And include women this time.

There is in this State a body of men and women who each day they put on their uniforms, or perhaps not, and subordinate their right to life to the right to life of others. In the case of the Garda Síochána and the Defence Forces, this subordination is enshrined in their oaths. We see it made horrifically real sometimes. The fact that there are women and men ready to step forward to fill the empty spaces in the line means we’ve not yet fallen entirely into the abyss. When a society’s police and defence forces can still command a good deal of moral authority as opposed to the type that comes out of a gun there’s hope for it yet.

You’re all over the place, Allan. On the one hand you are saying that morality is irrelevant, then you are fulminating about corruption. There’s a tie-up, you know.

Nope, I’m saying that the Catholic Church centred morality that lingers here is irrelevant. We export abortion and deny loving couples the right to a state marriage based on that morality.
The formation of a moral system with a legislative backbone needs to be based on the needs of people, not the perverted constructions of a decadent Church.
Yes, there’s a tie-up between morality and corruption. And we’re living through it.

All right, Allan is saying the Church’s morality is irrelevant. But a secular, post-Catholic morality would still be based on, for example, the Ten Commandments. I recall how Conor Cruise O’Brien described himself as a subscriber to “the Judaeo-Christian ethic in its post-enlightenment form”.

You can’t pretend Christianity and Judaism just never existed.

Mabye it’s intellectual vanity, but I like to think I don’t need the Church to tell me what’s right and wrong. However, judging from the state of our country there are still a lot of people out there who do.

Just how much does it take for a full disgrace?

Adam, They might have trouble listening now. I wrote in a previous blog about attending Mass recently in a South Dublin church where the vast majority of the congregation were in late middle age or elderly. But it wasn’t a scientific survey, I hasten to add.

Edmund, A full disgrace would be where all, or virtually all, the hierarchy were found wanting in respect of the child abuse scandal or some other issue. But I have to say that Archbishop Martin impresses me as a sincere man who is doing his best to deal with a very difficult situation. I wish the Vatican would convey a greater feeling of wanting to make a clean sweep of the problem and start afresh rather than engaging in damage limitation.

Éireannach, Your vision is an appealing one. The Gaelic Ireland dream in a new form. Rath Dé ar an obair!

The organisation is the people in it. The human glue not quite superseded yet by machines and processes which however objective will never of themselves possess human morality. Not going on the technological horizon we currently view. No machines of loving grace to watch over us by and of themselves, and what a dystopia that would be. But those within the organisations who in themselves exemplify what those organisations are supposed to be about we can draw inspiration from. And as inspiration can be drawn from the good, so can example be drawn from the bad. In any event, authority without integrity is not deserving of our respect be it in the individual or in the organisation they exemplify.

sloppy use of words .

What a mess!!..I consider myself to have a good moral set of standards and ethics that I honestly try to live by. I dont need an authoritarian and dictatorial corrupt church to tell me how to live as a decent civilised human…Im an atheist and opposed to the control the RCChurch has in this little republic of ours…”give me the child and I will give you the man”…etc…and what a job they did of that!!..unfortunately the “man” is in government and in the establishment that controls our society…sooo…little hope of getting rid of the infamous Irish double think in the near future..unless we have a real revolution and get rid of the RCChurch’s control and influence in all the countries affairs…let them stick to preaching to whoever wants to listen to them and no taxpayer’s money to assist them.

Did they ever listen?

Your argument assumes that a strong, central moral authority will stop bad people from doing bad things. I don’t think that’s true.

People who want moral guidance will find it regardless of the strength of the church or state. Those who do not, will not, no matter how easy it is to access.

Drongo: Too cynical
Adam: Too fatalistic.
John: Too alarmist.

