Even the Independent admits: Irish are converting to Protestantism

[they don't love you like i love you]

http://www.independent.ie/woman/celeb-news/the-catholic-church-in-ireland-is-losing-market-share-some-would-call-this-a-healthy-development-26518946.html

But whoa! I thought because of culture and tradition OMG and all that ethnoreligious identity stuff no one in Ireland ever converted away from Catholicism and the US was the only country in the world where people changed religious affiliation. I guess that's not true?

[World politics is up Schmitt creek]

Give it a rest.

[Chunk Yogurt for President!]

My Irish Protestant ancestors would be proud!

[Tetro Kornbluth]

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Ah yes, the Sean Hannity of Irish Journalism, clearly an unbiased source if ever there was one. I'm looking forward to her next diatribe on how feminism has betrayed women, yet another in a very long running series.

[afleitch]

YOU

DO

NOT

KNOW

WHAT

YOU

ARE

TALKING

ABOUT

SO....

STOP.

JUST

STOP.

[All Along The Watchtower]

lol

[they don't love you like i love you]

OK I did use an overtly hyperbolic strawman in the OP. But my point has pretty much always simply been that actual "ex-Catholics" as opposed to "lapsed Catholics" or "non-practicing Catholics" do exist, and from all sorts of countries and cultures, not just in the US. And of course I know nothing about the author, but she mostly just quotes the Census info.

So yeah a significant number of people who hold the same sort of view on this type of identification as me do exist outside of Minneapolis/Minnesota/The Midwest/The US. All my point ever has been.

[World politics is up Schmitt creek]

And a significant number who don't do as well. All everybody else's point ever has been.

[BaconBacon96]

This thread. Why does it exist.

[Atlas Has Shrugged]

Was BRTD molested by a Catholic priest as a child?

[they don't love you like i love you]

Was BRTD molested by a Catholic priest as a child?

It's not even really about Catholicism so much as the idea of an immutable religious identity. Where I grew up this would be considered downright absurd, this is the type of place where people might "convert" because they move to a different part of the same city and a church of a different denomination was closer. Also the idea it's some sort of major cultural identifier that distinguishes between people was just as non-existent, at my schools there were plenty of students who were raised both Protestant and Catholic but absolutely no one thought of the "Protestant kids" and "Catholic kids" and this had zero effect on who associated with who or cliques. Basically the only difference anyone saw in it is the year you got confirmed. And yet people are perplexed that I view "the scene" as a much more important cultural distinguisher than if one is raised Catholic or Protestant, but the differences between people who were into it or not were A LOT more obvious than any Catholic/Protestant differences in high school.

[Snowstalker Mk. II]

BRTD, different places have different cultures. Religious identity works different ways in different cultures. America's individualism and wide variety of Christian denominations means that religion is weaker as a cultural identity than it is in, say, Ireland or France or Russia.

Do you understand?

[they don't love you like i love you]

BRTD, different places have different cultures. Religious identity works different ways in different cultures. America's individualism and wide variety of Christian denominations means that religion is weaker as a cultural identity than it is in, say, Ireland or France or Russia.

Do you understand?

But the article posted proves this is not exactly universal in Ireland either.

Also isn't this the sort of thing Marxists would want to abolish? Communists after all have suppressed religion but even keeping nominal religion as some sort of cultural identifier kind of goes against the supposed eventual goal of Communism.

[Mechaman]

BRTD, different places have different cultures. Religious identity works different ways in different cultures. America's individualism and wide variety of Christian denominations means that religion is weaker as a cultural identity than it is in, say, Ireland or France or Russia.

Do you understand?

But the article posted proves this is not exactly universal in Ireland either.

Also isn't this the sort of thing Marxists would want to abolish? Communists after all have suppressed religion but even keeping nominal religion as some sort of cultural identifier kind of goes against the supposed eventual goal of Communism.

