BBC Report on the Secularisation of Ireland

[Cato]

The BBC saw fit, in its Northern Ireland section, to discuss the secularisation of Ireland, under the heading 'Sacred or Secular'.

BBC News - Sacred or secular?

It features comments from Michael Nugent of Atheist Ireland, Senator Ivana Bacik of the Labour Party, David Quinn of the Iona Institute and Dr Vincent Twomey, a former professor of moral theology at Maynooth.

"We need a secular constitution. Currently our constitution starts off by saying that all authority comes from the Holy Trinity," said Michael Nugent, of Atheist Ireland."We want an education system that teaches children objectively about the different religious beliefs and non-religious beliefs that exist
"There's also a lot of what I would call 'religious background noise' in the relationship between Church and State, even down to trivial things such as the angelus being played every day on our national broadcaster."

...

"The reality of modern Ireland is that it has become a much more pluralist and a much more inclusive modern society, where we are no longer the homogenous 99% Catholic society we once were.
The (constitutional) convention is not an attempt to secularise society or to undermine anyone's religious belief or faith, it's simply to identify are there any aspects of the constitution that are out of date with modern life?" said Senator Bacik.

David Quinn;

"It's driven primarily by the secularising trends that would have overtaken the rest of Europe over the last century, and only secondly actually by the scandals, because the downward trends were in place before the scandals ever came to light."
"Church bashing has replaced 'Brit bashing' in the national psyche," he said.
"If you go back to the days when nationalism of a certain type, a one-eyed type of nationalism, was very strong in Ireland, if you did not go along with most vitriolic criticisms of Britain you were a 'West Brit'.
"We have psychologically replaced this with a very unthinking one eyed critique of Catholicism."

"Our real problem today is not caused by society or the current government's policies which are quite clearly anti-church, anti-catholic" said Fr Vincent Twomey, a former professor of moral theology at Maynooth seminary.
"The church itself has contributed to the secularisation of society by failing to grasp the imagination of people, by failing to feed their intellectual thirst for the truth."

The piece ends with a reflection by Quinn on what the future may hold and he wonders will the 'anti-church' sentiment diminish as the anti-English one has. He also anticipates a smaller, purer church.

I find the comments from the church side to be more interesting as they seem to point towards internal reform of the church as the way forward and the idea that they are simply going to give up on the idea of trying to reverse the decline and more on finding a floor on the fall and securing numbers there. In other places Quinn argues for the same, while also insisting that religion retain its place in Irish public life.

The two secularists seem confident that change is coming and they might be right. The main battle ground will be the constitution and in the education system.

Personally, I think that the decline in religious belief and practice will continue but will hit a floor. If the RCC go for the purity option then it will fall further than if they stick with the broad church idea. The purity option might also serve to only provoke further pro-secularism if it spills into the schools. Obviously those who post here will know my views on secularism and know that I fully support it and hope for it.

[Q-Tours]

Interesting. Almost sane comments from David Quinn for a change!

On a side note, the Spanish bishops have discovered the dark secrets of the Secular Agenda:

During his Boxing Day sermon, the Bishop of Córdoba, Demetrio Fernández, said there was a conspiracy by the United Nations. "The Minister for Family of the Papal Government, Cardinal Antonelli, told me a few days ago in Zaragoza that UNESCO has a program for the next 20 years to make half the world population homosexual. To do this they have distinct programs, and will continue to implant the ideology that is already present in our schools."

El País English

[asknoquestions]

The BBC saw fit, in its Northern Ireland section, to discuss the secularisation of Ireland, under the heading 'Sacred or Secular'.

BBC News - Sacred or secular?

It features comments from Michael Nugent of Atheist Ireland, Senator Ivana Bacik of the Labour Party, David Quinn of the Iona Institute and Dr Vincent Twomey, a former professor of moral theology at Maynooth.



David Quinn;





The piece ends with a reflection by Quinn on what the future may hold and he wonders will the 'anti-church' sentiment diminish as the anti-English one has. He also anticipates a smaller, purer church.

I find the comments from the church side to be more interesting as they seem to point towards internal reform of the church as the way forward and the idea that they are simply going to give up on the idea of trying to reverse the decline and more on finding a floor on the fall and securing numbers there. In other places Quinn argues for the same, while also insisting that religion retain its place in Irish public life.

The two secularists seem confident that change is coming and they might be right. The main battle ground will be the constitution and in the education system.

Personally, I think that the decline in religious belief and practice will continue but will hit a floor. If the RCC go for the purity option then it will fall further than if they stick with the broad church idea. The purity option might also serve to only provoke further pro-secularism if it spills into the schools. Obviously those who post here will know my views on secularism and know that I fully support it and hope for it.

I don't see the constitution as an issue, although it would be an interesting debate. The PDs had it as one of their original platforms 21 years ago. But it's not really something a party could maintain a whip on.

I think most people, even agnostics or atheists see the mentions of God in the constitution as relatively harmless. Just because someone does not believe in God does not mean they want to knock down churches...

[Hooch]

"A smaller purer church", in other words a small group of nutters that think like David Quinn.

Twomey is off the wall as usual and both of them maintain their ability to maintain an absurd sense of victimhood.

[simeongrimes]

It seems both the secularists and the religious want us all to pick sides so there can be a small pure church with no real influence. But the people in the middle are determined to hang on to the comforts of religion while putting in no real effort about it. Maybe they are the sensible ones and the people lik Quinn and Nugent have far more in common with each other in giving a damn one way or the other.

[west'sawake]

The BBC saw fit, in its Northern Ireland section, to discuss the secularisation of Ireland, under the heading 'Sacred or Secular'.

BBC News - Sacred or secular?