Niall, Yes we should. But this country does not interfere with the elites. Prominent clergy conspired and covered up serious criminal activity. This is a serious offence. Custodial sentences are in order. Developers, bankers, pollies, police, lawyers, etc.
Who got a gaol sentence? Only poor Frank Dunlop who blew it on the golden circle and paid the price.
And Deaglán thinks that I am too cynical. There was a time when I was merely a sceptic, but that was when I was at the CBS secondary in second year , and before Brother Lemmefeelyourass put his hand up my football shorts in the GAA changing room.
Nuff said.

Frank Jameson: In fairness to Nuala O’Loan I am republishing her article below. Her point is that persons are innocent until proven guilty but she is also highly-critical of the Church’s response to the child abuse issue as “inadequate and in some cases criminal”.

Church rules on abuse claims mean unfair treatment for accused priests
Tue, Mar 14, 2006

The Catholic Church’s rules for dealing with sex abuse allegations against priests can cause injustice, and greatly harm those who are wrongly accused, writes Nuala O’Loan

The reception of, and response to, allegations of child abuse requires huge sensitivity and absolute integrity. We have all seen and heard the terrible litany of the pain of those abused by a small number of members of the Catholic Church, some of them ordained to priesthood.

The abuse of trust of those who perpetrated these terrible actions against defenceless little children was total and abhorrent. The response of the church in Ireland was inadequate, and in some cases criminal – we saw the collusion which resulted in the movement of a few priests, known to be paedophiles, from parish to parish. It was wrong, terribly wrong.

More recently we have seen a completely different approach. The institutional church has acknowledged its wrongdoing and has apologised repeatedly for it. New rules were published at the end of last year stating how the church will respond in the event of an allegation of child abuse. They are clear and concise, and they state the necessity to protect children.

However, inherent in the operation of those new rules is further injustice, which has the capacity to cause great harm to those priests who are wrongly or falsely accused.

For, whilst articulating the fact that people are innocent until proven guilty, the church does not always reflect this understanding in the way in which it deals with those accused, especially those accused of offences which are less serious in nature and which allegedly occurred 20 and 30 years ago.

Inevitably, these are much harder to investigate.

It is absolutely essential that the first thing which happens, in all cases in which an allegation is made, is that the matter must be reported to the police for consideration and investigation where appropriate.

However, current processes also seem to require that priests who are accused will immediately have to step aside from ministry, leave their homes, and go away into what is effectively a limbo. In cases where there is a clear and precise allegation, what Colm O’Gorman referred to recently as “a significant allegation”, then such action may well be necessary.

In cases where there is a vague allegation, of a less serious nature which is very old, particularly where that allegation changes rapidly on the first few occasions on which it is recounted, the church should be more cautious.

Having reported the matter to the police, it should consider carefully the question of any action which it might take against the priest in a particular case. The priest may well concur with the church’s current position that he should step aside “in the common good”.

However, what seems to happen next is that the bishop appears in the church in which the priest serves, and makes a formal announcement, often before any investigation has commenced. An accusation against a nurse, a teacher, a social worker or a police officer would not be the subject of an immediate disclosure of the facts to all those with whom, and for whom, they work.

If an arrest becomes necessary, that public disclosure may well happen, but in the early moments of investigation it is normal to conduct the investigation having regard to the rights both of the accuser and of the accused, and not to make any public statement.

Priests’ homes are very often also their offices. Most of them do not work an eight-hour day; they are very often available to the people at all hours of the day and night. A priest, in this situation, is often asked to leave his home.

This does not happen to teachers or social workers or nurses or doctors or police officers. They continue to live in their homes for the duration of the investigation, which, if there is a criminal allegation, may well continue for up to two years. They retain some semblance of normality in a life which is otherwise turned upside down by what has happened.

Most teachers, nurses, social workers and police officers belong to a union or federation which will provide legal assistance in the event of an allegation of this kind. Priests have no such protection, no union to speak for them. Very often they are not provided with civil lawyers but must pay for their own.

Sometimes the diocese even stops paying them the small stipend which most of them receive. So effectively they can and do lose their homes, their reputation and their income. This does not happen to other members of the public.

