Survey reveals serious and growing split

What the survey reveals is a serious and growing divergence between orthodox Catholic Church teaching emanating from Rome and what the faithful in Ireland actually believe.

The Contemporary Catholic Perspectives survey scotches the notion that Irish Catholics are avowedly traditional and don’t want to contemplate change, finding substantial majorities in favour of married priests and women priests. On a positive note, the survey found that 35% attend Mass once a week and that 51% attend once or more each month. Only 5% never attend Mass.

“This is very a significant number of people attending Mass, higher than in most European countries,” said Fr Sean McDonagh, representing the Association of Catholic Priests at the launch of the survey, conducted for it by Amárach Research, in Dublin yesterday.