Interesting poll of Irish Catholics reveals widespread disagreement with Church.

[Tetro Kornbluth]

Opposition to divorce was really more about property than OMG TEH LAWS OF DE JEEBUS!!!1111. Now that everyone realizes that legalized divorce will not mean the end of the family farm, and indeed, there are less family farms to be potentially split up, a lot of the public concerns that originally existed about divorce has simply disappeared.

Unsurprising numbers, btw. Irish Catholics were always a la carte in many ways, but now they are being so in a different way.

[Tetro Kornbluth]

I wonder how similar the results of a poll of American Catholics would be.

It'd be quite different. The primary reason being in the US people who realize they don't have anything in common with the Catholic Church leave it and quite affiliating with it for inane reasons. These people in Ireland ought to do the same.

This is Europe. Such consumer approval tests don't apply to the churches here, really. There is still the mindset, at least towards census enumerators, of Cuius regio, eius religio. But that doesn't mean that lots haven't abandoned the church in practice. In some Dublin parishes attendances at mass, for example, are down to 2-3 percent and this is despite the large influx of Eastern European Catholics (who are likely to be much more demonstrative in their devotion) in the last decade or so.

[Tetro Kornbluth]

BRTD this explains it as well as I can:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XUVNZFylTdo

[Tetro Kornbluth]

You've said that you still have some instinctively Lutheran characteristics, right? It's like that, only stronger because of the nature of the country and its history.

But the difference is I actually like the ELCA. Now if I were from LCMS or WELS I doubt I'd feel that way. And really, the role of the Catholic church in Irish history is not something I'd be too proud about or want to affiliate with...(A 12th Century Pope being the whole reason the rather hated British even took it over in the first place just for starters...)

Way to fail Medieval History and Politics 101, BRTD. The Norman invasion (not English and certainly not British) was given sanction by Pope Adrian IV (who could have easily been ignored if he hadn't), not caused by it.

As for the clip, yes it is by a comedian but I can't believe that even you can't recognize that he is referring to something real.

[Tetro Kornbluth]

I'm sorry for being Irish, I don't know what you mean by a hipster church, really. At least I can imagine what that means and I doubt it to appeals to much Irish people; maybe a small subsection of Irish protestants (especially in the north...), maybe...

The point is BRTD that to most people being Irish and Catholic are symnomous. People who stop being Catholic in any religious sense identify themselves as "Catholic" because they are Irish. That is what they are. It is an unthinking reflex.

And where was I saying that anyone was proud of the actions of Pope Adrian IV?

[Tetro Kornbluth]

Religion smorgasbords that you can drift in and out of throughout your life are a culturally specific thing, BRTD. They don't generally have much meaning outside an American context.

I'll note as well that Irish protestant churches have not really covered themselves in glory over the past couple of years... or, like, forever.

[Tetro Kornbluth]

re: Ireland and hipster Christianity

Peter Rollins, associated with the Emergent Church movement (and thus one might say "hipster Christianity") started a community in Belfast called Ikon.

http://www.wittenburgdoor.com/peter-rollins-interview.html

You must be logged in to read this quote.

admittedly, this is sounds a different in form than the American hipster practices BRTD is describing, but it can come out of some similar  concerns.  (Rollins has preached at Rob Bell's church for instance)

I think you will find that Belfast is not located in the country which we are refering to in this thread.