It features comments from Michael Nugent of Atheist Ireland, Senator Ivana Bacik of the Labour Party, David Quinn of the Iona Institute and Dr Vincent Twomey, a former professor of moral theology at Maynooth.



David Quinn;





The piece ends with a reflection by Quinn on what the future may hold and he wonders will the 'anti-church' sentiment diminish as the anti-English one has. He also anticipates a smaller, purer church.

I find the comments from the church side to be more interesting as they seem to point towards internal reform of the church as the way forward and the idea that they are simply going to give up on the idea of trying to reverse the decline and more on finding a floor on the fall and securing numbers there. In other places Quinn argues for the same, while also insisting that religion retain its place in Irish public life.

The two secularists seem confident that change is coming and they might be right. The main battle ground will be the constitution and in the education system.

Personally, I think that the decline in religious belief and practice will continue but will hit a floor. If the RCC go for the purity option then it will fall further than if they stick with the broad church idea. The purity option might also serve to only provoke further pro-secularism if it spills into the schools. Obviously those who post here will know my views on secularism and know that I fully support it and hope for it.

Obviously I don't agree with you regarding the merits of a purely secular State and we have crossed verbal swords on this before. In essence I see rigid amorality, moral neutrality, or relativism, as absolutist in themselves, a veneer where catch cries of pluralism and tolerance masks an ideological zeal that is as bad if not worse than Catholic Ultramontanism or political totalitarianism. Its symptoms are the purging of religion from the public sphere altogether and pandering to a new anti catholic populism with a troika of Kenny, Gilmore and Quinn leading the way. The ignorant, gullible, and populist Kenny is though much more the villain than the other two. They at least are ideologically consistent and true to their own agnosticism/atheism. Kenny only showed the influence of the Flannery clan as unknown to himself, he is now a political stooge for an Irish club of theologians who emptied the pews long before the abuse evils did. They loved the sub context of Kenny's speech, because it is their agenda, an Irish Church for the Irish People, conveniently blaming Rome for all our woes here. It was intellectually dishonest and laughable in it's distortions and exaggerations. He then had the audacity to say he was a committed Catholic, only showing his ignorance and shallowness that there is no true Church once severed from Rome, i.e. a core belief of any 'committed Catholic. As many Catholic converts in the Literary World discovered in the 19th and 20th centures, all roads lead to Rome and an Irish Church psychologically and in spirit severed from that and Schismatic will go down the sewers even quicker.

Vincent Twomey got it spot on, the thirst for the truth, the light of reason engraved in all human hearts, just hasn't been fed here.

If secularisation in Education is to take place, I hope it also purges all the pop psychology, gender deconstruction, and other Frankford school rubbish that has turned the classroom into one big social engineering laboratory, not to mention the valuable waste of teaching man hours when other subject choices are being cut back, whilst SPHE CSPE crap continues as core curriculum subjects.

I also look forward to the non Catholic 'Catholic' teacher training colleges totally losing their State Subsidy and the theologians and sham 'Catholic' philosophers who work there, throwing away their collars, and finally admitting their are more comfortable with the new pelagianism. Trouble is the poor confused souls don't even know the damage they have done with their hijacking of 'The Spirit of Vatican II' and their Smorgasboard of isms. Now there would be something truly radical, an end to subtle Post Marxist indoctrination. Give me Sound Catholic Philosophy any day.

[Eric Cartman]

The two secularists seem confident that change is coming and they might be right. The main battle ground will be the constitution and in the education system.

Personally, I think that the decline in religious belief and practice will continue but will hit a floor. If the RCC go for the purity option then it will fall further than if they stick with the broad church idea. The purity option might also serve to only provoke further pro-secularism if it spills into the schools. Obviously those who post here will know my views on secularism and know that I fully support it and hope for it.

The schools will indeed become a battleground. The Catholic Church will remain owner of most primary schools, despite what Ruairí Quinn says. The Church will not give them up and cannot be legally made to do so. Most new schools I presume will be non-denominational (but all?). The current system will remain unchanged as the Protestant Churches will not like to relinquish control over their own schools. What will be interesting will be the issue of parental choice and the demand for non- or multi-denominational schools. Certainly a plurality (if not a majority) of voters want Catholic schools (perhaps higher among parents?), only a small minority want American-style 'public schools'. If the religious affiliation of a given school come into question, would it come to a referendum among the parents of the aforesaid schools' parents? Does each parent get a vote? Weighted for the number of pupils attending the school? Would the atheists be that certain that their numbers are sufficiently strong in enough schools to change the affiliation of the school? There are many primary schools in Dublin 15 or Dublin 24 that Irish children are now in a minority, that are Catholic schools. Perhaps these schools may change from being under Catholic control, but then again, perhaps many of the parents are zealous Catholics? Progressive liberals have fewer (or no) children and more religious families have many more children. Interesting challenges ahead for the atheists. I think they assumed that the Catholic Church would surrender the poorer schools, but I do not think that will happen.

[Telemachus]

A broad church would just be a protestant church and face the same fate as the Anglican church - endless schism.

The church may well go back to being a mustard seed as I think one of the former popes had said.

The bankruptsy of liberalism and its direct cause in the demographic collapse of Europe & family breakdown will usher in a new age of faith and reason in the future.

Economics will play a large part in this.

[west'sawake]

A broad church would just be a protestant church and face the same fate as the Anglican church - endless schism.

The church may well go back to being a mustard seed as I think one of the former popes had said.

The bankruptsy of liberalism and its direct cause in the demographic collapse of Europe & family breakdown will usher in a new age of faith and reason in the future.

Economics will play a large part in this.

It had better, or the loo laa liberal ayatollahs around the place will find themselves under Sharia Law.

[Bill]

Wow more whiney drivel from Quinn, well I suppose whatever helps him sleep at night