by a miracle, same as here in ireland.

Anytime soon?  I doubt it.  However, if you were a Christian living in the early Second Centrury, would you think it possible for the Roman Empire to one day convert?

With God, anything is possible.

:shocked:

I thought Ireland was a Catholic country.

Emphasis on was, Canta. Ireland is still part of the world and that means under the influence of Vat2. :faint:

Simple answer, no.

Compare the Irish Constitution ( just the preamble ) with that of the US and then read the following.  Then re-ask your question.

The US has NEVER even been close to being Catholic and it is now infinitely worse, morally and spiritually, than at the time Ben Frankin and the Adams boys wanted all Catholics rounded up and put on ships - after an appreciable percentage of the forces that fought under Washington were Catholics!



Christian Order

 
December 2003





An Irish Priest writes: "A European report states that the Irish Republic is one of the MOST corrupt countries in Europe. Dublin is a Pagan Jungle. I never go there."

Ireland

The Most Anti-Catholic Catholic Country in the World.





C.J. O’HEHIR

During a Mass in Dublin in 1992, an Englishman turned to a friend seated beside him and whispered: "Do you ever feel English Catholics know why they are Catholics in a way that Irish Catholics don’t." As so often happens, a foreign visitor had identified a glaringly obvious facet of Irish life that eludes most of the natives; in this case, the extraordinary lack of Catholic consciousness among the mass of the population.





Tribal Liberalism

Ireland is both the most anti-Catholic Catholic country in the world and the most monolithically Liberal of the world’s democracies. To an extent unparalleled outside Communist dictatorships and other officially non-Christian societies, the Irish cultural climate is unremittingly hostile to Catholicism. There are no non-Liberal political parties represented in parliament, no non-Liberal newspapers or magazines with a wide circulation, no non-Liberal intellectuals and very few non-Liberal journalists. For many generations Irish literature has been defined primarily, if not exclusively, by anti-Catholic themes. Likewise, few if any Irish artists who work in music, painting, theatre, or cinema profess Catholic belief.

Although, in comparison with Ireland, the U.K. has a small Catholic minority, Catholicism pervades its culture, both past and present, to an extent unimaginable in its western neighbour. A short and by no means comprehensive list of British Catholic luminaries will suffice to highlight the disparity: Gerard Manley Hopkins, Hilaire Belloc, G.K. Chesterton, Edward Elgar, Eric Gill, Graham Greene, Evelyn Waugh, Muriel Spark, Elizabeth Anscombe, Elizabeth Jennings, Michael MacMillan - the Irish equivalents of such figures simply don’t exist.

For Irish Catholics it would be tempting to believe that such a paucity of Catholic culture only demonstrates the gulf that exists between the ruling elite and "the plain people of Ireland." But this would be to succuмb to the democratic fallacy. Again and again history has shown that where elites lead, sooner or later the masses follow. Moreover, all the evidence suggests that the dominant Liberal coterie in Ireland reflects the philosophical outlook of a large and growing sector of the population. Several Europe-wide surveys have shown Irish attitudes towards social and moral issues to be among the most Liberal in Europe. Voting trends too, reveal that as much as a third of the Irish population is now tribally Liberal in the sense that residents of the Shankill Road are tribal Loyalists or the people of north-eastern England are tribal Labour voters, i.e., they simply can’t conceive of voting in any other way. Tribal Liberals would not so much as contemplate supporting a candidate for office who was not "pro-choice," pro-divorce, etc., even if they agreed with him or her on other issues.

No equivalent tribal Catholic vote exists. Irish Catholics who oppose abortion rarely allow such opposition to influence their voting behaviour or their choice of newspapers and magazines. The great Scottish convert, Hamish Fraser, once described American Catholics as "Protestants who go to Mass." In Ireland the situation is much worse: Catholics here are secular Liberals who go to Mass. Nor is this a new phenomenon. Commentators often cite Mary Robinson’s election as the dawn of the New Ireland. Yet they usually fail to record the truly significant facet of the 1990 Presidential contest: the remarkable similarity between Mrs Robinson’s own social and political views and those of her two rivals for the Presidency.





Pernicious Prelates

In the same way, Liberal schadenfreude over the countless scandals that afflict the Irish hierarchy is somewhat disingenuous, since, on key issues, ranging from mass immigration to sex education, the Bishops invariably reflect the received Liberal wisdom [cf. "Sensual Catechesis: Irish Bishops in Bed with the State," by Michael McGrade, CO, February 1999]. In fact, apart from the single issue of abortion the Irish episcopate rarely if ever challenges the political and social consensus that emanates from the newspaper offices of central Dublin. Episcopal Liberalism in Ireland may not be of the "in your face" grandstanding variety so beloved of some American prelates but its very unobtrusiveness makes it all the more pernicious. For example, several years ago the Irish bishops Conference urged the Vatican to scrap Gospel readings that offended radical feminist sensibilities. Nobody in Ireland condemned this internationally unprecedented intervention; an indifference which underscores how, almost unnoticed, radical modernism has entered the mainstream of the Irish Church.

Predictably enough the drive towards a European state has also received the enthusiastic backing of the Irish bishops. Ironically, in this one area the media’s relentless campaign of denigration against the Church has, to some extent, backfired. Before the 2001 referendum on the Nice Treaty for European integration, the bishops strongly urged Catholics to vote yes to ratification. Unsurprisingly, the voters, nourished on a daily media diet of clerical scandals, felt no obligation to heed their shepherd’s advice and rejected the treaty. (Sixteen months later, in October 2002, it took a massively funded propaganda exercise involving all major political parties, the media, big business and the trade unions as well as the bishops - which campaign spent £10 for every £1 spent by the No camp! - to intimidate voters into reversing that decision.)
 

[Article continued on Christian Order website]