Can Ireland Be Catholic Without the Church?

[Voltaire2]

An attempt to salvage something from the RCC’s debacle in Ireland:

It has become common in recent years to declare the end of Catholic Ireland. By now, it’s a familiar story: the clerical abuse scandals which made headlines in the 1990s so undermined the institution that it has been on a slow slide into irrelevance since, with Friday’s vote to repeal the country’s ban on abortion the latest — and in some ways, most significant — in a string of losses that have included the decriminalization of homosexuality and divorce and the legalization of same-sex marriage.

The importance of Friday’s vote as a blow to the institutional Catholic Church should not be understated. At times, it seemed as much a referendum on the church’s historic treatment of women as it was about abortion itself. Stories dating back decades of women who had been at the receiving end of the church’s intolerance have not lost their power to rouse public anger.

But if it’s clear that the institution of the church no longer commands the moral authority or the loyalty in Ireland that it once did, the end of Catholic Ireland, too, is an overstatement. Ireland remains defined by its relationship with Catholicism, because it has yet to develop another way to be. What isn’t yet clear is what the social and political consequences of this new relationship with the church are.

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2018/05/26/opinion/ireland-catholic-abortion-referendum.html

[MaryMagdaline]

1. Line from She's the One

Just because I don't believe in God doesn't mean I quit being a good Catholic.

[marylandblue]

2. This is very hard to understand in a Protestant country

Protestantism is obsessed with beliefs. Catholics not so much.

[pennylane100]

4. You have never met my family.

They (my many uncles aunts and parents} were strong believe in all things catholic. They longed for the return of Latin mass long after the church in UK stopped the practice. The trinity was sacred and the pope and the bible were infallible. However, they never made any of us cousins feel bad because we eventually all stopped practicing, and it gave them the gift of faith in heaven. I missed that when I lost my faith.

[applegrove]

3. Quebec went through the same thing. They still co exist but quebec

is the most liberal of places these days.

[OnDoutside]

5. Those left in an influential position in the church, in Ireland, disparagingly call

the rest of us A la carte Catholics, not wanting to engage with the church other than the main sacraments. Is it any wonder that people want as little to do with them. Those left controlling the church are seriously conservative, and bitter that we don't bow down before them. I've heard priests in the media encouraging people to leave if they refuse to accept all the rules of the club, which is as ridiculous as it sounds. The irony is that they make it really hard to officially leave the Catholic Church, and they still control the ethos in 90% of primary schools in Ireland....Hotel California how are ya ?

While the writer is largely correct for the middle aged generation, it is becoming less and less true. I grew up in the 70s and 80s and we were the first crack in the dam, though many of us still adhere to the rituals, the daily interaction is no more. This will become even less with future generations.

As bad as the sins of the priests and nuns were, what sickened people most is the response of the church, especially the bishops, in covering up and refusing to accept responsibility. That's what turned people away as much as anything, and that continues to this day.