LITTLE in the findings of the Irish Times/MRBI poll on religious attitudes should surprise anyone. The picture of falling, Mass attendances, crumbling church authority on moral issues and pessimism about Ireland's future as a uniquely Catholic western European country is strongly supported by anecdotal evidence from priests and religious observers in recent years.
Until 1990, Ireland seemed 19 be maintaining that unique position against all the countervailing influences of increased material prosperity; the influence of the media, with their emphasis on the liberal values of personal and sexual freedom; and the opening up to pluralism and secularism represented by the State's membership of the European Community.
Thus most surveys agreed that at the end of the 1980s Ireland's extraordinarily high level of Mass-going had dipped only slightly during the decade. The European Values Survey showed that the numbers going to Mass at least once a week had declined from 87 per cent in 1981 to 85 per cent in 1990.
In the late 1980s some commentators had even suggested that the decade was witnessing a reinforcing of religious attitudes following the more liberal late 1960s and 1970s. They pointed as evidence of this to the results of the 1983 and 1986 abortion and divorce referendums.
The election of the liberal feminist Mary Robinson as President in 1990 was the first strong sign that this analysis was faulty. In the following year the revelations about Bishop Eamonn Casey and his teenage son in the United States became the first in a series of damaging blows to the previously almost unimpeachable authority of the Catholic Church as the prime moral arbiter of the majority of Irish people.
A series of ugly and highly-publicised clerical sex abuse cases, starting with the Norbertine priest Brendan Smyth, began in the summer of 1994, and still continues. More recently the long-running saga of Bishop Brendan Comiskey's departure to and absence in the United States for alcoholism treatment gave rise to a fever of speculation about sexual, financial and managerial misdeeds, little or none of it substantiated, but which nevertheless added to the image of a church in crisis.
This is the background to what is perhaps the most dramatic finding of the Irish Times/MRBI poll: that only 21 per cent of Catholics questioned said they follow the teaching of their church when it comes to making "serious moral decisions", compared to 78 per cent who follow their own conscience.
Some Catholic commentators may say there is a flaw in the methodology in this question, in that it does not allow for the individual conscience which is "informed" by church teaching, nor does it permit respondents to say they would follow both church teaching and their own conscience.
Even with that caveat, the figures are particularly striking among younger people. Only 7 per cent of 18-34 year-olds said they follow church teaching when making serious moral decisions, compared to 92 per cent who follow their own conscience.
In striking contrast, among over 65 year-olds, 55 per cent said they follow church teaching, compared to 42 per cent who follow their own conscience.
In Dublin, 15-16 per cent said they follow church teaching, compared to 83 per cent who follow their own conscience. Even in traditionally more devout, largely rural Connacht-Ulster, only 22 per cent said they follow church teaching, compared to 67 per cent who said they follow their own conscience.
These figures show how Ireland is moving towards the European cultural mainstream in its religious attitudes. A recent French poll, for example, found that 83 per cent of people in that most secularised of countries first turned to their conscience when making "life's big decisions", compared to 1 per cent who turned first to the Catholic Church's teachings, and 9 per cent to both.
This is borne out by the Irish Times/MRBI poll's finding that only 27 per cent of those polled believe that "the great majority of people in Ireland will still practise Catholicism in 20 years time". Sixty-nine per cent think that "in 20 years time Ireland will be Catholic in name, but only a minority will be practising their Catholicism".
Among 18-24 year-olds only 16 per cent believe that the great majority of Irish people will be practising Catholics in 20 years.
The fall in Mass attendance in recent years is also not surprising, given the extraordinarily high levels of weekly attendance before the scandals started to break. When asked how frequently they went to Mass five years ago, 79 per cent of those polled said once a week. When asked how frequently they went 10 years ago, 85 per cent said once a week.
Now only 66 per cent of those polled say they attend Mass at least once a week. This falls to 50 per cent in Dublin south and 53 per cent in Dublin north, but rises to 70 per cent in Munster and 87 per cent in Connacht-Ulster.
Forty-one per cent of 18-24 year-olds say they go to weekly Mass, as do 52 per cent of 25-34 year-olds, 65 per cent of 35-49 year-olds, 87 per cent of 50-64 year-olds and 92 per cent of over 65 year-olds.
The figures in this latest poll should be compared to the recently published study of Irish attitudes by the prominent Catholic sociologist, Father Micheal MacGreil. This was based on more than 1,000 interviews carried out in 1988-89. It found that 81.6 per cent of Catholics went to Mass at least once a week.
When this figure was broken down, Father MacGreil found that 69 per cent of people resident in Dublin city and county went to Mass at least weekly, as did 78 per cent of 18-20 year-olds and 71 per cent on 21-35 year-olds.
The 1990 European Values Survey found that 85 per cent of respondents nationally went to Mass at least once a week, as did a surprising 76 per cent of 18-26 year-olds and 74 per cent of 27-35 year-olds. However, the signs of decline were already there, with only 40 per cent of the urban unemployed attending weekly.
In terms of social class, the Irish Times/MRBI polls show that 66 per cent of people in the higher ABCl classes said they go to weekly mass, compared to 88-91 per cent of farmers but only 46 per cent of unemployed people. Sixty per cent of men said they went weekly, compared to 72 per cent of women.
A question was also asked to measure the level of acceptability of a priest or a nun in people's families in the wake of the clerical sex abuse scandals. Sixty-seven per cent of those polled said they would welcome a member of their immediate family becoming a priest, and 62 per cent an immediate family member becoming a nun.