I have investigated such allegations against police officers. The police investigate similar allegations against civilians. If those allegations are proved to be false, or if they are unproven, the accused go back into their professional life.

The determination will be either that they should stand trial, as a consequence of which they will be either acquitted or convicted, or that there is no evidence on which to found a prosecution, in which case they will return to normal life.

At the end of an investigation, those against whom there is no evidence will be able to get on with their lives.

In many cases in the church here in Ireland, this does not happen. Men against whom the evidence is simply not to be found will nevertheless not be permitted to return to work, but will spend the rest of their days waiting. For what?

I know of such men living apart in monasteries and seminaries, for whom life is on hold indefinitely because the church does not have the structures which will enable proper handling of the issue. This is wrong.

These situations are few but they are important. The church should not, by its actions, create a situation in which priests are treated less fairly than others such as teachers, nurses, social workers and police officers.

Nuala O’Loan is Police Ombudsman for Northern Ireland

© 2006 The Irish Times

Really! This is the 21st Century… the omniscience of the Church has been eroded by increasing secularisation…we worship the gifts of the Magi not the ‘Saviour’… the structures that previously supported collectivism have been smashed by the Establishment…Church State and Judiciary… too subversive…instead we have an individualistic society…morality mirrors the prevailing ‘I’m all right Jack pull the ladder up’ culture… if you’d read your Marx he told you all this in a little book called Das Kapital…c.f. chapter on ‘Contradictions of Capital’, false conciousness all that stuff but he was condemned by the ‘moral guardians’ the Church the State the Judiciary…have we come full circle? In other words ‘It’s the Economy stoopid’…Anyway I’d say you lot are great fun at parties!

Never leave home without it! Nollaig Shona Duit

You couldn’t accuse the One who first cried it in Aramaic but there were plenty since cried something like it in English and other languages were so accused. Of cowardice. On a battlefield. Mother of God we breed and train our cannon-fodder just like fighting bulls or greyhounds. Brutalisation. Only way the military’s found to train young men to drop fire on other people’s heads but won’t let them write fuck on their airplanes. And they accuse the Church of cognitive dissonance. Fuckused to be known in Ireland as The Soldier’s Word. My granduncle was slapped across the face by his father for using it once. At 21 years of age. Became a soldier thereafter but not sure he was much good at it was over fond of the bottle but he was a good and gentle soft-hearted man. Anyway sorry just to clarify the one before.

Aidan,

You write: “We need to look to people who value the truth above all.”

Who are these people? My point is that the Church has a corps of individuals who are, or should be, dedicated to bringing out the best in people. I don’t see any squads of atheists going around preaching (it didn’t work too well in Russia). The tragedy of the child abuse scandal is that it has undermined the credibility of the good priests who are saying the right thing to children and adults about good and evil. Hence the threat to society’s moral standards and my appreciation of the Church’s role even though I am not a religious person.

As for basing things on fiction, well, I am sure that many religious people do not accept that the Bible is literally true, e.g., the Book of Genesis. But they believe there is a moral truth there, as there can be in the best of fiction, e.g., War and Peace, Dostoevsky, etc.

If fiction makes people behave better, then it is not a bad thing.

If it’s not impertinent to ask and/or you’ve answered this already (I haven’t got the stamina to wade through all of the above) why do you go to Mass if as you say you are not religious ?

OK point taken! but it’s not only Aidan’s comments…I think a good nights sleep
might clear/ease the minds of some of your contributors…On the religious bit I ‘love’ the rituals of the Catholic Church, the ’smells and bells’ etc, and luckily there is a sung Latin Mass at the Catholic Cathedral I like to attend when I need some Spiritual therapy…other than that I find Mass more of an endurance, a glorified creche…maybe because I live in that oul’ Pagan country as my Grandmother used to say…anyway a little Politics lite occasionally… possibly, maybe?

