News: What Ever Happened to Ireland?

“... the decline in religious practice may be due more to the failure of many Church leaders to offer effective leadership to this now better educated and more prosperous people.”

In the July 16, 2007 issue of AMERICA magazine Father Andrew M. Greeley wrote an article titled, ”What Ever Happened to Ireland?” In the article, Father Greeley presented a view differing from the popular one about recent Church events in that land.

Many commentators have blamed the rise in affluence for Ireland’s sudden and precipitous decline in Catholic religious practice among many of the island’s people. Father Greeley casts scorn on those who prefer the Irish to be ignorant and poor. He sees the people’s advances in education and prosperity in a far more positive light, and suggests that the decline in religious practice may be due more to the failure of many Church leaders to offer effective leadership to this now better educated and more prosperous people.

Father Greeley sees no advantage in ignorance and involuntary poverty for the Irish people. Father Greeley insists that the “loss of faith’ in Ireland is also a problem that exists throughout the world, for example in Poland and Nigeria. Interestingly, Father Greeley quotes his colleague, Mark Chavex, who says that ‘’’secularization,’ if it means anything at all, means that organized religion has lost its power to impose unquestioned rules on the behavior of its members. Religious leaders are reduced from commanders who issue orders to teachers who must listen and try to persuade.”