Snapshot of post-Catholic Ireland

Last week’s census findings tells us of ‘an older population, fewer religious people, and more divorcees’ as well as nearly half a million having no religion.

In tandem, from Monday to Saturday of the same week, the Irish Independent reported the following: doubts concerning An Garda Síochána breath tests being inflated “four-fold”; charities to be forced to “disclose the amount paid in salaries and expenses”; a park being dug up in “search for body of a brutal rapist”; an alleged threat to “slit a woman’s throat” by a developer; a man accused of “abusing his fiancée’s three young daughters”; a man stabbed to death by “the blade of a garden shears”; a burglar who “taunted and tortured” an 89-year-old woman; the sex enslavement of a disabled woman in Armagh by a depraved couple; incidents of ‘revenge porn’ involving explicit photos and videos online; a killer driver jailed; “dark questions” unanswerable in the Fennelly Commission’s investigation of certain controversies involving An Garda Síochána; a bid by an Irish skipper to smuggle cocaine into the UK; a great grandmother shot on her doorstep; the “age of innocence” being destroyed; a “significant number of teens” attempting suicide; a priest attacked by a number of men; museum staff to be vetted because of “controversies involving alleged bullying and sexual harassment”.

Surely we have here a salient snapshot of life in what is being termed progressive post-Catholic Ireland. Colm Ó Tórna Baile Átha Cliath 5