Church and State.
...contraception until 1979, retaining largely unquestionable control over schools and hospitals funded by the taxpayer, resisting the slow development of a welfare state…’. It is evident that the moral teachings of the church were effectively apart of the Irish constitution, for example; access to divorce was halted in 1925. In 1929, all literature on contraception and birth control was banned under the Censorship of Publications Act, and in 1935, the criminal Law Amendment Act forbade the importation, advertising and sale of contraceptives. Abortion had been outlawed under a British Act of 1861 and remained criminalized. This highlights the close relationship that existed between the Church and State and the influence the Catholic Church had in the twentieth century When the Catholic Church was in its prime in twentieth century Ireland there were priests, nuns and brothers in every corner of society. They held great power over the Irish institution. The Church supervised over schools (e.g. Glenstal Abbey), hospitals (e.g. St. Vincents Hospital Dublin), and an extensive array of social welfare institutions from orphanages, homes for ‘unmarried’ mothers (e.g. The Magdalen Laundries), hostels, hospices, reform schools, and most importantly of all they presided over Irish family homes. Indeed O’Toole puts forward the idea that the Catholic Church became a ‘surrogate State’ (Hilary, Share, Tovey, 2000, pg322). The fast escalation of involvement in these institutions was made possible by the large numbers of men and women entering the religious life. This was deal for the State as religious labour was cheap or free, and the capital costs were met from the flock and through ‘dowries’ brought in by the middle class religious, (by MacCurtain, as cited in Hilary, Share, Tovey, 2000, pg322). For example, in education, a marriage of expediency was entered into between the emerging Irish State and the Catholic religious orders who already controlled considerable elements of the education system. The existing denominational, single-sex schools provided a fertile ground for recruitment to the ranks of the religious, teaching costs were kept minimised through non-payment of full wages to religious staff and the school offered the sort of product desired by the State- young-people schooled in orderliness, discipline, obedience and self-control. ‘The Church offered the state continuity and stability and in return sought its support for its continuity and stability in its own work’ (Nic ghiolla Phadraig, 1995, pg609). This portrays how the Church and State relied on each other to develop and grow. Secularisation is a great concern to the Irish Catholic Church. Secularisation is often taken to refer to the decline of religious institutions in public life, for example, a decrease in the political power of the Churches and a decline in the rank and reputation of religious figures. And in terms closer to the modern-day coherent understanding of the concept, it can relate to a decline in involvement in formal and informal religious activities, such as weekly attendance at Mass or participation in confession. It has been put forward that in all these senses, Ireland is a secularising society, especially since it is also a modernising one. According to an Irish Times/Market Research Bureau of Ireland (MRBI) opinion poll carried out in late 1997 (Irish Times, 12 November, 1997) only a fifth of Catholics follow the teachings of their Church when it comes to making ‘serious moral decisions’ compared to 78 percent who follow their own conscience’. This latter figure rises to 92 per cent for eighteen to twenty-year-olds. More than half of the people surveyed by the MRBI disagreed to varying extents on the Church’s attitude to major moral and canonical issues, including divorce, contraception, priestly celibacy and women priests. Surveys show that weekly mass attendance has decreased from 87 percent of Catholics, to around 60 percent in the period 1981 to 1998. The most rapid decline in religious practice has been in attendance to confession. The level of attendance at monthly confession decreased from 47 percent in 1974 to 14 per cent in 1995. Vocations have experienced a sharp turn down in Ireland, as in the rest of Western Europe. The number of students training for the priesthood in the seminaries in Maynooth, Dublin, Thurles, Waterford and Carlow was about 220 in 1998. Two decades previously there were 600 studying at Maynooth alone. (Hilary, Share, Tovey, 2000, pg326-329). A number of explanations for the downturn in religious practice in Ireland have been suggested. One may be a common convergence with European and Western conduct, for other Catholic countries such as Spain, Italy and France figures are even lower. Second it has been suggested that the numerous cases of sexual and physical abuse in church-run institutions, as well as individual cases of sexual and financial abuse, and the revelation of the bishop Eamon Casey Case in 1992 dramatically undermined confidence in the Church. Third, the media has operated as a provider of alternative value systems and also an alternative means t...