Church still in big league of modern Ireland

A cousin of mine is fond of telling a story from a day in school long ago, when her class was tasked with a question to take home to their parents: what was the most memorable event in their lives?

You can work out the age ranges of the parents from two of the responses. Her own folks nominated the Pope’s visit in 1979. A classmate’s parents picked out an event they’d attended themselves almost a decade earlier: Woodstock.

Interesting, then, to read comments from Bishop Brendan Leahy in last Friday’s Examiner: “ . . . it is good news to hear that 78% of our population have affirmed their Catholic belief. I doubt even the GAA has such a level of affiliation . . . (people come to the) big matches, as it were (Christmas mass, funerals and major events) . . . before he left Ireland, the papal nuncio, Archbishop Charles Brown, said there is still so much to play for in Ireland.”