No Longer Merely Lapsed ➖ In Ireland Today We Are Choosing Our Religion

Examiner ✒ In the first day of a two-day special report, Joyce Fegan asked four people to open up about how they left one faith behind, and about their new lives.

Joyce Fegan

And, despite the stereotype that people merely fade from a particular practice of religion, she discovered that each of them has been on a spiritual journey towards the life that is right for them.

“The Post-pandemic church will look significantly different to the church we traditionally knew," these were the words of Diarmuid Martin, the Archbishop of Dublin at the end of 2020 (now retired).

And he suggested that many pre-Covid worshipers will never return to Mass.

While the pandemic has been a major catalyst for change in people's behaviour, the Archbishop acknowledged that the country had already gone through a sea change in terms of religion in our lives.

“The fact that there are in Ireland today more civil weddings than religious marriage ceremonies is not by imposition. The fact that, according to the last census, ‘no religion’ is the second largest population group after Roman Catholics is the fruit of choice,” he said last November.

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