I have a new post on the Slugger O’Toole blog titled, ‘Is Ireland Abandoning Religion?’ It’s a response to a poll by Red C published in today’s Belfast Telegraph, indicating that religion is declining in the Republic of Ireland at a faster rate than every country in the world except Vietnam.
(Photo sourced on flickr, by Z303)
Welcome to Building a Church Without Walls, a website for people who are excited about how Christianity is developing in the 21st Century. I am a Lecturer and Coordinator of the Conflict Resolution and Reconciliation Studies Programme at Trinity College Dublin at Belfast (the Irish School of Ecumenics).
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The only reliable ” polls ” are the census results. Ambiguous questions result in flawed analysis. The recent Irish census revealed that over 84% of the Irish people identified as Roman Catholic. Not bad for a Church which has been under attack by the media establishment for the last 20 years at least.
A brief follow up to previous comment. We should also take with large grains of salt the sincerity of those claiming to be non-religious. When push comes to shove the reality is often different. For example, in recent years three prominent celebrities ( Nuala O’Faolain, John McGahern, & Maeve Binchy – RIP ) voiced frequently in interviews their atheism/agnosticism. Yet all three chose to have Catholic Requiem Masses. So there is a great deal of hypocricy out there. Anti-Catholic rhetoric is very popular/profitable among the ” liberal ” chatering classes, but it’s frequently quite shallow & insincere.