There is one other thing that shows how religion is regarded in Ireland today: The power of the press on reporting clerical errors and wrongdoings. When the scandal about clerical abuse was broken by The Irish Times, there were people who would not believe it, they thought it was a scandalous story invented by the paper. They obviously paid no heed to the fact that the Times was and still is, regarded as one of the more respectable papers.

There is some form of church related scandal to be seen nearly every week now. If not a new story there there is an ongoing one which is being continuously covered. There was a time when stories like these were hushed up and some families were allegedly paid off to keep these stories out of the papers.

It is only in more recent times, when these people have come forward to tell their stories , that we can see just how much power the church used to have in Ireland, and just how much power they have also lost.

The fact is, some of us don’t think we need anything to follow any more. Life is so much simpler when you don’t have to think of greater powers or an afterlife. We don’t want to believe in sin and the greater good.
We want to be able to get on with our lives, do what we like and live life to the full. Religion gets in the way of that. Sunday mornings are easier to bear with no drone of a priest early on the morning. Likewise for special occasions and (ironically) religious holidays.
Yet we all can become very religious when it’s needed, think of how many people declare their love for religion when they want to be married!

Has our faith in the church disappeared forever or is this just a lull in our worship?

Humans are (unfortunately) very like sheep, we like to follow others and have something to work towards. It used to be religion which kept us on our toes, the priest was the be all and end all, a figure of power and might. Now with the numbers of religious vocations declining at a rapid rate and an aging priesthood it seems that we have decided to follow something else.

Perhaps it is because we have had to expand our religious views, there is not just one religion in Ireland any more, there are loads to choose from.

So we question ourselves more about whether we can be in the 'correct' religion as surely, we all think, these religions cant all be the right ones. Some of us have to be wrong!

It could be that we are afraid of joining the wrong one too, therefore worshiping a false god. 

Gone are the times of a son or daughter being held in high regard after joining the priesthood or nunnery. Nowadays parents are more likely to bring you to a doctor if you declare a calling to the religious life.

Of course I don’t think we should all be taking religion to the extreme like some of the images we get from Israel etc. I have seen images and videos of people ‘re-living’ Jesus’ last walk bearing the cross and being nailed to it also.
Imagine seeing that at the top of O Connell St!
But I do believe there should be more respect for religion in Ireland. Its not that it is non existent, in any town in Ireland there is always less graffiti and rubbish around the churches, although the same cannot be said for graveyards unfortunately.
They seem to have become places for ‘knacker drinking’ where youths conjugate to drink alcohol in little known areas. Now im not saying all youths do this, but some do.

But Jesus (supposedly) gave his life for us, he died for sins we committed. So where has the respect for him disappeared to in the last 50 years or so?
The generation before this one still holds respect for church holidays and actively participate in church activities. Yet how many younger people will obey church 'rules' such as fast days and refraining from use of contraception.

On Holy Thursday the off license in the town near me had three other people buying crates of beer and spirits in the brief time I was there. This was, presumably, to get them through the next day; Good Friday, where alcohol cannot be served. One day! Our nation cannot go one day without drinking, or at the very least, stocking up on alcohol in case they are in dire need of it.
Good Friday was also a fast day, where traditionally we don't eat meat. But look at any menu in a pub or a restaurant that day and you would have been spoiled for choice with any meat you wanted to eat. There would be, of course, a non meat alternative supplied but it is still a shame to see our holy traditions being overlooked.
But come Easter Sunday, we were all Catholics once again. This was a day for celebration, a day to go to the pub, to drink at home with the family, or to hit the dancefloor that night with your mates. Isn't it fantastic to be living in Catholic Ireland where we get this long weekend where we can so thoughtfully appreciate and celebrate being part of this religion

So Easter is nearly upon us now and the shops are filled with.......chocolate. Is it just me or has Easter become almost as commercial as christmas? The first Cadburys Creme Egg (the number one confectionary sold during Easter no less) was out....wait for it....before Christmas.

So have we gone too far? Thinking about the next holy celebration even before we have one over and done with?

There has been a backlash in recent years about religious feasts becoming far too commercial and Easter seems to prove this. While the retailers seem to think it is ok to force their products on us in 'celebration' of Jesus rising from the dead on Easter Sunday, it is a tad ironic that we are mourning his death just 3 days earlier. 

So just where did this association with chocolate eggs and Easter start? And how has it taken over so quickly? It makes me feel old just to look in the shops at the Easter decorations and I'm still a student! The Easter Bunny phenonomon also seems to have spiraled out of control, the shops are full of cutesy little Spring animals, all in shades of pastel, inviting us to buy them as 'Spring is here! Winter is over! It's time for Easter!'

But is this too far, would our Lord approve of this farcical celebration of Spring, which has pagan connotations by the way. 

Just how many children care about the celebration of Easter? It is supposed to be a day of celebration for the rising of Jesus, who died for our sins. Yet there is no sign of this in any of the shops around Dublin City. How are kids supposed to associate Jesus and Easter when all they see around them are bunnies and baby chicks. 

So Paddy’s day has been and gone, our national and unofficial day of drinking and thanking our patron saint for ridding our isle of snakes. (Regardless of the fact that fossils show Ireland has never had a snake of any kind.)

Recently, I was at the receiving end of a near death experience, now while this has not had any effect on my own personal views of religion, I can now see how some people might drastically change their lives after such an experience.
It has, in one aspect, made me think about life more, about how we are such fragile parts of this world.
The fearful part of this experience for me, though, was that it was a natural force that caused it, the Atlantic Ocean. It proved to me that although humans may think we control the earth and that we are the force to be reckoned with, we are in fact, weak.