Aidan a chara,

When children are small, their parents tell them stories, partly to entertain, partly to get them to behave better. “If you don’t go to sleep soon, the Boogie Man will come after you!” I look on religion in the same light.

There is a difference between the foundation myth of a society, or a religious denomination, and lies, which would be something I associate with, say, a dishonest business transaction or an untruthful statement from a politician.

We are in the middle of a festive season based for many children around the happy expectation that a man in a red suit with a white beard will come down the chimney with a sackful of presents. Go ahead, Scrooge/Aidan you old spoilsport/partypooper and denounce it all as “lies”!

For whatever reason, judging from your many comments, you appear to hate religion as distinct from just rejecting it. You also share a somewhat dogmatic approach with the worst elements of the Catholic Church you despise so much.

But Happy Christmas all the same and good to have you back in dialogue. You are right about the obscure location of our Irish Times blogs. A colleague said, “You would need a degree in Geography to find them”

DEAGLÁN! I hope you’re not suggesting there ain’t no Sanity Claus! You say Boogie I say Bogey… the Boogie Man sounds quite fun…if you like dancing…

Truth will set you free. Thought came to mind, thinking of the opening chapter of “The Inglourious Basterds” (saw it for 1st time last nite). The farmer tells the truth to the nazi jewhunter. He does so to spare his own family’s life. Knowing the hiding place of the Jews whom the farmer had been protecting, the nazi has them killed. The nazi told the farmer his property was to be searched, and that the consequences of any Jews being found would be severe on the farmer, but that if he provided information that would make a search unnecessary, the consequences for he and his (three daughters) would be positive. What a horrific dilemma. A Jewish family’s life versus your own. What would you do? Would you tell the truth in such a situation, as the farmer did? Sorry not butting into anyone else’s question to anyone else just answering it for myself. A psychiatric patient asks you whether there are drugs of abuse in your possession. He has a knife in his hand and is threatening to kill himself if he doesn’t get the drugs. You have them in a locked drawer. You’re his doctor. The drugs are diamorphine. He’s addicted to it. Would you think the truth should be told? You believe a certain aircraft is involved in illegal activities to wit the kidnap and torture of human beings who are beyond the law’s reach and made so by friendly and immensely powerful governments. Your HEO believes it and so does your SEO. But you’ve been told by your boss that the word’s come down from higher up – the very heights – not to make further inquiry into said aircraft, in fact to leave them severely alone thought the law says to do otherwise. What would you do? I think the obligation to the truth is directly related to the moral quantity of the thing or the impetus demanding it be told. How to determine the moral quantity might not be as easy as in the preceding examples. It’s a dilemma the guards face every day I would think. Customs and other enforcement agencies also. The difference between following orders and doing your duty.

Deaglán,

Well, I think we should be grown-up about this, don’t you? Yes, sometimes children are told white lies, and white lies are necessary sometimes, but the difference between the Santa Claus myth and the Jesus myth should be obvious. You and I are adults. We don’t need to believe in Santa Claus or Jesus to behave morally. There is no evidence for your argument that people need to be treated like children. This might be interesting reading for you:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article571206.ece

Nobody is founding a society on the Santa Claus myth, and you won’t find a sane adult who believes it to be true. Nobody has died for the Santa Claus myth, nobody has been tortured, Santa Claus never said that there are holes large enough in condoms to let the AIDS virus through…I could go on, but I think the point has been made. (Also Red Biddy, if people put forward the Jesus myth as a “white truth” then we could talk about it as a “white lie”.)

You have failed to answer the questions I put to you, Deaglán. “And what good do priests preach that they couldn’t preach if they weren’t priests? Or, more importantly, what immorality do they preach precisely because they are priests?”

