Having spent so long pushing against the monolith that was conservative Catholic power, it is rather disconcerting to realise that the roles have been reversed.
Something extraordinary yet not at all unexpected happened last week. For the first time, a detailed and respectable opinion survey showed that practising Catholics are now a minority in the Republic of Ireland. The Prime Time/TNS mrbi poll showed that just 44 per cent of people who regard themselves as Catholics attend Mass at least once a week. A clear majority, in other words, are not, by the church's own standards, practising their faith. Most of the Republic's population therefore lie somewhere on a line that runs from occasional Catholic, through lapsed Catholic, into other faiths and on towards apathy or atheism.
If Mass attendance is a somewhat crude measure, the big picture is even clearer if we consider the markers of Catholic identity that distinguish the church's teachings from those of other Christian faiths. A mere quarter, or even a fifth, of Catholics, agree with basic teachings like the ban on artificial contraception, the notion that divorce is morally wrong and the prohibitions on married and women priests. Those who remain behind the line drawn by the present Pope, beyond which one ceases to be a good Catholic, are a significant but embattled minority.
Among Irish Catholics, indeed, there are now many more extreme liberals than orthodox conservatives. Thirty-five per cent of them think that gay couples should be allowed to marry in a Catholic church, compared to just 20 per cent who think that divorced couples should not be allowed to re-marry in a Catholic church. Thirty per cent think that abortion is not morally wrong compared to 20 per cent who think that artificial contraception is morally wrong. More Irish Catholics would be happy to see sexually active gay men ordained as priests than would be unhappy to see women ordained as priests.
And, from the point of view of Catholic orthodoxy, things can only get worse. If you put the Prime Time poll together with The Irish Times Youth Poll, the degree to which orthodox Catholicism depends on older people is stark. The Irish Times poll showed that 55 per cent of Irish people between 15 and 24 don't regard themselves as Mass-goers at all. In Dublin, where much of the growth in population is concentrated, just 30 per cent of young people say they go to Mass nowadays.
Church leaders, of course, can point to the evidence of the Prime Time poll that this is still a highly religious country. Most Catholics still pray at least once a week, and nearly three-quarters regard religion in general as very or fairly important in their lives. But even these findings are surely double-edged. If there's a big demand for the kind of product you manufacture but your particular brand is rapidly losing popularity, it suggests that you're doing something wrong. The church in this regard is a little like League of Ireland soccer clubs: the fact that there is a vast appetite for soccer in this country makes their failure to attract big crowds all the more stark.
The evidence that practising Catholics are now a minority has immense consequences for both church and state. It means that the way we have organised our health and education systems, where a citizen is assumed to be Catholic unless proven otherwise, is utterly untenable. Why, for example, should the vast majority of primary school teachers paid for by a democratic State, be required to teach dogmas which the vast majority of the population do not believe? The old argument that church control of State-funded institutions is a reflection of the ethos of the majority just doesn't work any more. This is now a definitively pluralist society and it is time for public institutions to reflect this reality.
And for the church there is also a new possibility: the joy of being a minority. There is actually great pleasure and great freedom is shrugging off the burden of monolithic status. The church could be like Atlas, who got tired holding up the world and wanted someone else to take the weight for a change. It could feel free to move around and stretch its limbs.
Both church and state, as it happens, have an opportunity to begin this process today when the Comptroller and Auditor General reports on the scandalous immunity deal under which the taxpayer takes the vast bulk of responsibility for abuse in religious institutions.
The Prime Time poll shows that a mere 6 per cent of Irish Catholics actually believe that the State was mainly to blame for the abuse. Yet this is the assumption behind the deal. By repudiating it, and thus freeing up perhaps €500 million that could be used to alleviate the effects of poverty, the church could show, at a stroke, that it now understands the need to earn, rather than assume, a position of moral leadership in a pluralist democracy.