Can it all just be a coincidence? That everything all just came together at the right time, the right temperature, the right place, and combined to make this wonderful world. Where we have televisions, iphones and fridge magnets, where we can graph the evolution of man from prehistoric times and yet still be unable to find that missing link when animal became man.
It has to be said here that most Christians’ do not know the full story, that there are thousands if not hundreds of thousands, of books in the Vatican in Rome, containing undisclosed information that has not been deemed ‘suitable’ for the public to hear. Yet why the secrecy?
Wouldn’t it be fairer if our respective schools and teachers told us this? Personally I found out about it by accident, while reading The Da Vinci Code which then made me more interested in finding out about these hidden books.
Just why aren’t we allowed to have the Gospel of Judas proclaimed from the Catholic pulpit every Sunday? If we were given the full story, then it would seem less like we were being manipulated into our beliefs by selective preaching.

So it is St Patrick's Day, the Irish national day of celebration. This is a day which is supposed to be held in honour of the saint who brought Catholicism to Ireland. Indeed this is the man who returned to our island after he escaped from slavery here.
Yet how do the majority of Irish people see this day?
As a day for drinking.
I can honestly say that I have never spent a St Patrick's Day in the pub, indeed I don't think I have even spent that night in the pub either. So I cannot speak from experience about the queues and the hiked prices of alcohol on this day. But just take a look at the parade travelling down O Connell St in Dublin today, the crowds are 10-15 people deep in places at the side of the street.
Just how many of them will leave the parade and head straight into the nearest bar for the evening?
It will be a fairly high percentage I can tell you that much. Just what example is this that we are setting for youth? Its our national day and we spend it half langered in a pub, singing Irish songs and claiming to be patriotic about our country, yet just how many people can tell you what our national colour is.........and no its not green.....

The historian JH Whyte, author of Church and State in Modern Ireland. asked at the start of his book whether the Irish were truly religious or merely adhering to social norms of churchgoing. He concluded that, since people did far more than the church demanded of them, they were obviously genuinely religious. The church said we had to go to confession and communion once a year; most of us went every week, some every day. Whyte was judging behaviour against the demands of church law, not against the social rules by which we were drilled into conformity in a rural country in which there was little other opportunity for meeting all your neighbours in the one place

So where did it all go wrong for Irish religion then? Most people presume that it was the sex and child abuse scandals which led to the Irish public ditching a clergy which failed to meet our standards.

Actually, the decline started in the 1960s, with the urbanisation of Ireland, and it was the women who started it. Around this time the Vatican reaffirmed the 'evils' of sexual deviancy and contraception. This led to questions as to why the church was condemning something which took the risk out of sexual relationships, why were we all following a narrow, strait-laced path when there was other possibilities which could now be chanced?

So perhaps it is the church itself that has led to the present day demise of religion. Certainly it has not helped them to remain so old fashioned in the modern world.

While I am not normally one that likes to eat my own words so to speak, I have to say that I was surprised last Wednesday to see so many people in Dublin City Centre with ashes on their foreheads. Being the not-so-devout Catholic that I am, I had also happened to forget that it was Ash Wednesday, cue the look of dawning realisation which appeared on my face in the middle of Grafton St. What interested me about the day was the fact that so many people were oblivious to the crosses that they were displaying. 

The cross is used on our foreheads as a sign that we repent and are 'carrying our cross' out of the church and into the world. Yet everyone I seen on the streets that day looked like they had totally forgotten that it was the beginning of a forty day diet which Catholics undertake, both in preparation for Easter and as a way of spiritually “joining” Jesus with the fasting and meditation he did in the wilderness. Yet it was quite strange to see different nationalities partaking of this ritual also as I observed both Asians and Africans bearing the ashes. While I have no idea as to their nationality, they could be born and reared in any of the counties around Ireland, it was nice to see how Ireland has become an extended community and that religion does not pay any heed to race or origins.

But it was very obvious that the majority of people in Dublin did not attend the traditional Ash Wednesday mass, 30 or 40 years ago the ratio would look the opposite way. There would be a higher number of people with the ashes than without. Indeed, I even over heard one child whispering to her mother "Look at the man with the dirty face, Mammy." Innocence maybe, but it tragically reflects the steep slope Ireland is facing regarding religion.

Religion as it currently stands

Like the famous movie quote, religion in Ireland is currently as varied as 'a box of chocolates'. When you go out socialising on a Saturday night you are just as likely to see a Jew or Muslim as a Catholic. Although, thats if you can even tell them apart, which is an achievement in itself.

Yes, the Irish have come a long way in regards to religion and now that our opinions are starting to change, do you think we will ever see religion having the same control over the population as it once had?

There has not been such a bleak outlook for the Irish Catholic faith since the plantation times, where even then, masses were said regularly at certain designated 'holy sites' or mass rocks'. The Irish were renowned for their devoutness and we even earned the title of 'The Island of Saints and Scholars'. But what has happened to that Ireland? How have we managed to lose our faith in so short a period of time?

Only the older people and the devout attend weekly mass any more. Many now simply 'don't have the time' or see it as a yearly pilgrimage to be made at Christmas. Bishops and priests have their work cut out for them if they want to reach out to the young people.

The generation before me, the older middle-aged lets say, are still clinging on with all their might to their religion. They don't want to give up on it as a lost cause. Yet they are fighting a losing battle. How many young people go to mass on a regular basis? I can guarantee that it is not a high percentage.

Despite being raised a Roman Catholic myself, I personally have no time for religion. Its' simply boring to me. And I am not usually one to have a short attention span. Yet, if given the choice of staying in bed or going to mass on a Sunday morning.......I know which one I would choose.