Patsy McGarry was on “The Savage Eye” (more miss than hit comedy show) last night and he said that the Catholic Church was a homophobic institution, quoting the Pope himself. Now, the serious question you have to answer is do you think that if people thought more like the Pope that we would have a more moral society? If you can’t answer that question in the positive then your argument that the decline of the church (and the Pope’s influence) is a bad thing for society is practically finished. And unless you deal directly with that question (no more asides about Russian communism or Santa Claus) in your next reply then I think it’s safe to assume that you don’t have a serious argument here.

Yes, I despise the Catholic Church, and with good reason. I mean isn’t the statement made eight years ago from the Vatican that condoms let through the AIDS virus despicable? Isn’t the idea that people go to hell for all eternity a despicable idea? Pope Pius XII apparently sat on his hands during the Holocaust and may even have supported it (although we don’t know because the Vatican won’t release their documents): despicable? Isn’t telling people that masturbation is wrong despicable? Isn’t the idea of original sin despicable? Isn’t the church’s teaching on homosexuality despicable? Again, I could go on and on here….the question is not why I find the Church despicable, it’s why you don’t.

Are you really, really serious when you say that it is sad to see the decline of this organisation? What exactly is it that we are losing?

P.S. If you are going to label me dogmatic then you need to identify my dogma. As I have always maintained, if there were good evidence that Christianity was true I would consider it. If you could show me good evidence that Santa Claus existed I’d consider that too. My position can be changed by evidence. Could the same be said for the “worst elements of the church”? Hardly.

Happy Christmas all the same.

Ireland MUST have a total separation from any religious body to have true justice in Ireland. This includes your PUBLIC SCHOOLS which really are not true public schools but just paid for by the taxes of Ireland’s people.

Aidan: Is this really all about the Catholic Church’s position (no pun intended) on (presumably) male homo/sexual practices?. I don’t find all of the statements you rely on to bolster your antipathy to the Catholic Church ‘despicable’ some of them have a distinctly adolescent ring to them…is it really a good reason to despise the RCC because it teaches that ‘masturbation is wrong’…What is it with men and their mickies…? Quite honestly I couldn’t care if you shag sheep but why do we all have to know about your angst?

Whilst I can be sure that Dostoevsky and Tolstoy were not Communists having completed their opus magna and departed or almost departed this mortal coil before the Russian Revolution… I cannot be so sure about Santa…giving all those presents to children who had been ‘good’ (presumably having refrained from committing the sin of Onan) throughout the year…there’s also rumour that he also may have been Russian…Lachrymi Christi

Amen! to that…Joanna you are a ‘rock of sense’ but I suppose Theocrats would have a problem with the Faith/scepticism issue…As an aside it behoves me to adopt the Hiberno-Irish variant of my name lest I am persecuted for unauthorised use and ‘passing off’ under trade laws…

Thank you Joanna, I’m touched (!) Not only are you wise, you also have that essential ingredient of survival, humour. However, having said that, you can never be too careful where the ‘Peelers’ are concerned! I return your good wishes and send the same to Deaglan and the all other ‘bloggers’…

You are very difficult to have a dialogue with because you want to control the terms of debate and your tone is also very patronising. Your idea of a “good” debate is clearly one where you issue pronouncements and the rest of us say, “How true those words are!”
My point, which I haven’t seen you answering, is that, if the Church isn’t going to preach (and of course practise) good behaviour, then who is? Traffic Wardens?
Anyway, Happy, er, Holiday (since you probably have ideological objections to Christmas).

P.S.

“…you probably have ideological objections to Christmas).”

December 22, 2009
9:32 am

“Happy Christmas all the same”

Deaglán,

Again there is no substance to what you say. You point out that the murder rate has gone up in Ireland and you say in part that this caused by a decline in religious belief, but you don’t flesh out that point at all. How does the decline in belief (albeit, in part) lead to murder? Are the people who carry out these crimes the less religious part of the community? And, if you theory were correct, the least religious countries would have the highest crime/murder rates, and that just isn’t true.

