For those who equate fall-off in weekly attendance at religious services with growing secularisation and "godlessness" among the Irish people, there is little comfort in the findings of a new poll. The Millward Brown IMS survey, conducted last month for the "Power to Change" campaign, shows the attendance figure at such services is now down to 48 per cent of the population. It also shows that the downward trend is much more pronounced among younger people in urban areas.This suggests the weekly attendance figure is destined to slide still further.
However, the despondent should reflect on the words and figures related by Cardinal Cahal Daly at a Mass during the Chesterton conference in Maynooth last Sunday. A 2001 survey put weekly Mass attendance at 43 per cent in the United States, 42 per cent in Poland, and 29 per cent in Italy, he recalled.
There were " few parallels in any country at any period ", for what was the case in Ireland in the past, he said, when 91 per cent attended weekly Mass. And he warned against a "good old days" type of thinking, which looked back nostalgically.
Beneath " the pleasing surface " of those times there had been " dangers of conformism and routine " and " sometimes hypocrisy, with people, for reasons of expediency, professing in public views which they rejected in private discussion or contradicted in private behaviour," he said. It had also been largely a time when " Church teaching was largely unquestioned and Church authority largely unchallenged. "
The new research indicates that this is no longer the case. Irish people are reacting against institutionalised religion, strict rules and "the divine right of authority". They favour acceptance and tolerance " of people, of personal choices, of all faiths ".
Meanwhile 66 per cent of those surveyed say they have a personal relationship with Jesus, " the Son of God ". By any standards this is remarkable for an affluent country in the developed world.
The fact that 32 per cent of Irish people have their own set of beliefs and don't conform to any particular set of teachings suggests a growing determination to search critically for, rather than receive, meaning. This more questioning approach should help temper, in time, Cardinal Daly's belief that " if there is a conformism now, it is the current trend of criticism of the Church and non-practice of the faith. "
It should also help avoid any uncritical submission before conformity and authority in the future.