Irish Catholic Church in ‘terminal decline’ after sex abuse scandals

Ireland was once considered the most Catholic country in the world. However, that is no longer the case.

Mark Vincent Healy was sexually assaulted by a member of the Spiritan Order during his school days in the 1960s and 1970s. He says the sexual abuse he experienced destroyed his life.

“It had a profound psychological effect on me and the way I made decisions about things I wanted to do with my life. Even more recently and of course, when this issue came up and it surfaced in my life, everything changed,” he revealed. to Euronews.

“It is now 16 years since I sought redress and justice, but it was not an extension of justice to myself, but an extension of justice to so many other survivors in Ireland.”

A ‘catastrophic’ impact on Catholicism in Ireland

According to figures from the last Irish census, weekly Mass attendance, which was 91% in 1975, had fallen to 36% by 2016.

There is only one way to sum up the effect sex abuse scandals have had on Catholicism in Ireland, according to critical members of the Church.

“Catastrophic is the only answer to that,” said Father John Collins of the Association of Irish Catholic Priests. “We always had a problem before the child sexual abuse scandals broke out in this country.”

“There was a problem with the church in a way that a lot of people came forward [said] that the church was too controlling and had too much control over their lives and people rejected that,” he added.

The behavior of the Church in resisting the payment of damages and acting as if nothing had happened has, in the words of a Catholic commentator, been damaging to the Church in Ireland.

“The sexual abuse scandals have been absolutely devastating to the Church, not just the actual abuse itself, which of course has been devastating to the victims, but the fact that when the victims came forward, when they spoke to those in leadership positions within the Church, they were ignored, they were told they were making it up, it was consistently minimized,” explains Michael Kelly, editor at the Irish Catholic Newspaper.

The Catholic Church in ‘terminal decay’

The percentage of Catholics in Ireland is now just over 70%, but falling. The average age of a priest in Ireland is now 70 years.

While sex abuse scandals have wreaked havoc on the institution in Ireland, this and a host of other factors suggest that the Catholic Church will have to change to hold on to what it has.

Patsy McGarry, religious correspondent at the Irish Times, told Euronews: “The Catholic Church in Ireland is probably in a definite decline, but that’s not entirely due to the sex abuse scandals – although they have contributed enormously to what is going on there anyway. was also a trend since the late 1960s since free education was introduced in this country.”

By all accounts, the Catholic Church in Ireland is in serious trouble. The feeling is that unless the Vatican modernizes or changes the rules very quickly, the Church in this country will effectively cease to exist in the years and decades to come.