Your point on child abuse is based on a hunch. You can’t know whether child abuse is going unreported in this country or to what extent it is. What we can and do know is that the “preachers” who you want to turn back to as some sort of moral compass have a shameful record on the subject that can’t be swept away neatly by calling it a “moral blindspot”.

People’s attitudes to homosexuality are important, and I think it should be conceded that on that point the further we are from the Pope’s thinking the better for society. His preaching on this subject should not be called a “moral blindspot” either. If one of your colleagues told you that he or she felt that homosexuals were evil or sinful you wouldn’t think that that was a small thing about that colleague that could be ignored. You certainly wouldn’t look to a homophobe or racist for moral guidance.

As for Listowel, the timeline should be taken into account. The priest had defended the guy at the trial. It was a full two weeks before the sentencing and there was no attempt by the bishop to make any statement of support. The statement of support came AFTER the public outcry. To hold the bishop up as some sort of moral light on the issue one would have expected to see him leading, and not following. After all, we are talking about looking for moral leaders here.

I am not offering soulless secularism. There is far more morality in the Declaration of Human Rights than the Ten Commandments. In fact, we can dispose of the first three commandments because they have nothing to do with morality. Again, if the Ten Commandments as a moral proclamation couldn’t be bettered you might have a point, but of course they can and have been bettered.

Anyway, I’m over and out for Christmas.

Hello boys…still at it I see!…For what it’s worth my seanfhear fada blames the Beatles…and The Pill…

The concept of ‘Religion as the opiate of the masses’ (no pun intended) and therefore a method of social control diminishes as science erodes religious ‘belief’ and society becomes more secularised. The role of the ‘Church’ therefore changes mutatis mutandis as society changes. This has been accelerated inexorably in Ireland by the conduct of those who have abused their ministerial role. Ironically therefore Aidanwould seem to have more in common with the Marxist/Communist model of the role of the Church/religion in advanced society. He’s probably correct in saying that we don’t need ‘priests’ whose moral authority is now so tarnished that it has disappeared almost to vanishing point, to act as ‘moral guardians’. However that is not the same thing as saying that the principles of Christianity e.g. The Ten Commandments (yep! I struggled to remember them all!) and the now discredited religious Orders are not worth keeping as a moral blueprint. However on a personal level I still find something Spiritual particularly at this time of year, in the ritual of the Catholic Church. But I attend from choice not moral obligation…And NO! I haven’t been at the cooking sherry…yet!

Deaglán,

My point is that we don’t need moral guardians, we need argument and discourse.

The job of the moral guardians you think we we need is to say “thou shalt not kill…because God says so”. Is that the best argument we have against murder?

And the other problem, of course, is that you want to take the fifth commandment in splendid isolation, as if the rest of things that the same moral guardians say God wants don’t exist, or are merely “moral blindspots”. Nothing good can be built on such shifting sands.

As I said to you before, the Ten Commandments really aren’t anywhere close to the finest treatise on human rights and solidarity. There is no room for “all people are born equal in dignity and rights” but ample room for “have no other Gods before me”.

Perhaps also you could answer the question as to what moral statement could a believer make that a non-believer could not make? If you seriously argue that belief in God is necessary for morality then you should be able to come up numerous answers.

You didn’t answer the question. Charity is of course possible without religion. Here is a list of secular charities:

http://freethoughtpedia.com/wiki/Charities#Secular_Charities_and_Aid_groups

I have no problem with numinous or spiritual in human life, but that doesn’t require us to abandon our logic.

If you are still taking about “abusers not being tracked down” you haven’t really fully grasped the problem with the church. It was worldwide church policy dictated by the Vatican to cover-up child abuse by priests. The words “systemic” and “endemic” appear in the Ryan and Murphy reports. It wasn’t a case of “bad apples”, the whole thing was rotten to the core. As regards people being better off, I wonder how much charitable work by how many people would make up for the cover up of abused women and children. Do you know?

