Last week I presented a paper, ‘Ireland as a Post-Catholic Religious Market? The Role of Extra-Institutional Religion,’ at a conference on ‘The Church in a Pluralist Society,’ hosted by the Loyola Institute in Trinity College Dublin.
The talk was based on my latest book, Transforming Post-Catholic Ireland: Religious Practice in Late Modernity.
The paper explored three claims that I make in the book:
- We can characterize the island of Ireland as ‘post-Catholic’
- We can describe the religious landscape on the island of Ireland as a ‘market’
- The concept of ‘extra-institutional religion’ – which I develop in the book – can help us understand how religion is changing and evolving
The first chapter of my book is available for free on the Oxford University Press website.
I hope you are right. And I hope there develops a diversity of religious practices that relegates hierarchical and institutionalized religion to the dustbin of history!