- "Around 400 A.D., a 16 year old of Roman heritage was kidnapped and sold into slavery. Though he escaped six years later, a love for the people of his captive land was planted in his heart. A few decades later, Patrick returned as a bishop to Ireland - to what was then considered the outskirts of Western Civilization - intent on converting her to Catholicism. He left a lasting impression. Soon after Patrick, Anita McSorley tells us that Ireland saw an end to the slave trade and an end to human sacrifice; Patrick followed Christ's great commission to bring the Gospel to what was then considered the ends of the earth.
"Fast forward through Catholic Ireland's hay day of monasteries and shrines (cf, Thomas Cahill, How the Irish Saved Civilization: The Untold Story of Ireland's Heroic Role From the Fall of Rome to the Rise of Medieval Europe, 1996), through the suppression of Catholicism after King Henry VII (cf., Christopher Check, The Great Divorce: The Evil Fruits of Henry VIII's Adultery, 2007), and to the early 19th century, we find that religious practice in Ireland had greatly waned. Center City's Irish Memorial also reminds us of "‘Ireland's Great Hunger of 1845 - 1850 when more than one million Irish were starved to death and another million forced to emigrate’ (So many of the ‘sons and daughters’ of Saint Patrick now call America their home.).
"Less well known than Patrick or the Great Hunger is Cardinal Paul Cullen's mid to late 19th century religious revival, returning Irish religious practice to what was intended by Saint Patrick. In 1972, University of Chicago historian Emmet Larkin coined the term, ‘Devotional Revolution,’ to explain this Cullen-led revival, which resulted in the vast majority of Catholic Ireland going to Sunday Mass for more than 100 years!....
"religious practice has again greatly waned in the early 21st Century....there is now an anti-Catholicism frequently exhibited by people of Catholic heritage. Early 19th Century apathy has been replaced by early 21st Century hostility.
"Ireland saw an economic hay day in the 1990s, which seemed to usher in a secularization of the society. At the same time, it is undeniable that scandals of clerical sexual abuse and institutional abuse have also led to diminished religious practice among Irish Catholics and their Irish-American Catholic cousins (cf, How Catholicism Fell from Grace in Ireland, Chicago Tribune, 7/9/06; John P. McCarthy, What Happened to Catholic Ireland, Homiletic and Pastoral Review, 3/6/14). Father Tom Forde, OFM Cap....points to the earlier beginnings of a rejection of moral teaching, which was to result in a loosening of Ireland's restrictions on contraception (and later to divorce and abortion): ‘faith does not thrive under disobedience’" (B.C. Courier Times, 3/11/15)
Among those with little appreciation for reality, the
Republic of Ireland is often portrayed as just emerging from backwardness, because contraceptives were illegal until 1979,
divorce was illegal until 1996, marriage was recognized as only between individuals of the opposite sex until
2015, and Ireland's constitution offered protections for preborn children
till 2018. In this supposed emergence from backwardness, a blind eye has been turned to certain recent developments in Ireland:
- "Since 2003..the number of sexual offences recorded in the Republic has almost doubled" (Irish Times, 5/26/18)
- "Rates of HIV, Syphilis, Gonorrhea, Herpes and Chlamydia are now soaring despite repeated sexual health education campaigns" (Irish Independent, 1/8/18)
- There has been a "sixfold increase in marital breakdown since 1986....[and a] huge increase in cohabitation....A third figure worth highlighting is the number of children being raised outside marriage. In 1986 this was 12.8pc of all children. By 2011 it had increased to over 28.1 percent....as 'family 'diversity' in Ireland increases overwhelmingly it will be the result of marriage and relationship breakdown and will go hand-in-hand with a rise in families without active, present fathers" (Iona Institute, 10/31/2013).
"Unlike Ireland, America never chose abortion; it was imposed upon them by the U.S. Supreme Court. How did Ireland decay to such a point? The answers are quite clear. Merely 18% of Ireland faithfully attend Mass....just 10 years ago, that number was almost half of Ireland. In 1983 when the [pro life] 8th Amendment was passed into law? Almost 4 in 5 faithfully attended Mass....The Ireland he [Pope Francis] will visit will be far different from the vibrant Catholic Ireland which greeted Pope John Paul II in 1979" (Lepanto Institute, 6/2/18)
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