In the end I think that there is more nostalgia than serious argument on your part here. There’s a good programme called “Seven Ages” about the history of Ireland, and I remember Michael D. Higgins saying that the Ireland of the fifties was a truly miserable, small-minded place and how anyone could want that back was beyond him (or words to that effect).

***

Tiernan alluded to the Holocaust joke with a joke about offending people globally not just Irish people. The rest of the program was a poorly-edited, self-indulgent (they had their ex-classmates as guests!) mess with few laughs. I won’t be watching again.

Is this a private party or can anyone join in? Unpalatable tho’ it may seem I think Aidan’s argument has force. The Charitable work done by the clergy has been done as well if not better by Humanitarian organisations who have no patronising or ulterior motives, and are not swapping wampum for bibles or ’souls’. Of course in a just/equal society there would should be no need for Charity in any event. By definition there can never be true equality in a Capitalist Society especially when that inequality is bolstered by the Church c.f. The Beatitudes. I get the impression you are someone who looks for a sees the good in people Deaglán, and expect when the idea of sexual abuse by the Clergy was first mooted you would also have found that too, incomprehensible and rejected it accordingly. On a personal level, being a convent girl, priests and nuns, have always weirded me out…something to do with the prevalence of halitosis and body odour or maybe I’ve just got a sensitive nose…Now I’m just going to look up ‘numinous’…hope you enjoyed your plum duff…

Deaglán,

Abusers were in the minority, but the cover-up, which was the real problem, was perpetrated by the organisation. You and I may not have seen abuse, but it happened. The charitable aspect of the church did not make up for repressive force of the same organisation. Charity is best, in my opinion, when it is done without ulterior motive, and as I have shown, contrary to what you think, charity is alive and well in the secular world.

The church cared (and in my opinion still cares) more about the institution than the human lives of the people who are part of that church. You only have to watch that BBC documentary “Sex Crimes and the Vatican” to see that in countries where the Vatican can get away with cover-up it still does. We do not need these people as moral guardians.

Finally, if you think there is a correlation between lack of religious belief and the murder rate perhaps you could match a chart of a religious belief in various countries with the murder rate in those countries. The exercise is not going to support your argument:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article571206.ece

“In general, higher rates of belief in and worship of a creator correlate with higher rates of homicide, juvenile and early adult mortality, STD infection rates, teen pregnancy and abortion in the prosperous democracies.”

Aidan: Have you done yet? You’re not a statistician by any chance are you…? You have made your point articulately, eloquently and… often…
Repetition does not make it any stronger… What now is your objective…endorsement or capitulation…? Deaglán has already conceded that you are ‘bright’ if not the wittiest company…unless you are prepared to reveal a different side to your personality…

My experience of religion has not been particularly “pleasant”. The Brothers hammered us, as did lay teachers on the staff. Frankly, when I go to Mass nowadays I find it … boring. The peace-sign handshake is embarrassingly twee. The sermons are rarely of much interest. If it’s a Folk Mass, I start to look for the exit.

Your patronising bluster aside, my experience of a society where the murder-rate was low and religiious belief was strong is worth at least as much as your link to a piece in The Times.

I haven’t yet read Fintan O’Toole’s “Ship of Fools” but I gather his main point is that the decline in religious morality was not replaced by a new civic morality. That would be a key point of my own as well.

Arrogance is no substitute for argument, oul’ son

My personal experience was real. I grew up at a time when murders were a rarity. Now they are virtually a daily occurrence in this State. These are independently verifiable facts. Why do you not believe something unless someone in an ivory tower writes it up for a British newspaper?

What did Mother Church do to you anyway? And who are you going to blame for the world’s ills, now that she is in decline?

Well said, Red Biddy. I haven’t felt bullied like this since my days at school with the Brothers

For a smiley face you mix the following ingredients, a colon :, a dash -, and a parenthesis ).

All together and you get