IRELAND
Irish Independent
Colette Browne
26/05/2015
Archbishop Diarmuid Martin is right that the Catholic Church needs a “reality check” in the wake of the landslide marriage equality referendum result, but the State also needs a reality check when it comes to its reliance on the church for the provision of education.
The notion that it took the decisive result of the marriage equality referendum for senior members of the church to grasp that it is no longer relevant in the lives of young people is a sad indictment of its remoteness from the lives of the people it purports to represent.
In truth, alarm bells should have been ringing for the church as far back as 1973, when the Supreme Court found married couples had a right to use contraceptives – even if the church and the State, which were then virtually indistinguishable, disagreed.
Instead, it has opted to ignore the massive societal changes that have occurred in Ireland in the intervening four decades, leading it to its current sorry impasse of irrelevance and decay.
The degree to which the influence of the church has waned is evident even in the lobbying style of its most enthusiastic supporters, the Iona Institute.
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