How the Catholic Church in Ireland can survive

Someoone once opined that "Religion was the devil's greatest achievement." A fundamental point that faithful people fail to appreicate is that there can be a whale of a difference between religion and spirituality. The former is the vehicle, the latter the destination. Sometimes the vehicle takes you in the very opposite direction.

if it had been true,had rooted out the very real EVIL in its midst,it wouldnt be in the state it is in now.people saw the corruption and the way it was covered up and couldnt accept it.i am not religious,thank god.....but jesus said in the bible, beware the whited sepulchers,meaning beware of people who professed to be to holy,how true that has shown to be..its a shame that this has tainted the many devout and decent people within the church but they realy need to clean their act up and restore credibility and respect.

As Christmas draws near, many of us are still bewildered by the revelations surrounding the Catholic Church over the past decade. We are living in a time when all the foundations we depended on whether religious, political, financial or civil, are coming down around us. We certainly need something for solace.

Brilliant article, at last someone sees you need heart and soul not just an institution

Sorry, katiemac, being Catholic doesn't automatically make people emotionally, mentally, physically, or financially capable of being competent parents of a lot of kids. Most people know their limit.

@GeorgeDillon - "what an idiotic post"?? Not really. In order to survive, the Catholic Church will have to Reform in the sense of change in order to survive. In essence it is the last Christian Church to embrace Reformation. So in a sense Rugbyplayer is right on the money!!

I can't stop laughing: katiemac thinks that the Roman Catholic Church was born in the 1950s and that if Catholics simply return to that time-- before Second Vatican Council-- they will find their "roots"! Tell that to Jesus, who was born many centuries before katiemac's golden age of Catholicism. To find the roots, the early Christian Church, one can read the Acts of the Apostles and the gospels' records of the life of Christ-- and realize that Catholicism had wandered far when Vatican II attempted to call it back to its its core values, like feeding the hungry rather than adding another jeweled gold papal tiara to the Vatican stash. katiemac wants Catholics to forget contraception and have really big families. Those "apostle" guys and gals didn't have time to raise big families; they were busy traveling, spreading the gospel and ministering to new Christian communities. Is there any living, breathing Catholic who is not, like katiemac, a "cafeteria Catholic"? "Serve up my religion without the Vatican II ecumenism sauce, please, and leave the unitas and sensus fidelium garnishes on the side of the plate! But sprinkle the liturgy heavily with Latin, and let's have a choir of priests to chant about chastity." Oh, and the only "relativists" I've encountered on this site are Catholics who'd like to excuse the sexual predation of priests by blaming their crimes on the spirit of the over-sexed times we live in! (Trying not to laugh here because paedophila is serious!) katiemac needs "to pray, often and ardently, for the grace to overcome" serious self-delusions. The wounded Church will survive only if it figures out how to reform.

Rugbyplayer gets the prize for dopiest suggestion of the day. The Catholic Church, he tells us, can survive if it "adopt the Anglican model." So, the Catholic Church can survive if it becomes Protestant. What an idiotic post.

The Catholic church should never be given the power handed to them as their "divine right/rite" ever again. I's the faith that will survive these dark pages in history. Power and politics have no place were our spirituality is concerned: the ball is now in OUR court, it's up to us as to what we accept from now on, we have to utilize it for the good of all, universally as the eyes of the world are watching.

while visiting Ireland recently I attended Mass in three churches - the first was mostly older but with some young families, the second mostly tourists and resident elderly, but the third was full and had a lot of young families and young adults. It had a sense of life and community. So that priest must be doing something right.

I have no doubt the Catholic Church will survive. But, it will never regain the political power it once enjoyed. If Catholics can live with the "Render unto Caesar" advice given by the man himself then there is no reason we cannot all get along. But if Catholics continue to insist that Catholic beliefs about sex and life should be enshrined in law as the Bishops in the US seem to think, then the whole enterprise is going to grow more marginalized. Traditional and conservative Catholics may be comforted by the idea that the Bishops are more conservative than ever and are 'fighting back', but it is quite clear that Benedict expects the church to shrink to a purer core in much of the world. The growth in Africa and other third world cultures is the result of a transfer of loyalty in overwhelmingly superstitious cultures more than anything else. With the understanding that the Catholic Church is shrinking in the developed world comes the inescapable consequence that it will have less rather than more influence in secular matters. That is simply the reality of a declining membership. Nobody wants to muzzle Catholics, free speech is the right of all. What we don't want to see are Bishops putting direct pressure on politicians as has been the habit in the past and continues to be the default position in the US today.

More important --Christianity MUST survive. There are other denominations to consider.

Bronze-Age goat-herders' myths "What profit has not that fable of Christ brought us!" Pope Leo X (As attributed by John Bale, Bishop of Ossory, in The Pageant of Popes, p. 179, 1574) Is it not time to grow up, and face the world as it is, and stop using Bronze-Age goat-herders' myths as a security blanket.

Can we not just let it die and move back from our preoccupation with myth and superstition. Lets just embrace and celebrate our common wonderful humanity; nurture kindness to all, and not allow religion to pull us apart from each other, as it so often does.

Why not stay Catholic but switch to Apostolic Catholic where the priests MUST be married? Back in 1868 when the Pope issued the Writ of Papal Infallibility (which stated that the Pope, because he spoke with God, could not be questioned) the Apostolics said, "Well, that was the first and last mistake," and struck out on their own. I have been friends for years with a former Bishop of the Apostolic Catholic Church in Texas (and I am a longtime atheist) and found the changes they made to be logical and noteworthy.