Even the Independent admits: Irish are converting to Protestantism

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

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?

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

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.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

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.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

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.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

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...

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

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.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

For the record and as I've said in some places before, in my scene and subculture I've interacted with many people outside the US, including many who are Christian (actually from places like Scandinavia probably a higher percentage are practicing Christians than the population at large, which perhaps isn't that surprising since it's not part of mainstream culture there) and many who post on their Facebooks or last.fm pages about finding Christ and a personal relationship with Jesus stuff that oakvale finds so creepy (including at least one from Ireland FYI) and counting all that I still have never met anyone identifying as Catholic. Including those from very heavily Catholic countries. Now you might say that this makes a statistically insignificant number of the population, and you'd be correct, but still I'd say since this stands in such stark contrast to the country overall it's clear that there's something at work and influencing here and thus you clearly can't just say "everyone in Ireland/country thinks this way".

I remember getting in a debate with belgiansocialist about this and people who are involved in the scene in Belgium and those who still identify as Christian and go to Christian hardcore shows and he basically came to the conclusion of "Wow your scene sounds like a really messed up cult."

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

A couple years ago on another forum I posted at, we had a breakdown of like this: 20% Christian, 50% Decidedly not Christian but not particularly anti-Christian, just apathetic and with an attitude of "Well if you're liberal/progressive still I don't care" and 30% virulently anti-Christian and Einzige-esque. So we felt quite a bit outnumbered and kind of banded together, had lots of PM stuff and AIM chats (heh showing the era here) and I got to know the other people in the "Christian clique" pretty well. No one in it was Catholic. At the time I didn't put much thought into it. I just sort of accepted that people heavily involved in the scene, even if Christian were never Catholic, it was just a group you didn't find it, and never put much thought into this because it was how I discovered things to be in the years prior. I never quite thought as to why this is and the rather interesting sociological reasons when you think about it. The fact that this is even true if transferred to other countries is interesting as well. But there's clearly some sort of effect and factor going on here that's more than just political, if compared to the rest of the population you can't just chalk it up to "the Catholic Church doesn't represent their rather progressive views of Christianity well and thus none of them stay Catholic even if brought up that way." What exactly is the big underlying difference here?