IRELAND
Irish Independent
Jody Corcoran
24/05/2015
The overwhelming Yes vote in favour of same-sex marriage must represent an end to the influence and power of the Catholic church over the political and social trajectory of politics and society.
But as the country embarks on a new era, post Celtic Tiger, economic collapse and austerity, this is a good time to ask: With what have we replaced the overbearing authority of that discredited church?
The decline of the church’s influence over the nation’s morals, more specifically over education, health and, to a lesser extent, social services, has been evident for more than three decades.
That diminished authority is more often than not associated with revelations to do with the sexual abuse of children, which began to emerge in the mid-1990s.
It can be pinpointed, however, to the first in a series of scandals when the Bishop of Galway, Eamon Casey, resigned in 1992 after it was discovered that he was the father of a teenage son.
That revelation may have exposed the hypocrisy of the church; but it was the sex-abuse scandals, specifically the controversy in 1995 over the extradition of a paedophile priest, Brendan Smyth, which also brought down the government, that accelerated the decline of the church.
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