Snowstalker, the great Communist boy, also read the part that you missed about how the Church of Ireland (part of the Anglican Communion) was gaining members.  If he is very anti-religion I highly doubt he would think highly of this development.  You are basically asking him why he is unhappy that sh*t sandwiches are now being served instead of crapdogs.

[Mechaman]

Why did I just bother replying to a BRTD thread?

Why god?  Why?

[eric82oslo]

http://www.independent.ie/woman/celeb-news/the-catholic-church-in-ireland-is-losing-market-share-some-would-call-this-a-healthy-development-26518946.html

But whoa! I thought because of culture and tradition OMG and all that ethnoreligious identity stuff no one in Ireland ever converted away from Catholicism and the US was the only country in the world where people changed religious affiliation. I guess that's not true?

That's also the case in Brazil, Guatemala and many other countries, so clearly US is not the only country.

[Mechaman]

Also, just to spite our local Protestant Supremacist, I thought I'd leave this here:

http://www.pewforum.org/2012/10/09/nones-on-the-rise/

And this is the part where I regret posting an article that will give Hockeydude something to brag about.

[they don't love you like i love you]

Also, just to spite our local Protestant Supremacist, I thought I'd leave this here:

http://www.pewforum.org/2012/10/09/nones-on-the-rise/

And this is the part where I regret posting an article that will give Hockeydude something to brag about.

Uh OK. Are you familiar at all with my scene and subculture?

Furthermore if this proves people dropping out of Catholicism now identify as "None" instead of still saying "Catholic" it would actually further back up my point...

[Oakvale]

I'm basically dying of ebola or something at the moment so I'll be quick but suffice to say the article is rubbish (you can tell without even reading it since it's written by one of our most prominent right-wing concern trolls). It's telling that she uses the example of Navan to back up her 'point' - "the population of Protestants in Navan has increased massively since the early 90s!"? Navan is one of the most (the most?) fastest growing towns in the country. "Some 10pc of Irish Anglicans studying to be ordained were former Roman Catholics." I have no idea how many Irish Anglicans are studying to be ordained by I can't imagine it's exactly a massive sample set.

BRTD also (as always) misses the point through insane literal-mindedness. That Americans have a far different (looser) relationship with religious identity is hardly a controversial point. Religions, like everything else in the US, operate on a free market basis - people shop around and conversion is an unremarkable phenomenon. The heinous Mary Kenny even refers to this by talking about the Catholic Church "losing market share" (!). The fact that there's been a  near-negligible (and that's what it is ) increase in adherents to CoI blah blah blah doesn't change the reality that the overwhelming majority of people don't think of religion in the same way some dude from Minnesota does. What's the percentage of people who tick "Catholic" on the census despite not being remotely religious?

[Tetro Kornbluth]

What Oakvale says is completely correct but I'll add one more point - that sort of Americanizing language, speaking of religion in terms of 'market share' and applying American narratives to Irish experiences where they don't belong is typical of the sort of right-wing concern troll 'pundits' that Ireland has (a small population). Keeping that in mind, would it be at all surprising to note that Kenny wrote articles supporting the war in Iraq and thinks that the British Empire was an objectively good thing whose role in Ireland should be particularly proud of?

[ingemann]

This could have been a interesting discussion if not for the poster who start it, with his ridiculous inability that how we see and practice religion is a social construct and that every culture build a different construction.

[Tetro Kornbluth]

This could have been a interesting discussion if not for the poster who start it, with his ridiculous inability that how we see and practice religion is a social construct and that every culture build a different construction.

No it couldn't because this 'event' isn't happening.

[Snowstalker Mk. II]

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for BRTD

[they don't love you like i love you]

I have no clue what the hell that is or where it's from, but it's about as strawman-filled as your typical wormyguy or dead0man post. Especially as no one has unironically said "papist" since the 19th century.

[World politics is up Schmitt creek]

I have no clue what the hell that is or where it's from, but it's about as strawman-filled as your typical wormyguy or dead0man post. Especially as no one has unironically said "papist" since the 19th century.

Yeah.