important, as will family, but with a liberal attitude to practice.
