Irish atheists increase by 400 percent in ten years, survey shows

[SecularMotion]

The number of Irish people with no religion - atheists and agnostics - increased by 400 percent in Ireland between 1991 and 2011 to a total of 277,237.

The massive increase is due to a huge breakdown in trust between the Catholic Church and many of its traditional constituencies.

The sex scandals and cover-ups have deeply impacted the church with record numbers staying away and embracing atheism.

The latest figures confirm a 2011 a poll by Gallup International which showed Ireland now ranks among the top ten atheist nations worldwide, in a huge shift from the last poll in 2005. In the six years between polls, according to the results, one in five Irish people set aside religion.

http://www.irishcentral.com/news/-Irish-atheists-increase-by-400-percent-in-ten-years-survey-shows-237949531.html

[hrmjustin]

1. I can not say I am surprised by this.

[cbayer]

2. In related news: Islam to become Ireland's second religion by 2043

http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/islam-to-become-irelands-second-religion-by-2043-29874239.html

This article is extensively quoted in the one you link to.

It also says: "The second fastest growing religion in Ireland is Orthodox Christianity, where numbers have doubled in the space of five years, rising to 45,223 in 2011. This is almost entirely down to immigration from the former Soviet bloc states where Orthodox Christianity is dominant."

They are undergoing some dramatic shifts in Ireland.

[pinto]

3. Irish Catholicism has never been as monolithic as some may assume, in my experience.

Growing up it was far from an evangelical church. Lots of people took different approaches to how it played out in their lives.

In my own family, grandfather went to Mass every Sunday, Ash Wednesday, Holy Thursday, Good Friday - the whole gamut. Grandmother went twice a year, Christmas and Easter. When asked why, she'd grin and say "You know, Rome's a long way from here". Never advocated for either approach outside of that simple statement.

Yet she and her girlfriends flew to Rome one year to hear John XXIII. He was almost a secular as well as a religious icon among the Irish. Homes routinely had two portraits somewhere - John XXIII and JFK. Her flight into Rome was extremely turbulent. She recounts it - "All the rosaries came out, people were praying, crying. It was chaotic. If we were going to go down, I wanted a whiskey."

[Iggo]

4. That just makes me think there weren't a lot of them to begin with.

[pinto]

5. According to the article, 84% of Ireland's residents still identify as RC. I just think that means

different things to different people. Some Irish Catholics, for example, still routinely observe various Saint's Days - and there are a slew of them. The celebration, veneration?, of Mary isn't very pronounced in Irish religious culture as it is in Poland or Mexico.

[dimbear]

6. Encouraging news, but just as a point of philosophy it's audacious to say 'breakdown in trust.'

Many events came together--economic pressures, information explosion, and so on. Similar figures hold for American Jews, causes clearly not the same.