Greg Daly
There are some grains of hope for the Irish Church in a new survey, writes Greg Daly
Perhaps one of the great ironies of the huge donations from the New York-based Open Society Foundation (OSF) to help three groups push for a referendum in Ireland on repealing our constitutional protections for the unborn is that in some ways the groups appear to have been pushing at an open door.
It is, after all, difficult to interpret otherwise a two-to-one referendum result, especially one in which exit polls suggest three quarters of voters had long known how they intended to vote. It’s striking that according to the RTÉ exit poll on the day of the referendum, just 30% of the 3,779 voters surveyed by Behaviour & Attitudes said they attended religious services at least weekly, with this figure rising to 44% when those attending at least monthly are included.
And yet, according to comments on Ireland in a leaked OSF strategy document for the 2016-2019 period: “With one of the most restrictive abortion laws in the world, a win there could impact other strongly Catholic countries in Europe, such as Poland, and provide much-needed proof that change is possible, even in highly conservative places.”
Strongly Catholic? Highly conservative? After the 2015 referendum on redefining marriage went through with 62.1% support on a turnout of 60.5%? In hindsight, should anyone have been surprised that 66.4% of voters in a 64.1% turnout should have been willing to vote in such a way that the Oireachtas is free to introduce abortion on demand?
Curiously, however, if new numbers from the Washington, DC-based Pew Research Centre are to be trusted, Ireland still remains one of the most Christian countries in Western Europe, both in terms of religious practice and in terms of religious identification, with the latter being a surprisingly meaningful phenomenon even among those who do not regularly practice the Faith to which they claim affiliation.
The Pew survey quizzed almost 25,000 adults across 15 countries last year, and found that while in a typical Western European country just 64% of adults identify as Christian with only 18% of adults saying they attend Christian religious services at least monthly, in Ireland these figures stand at 80% and 34%, respectively.
According to the poll, only Italy and Portugal report higher rates of church attendance, with the former being 40% and the latter 35%.
The Irish figures compare reasonably closely with 2016 Census figures suggesting that 83.5% of those living in the State identify as Christian, with the vast majority of these – 78.8% – identifying as Catholic.
They also invite comparisons with European Social Survey figures that found in 2016, for example, that 36% of Irish people attend religious services at least weekly, a figure that across 18 European countries was second only to Poland, with just 12.8% of people typically attending services at least weekly across the 18 countries.
In some respects, the Pew figures are unsurprising, though the questions they ask are fascinating. Do people see themselves as spiritual, religious, both or neither? Do people believe in God as described in the Bible, in some other ‘higher power’ or no higher power at all? Does science make religion unnecessary in your life? Does religion cause more harm than good? Do you believe in fate, astrology, the ‘evil eye’, yoga as a spiritual practice, or reincarnation? Are you proud of your national identity? Your European identity? Your Christian identity? Should the number of immigrants to your country be increased, stay the same, or be reduced? Is Islam fundamentally compatible or incompatible with your country’s national values?
There isn’t scope here to analyse the report’s findings in full – the 168-page report can be read at pewforum.org – but it’s worth skimming through some of the above questions.
In Ireland 23% of people reject spirituality altogether, while 34% believe in fate, 20% in astrology, 19% in the ‘evil eye’, 24% in yoga as a spiritual practice and 20% in reincarnation.
Proud
Religion is thought to do more harm than good by 33% of Irish people, which doesn’t stop 72% of people being proud of their Christian identity; 85% of Irish people are, meanwhile, proud of being Irish and 72% are proud of being European.
It seems 47% of Irish people would like to see immigration stay at current levels, with 15% wanting it increased and 31% wanting it decreased, while 41% see Islam as incompatible with Irish values and 45% believe there is no fundamental contradiction between Irish values and Islam.
Across Western Europe as a whole, the survey found self-identified Christians to be more likely than religiously unaffiliated people to express negative views of immigrants, Muslims and Jews, raising questions of whether and how a constant stream of Church exhortations to ‘welcome the stranger’ are being heard.
Asked whether they would be inclined to agree with the statement “science makes religion unnecessary in my life”, 63% of Ireland’s religiously unaffiliated people say this is the case, a figure that stands at just 25% of non-practicising Christians and 17% of practising ones.
When asked if they believe Churches and other religious organisations play an important role in helping the poor and needy, 78% of church-attending Christians said yes, with 56% of non-practicising Christians agreeing, though just 40% of religiously unaffiliated people apparently thought so.
Perhaps the remarkable thing here is that all three numbers are so low. Do people not think of Trócaire, the Society of St Vincent de Paul, Focus Ireland, the Peter McVerry Trust, the Capuchin Day Centre, Crosscare, Merchants Quay Ireland and so many others as religious organisations?
At any rate, this certainly suggests that there’s scope for our religiously-rooted charities to do more to remind people of the soil from which their good deeds spring, not least as this could prove a powerful means of sharing the Gospel.
Asked whether the State should support religious values and beliefs, it seems 58% of church-attending Christians say ‘Yes’, as do 37% of non-practicing Christians, against a perhaps surprisingly high 14% of religiously unaffiliated people.
On the face of it, this suggests that barely two in five Irish people believe in Government support for religious policies, which might not bode well for continued State subsidisation of the country’s network of religiously-owned schools, but digging deeper into the data reveals something very curious.
Nobody should be surprised to learn that 99% of Ireland’s church-attending Christians intend to raise their children in the Faith, according to the poll, with the remainder perhaps being those who are married to non-Christians, but it’s striking that among those who identify as Christian without attending services, 92% are raising their children as Christians while only 5% are raising them without any religious affiliation.
Only Germany and Italy match Ireland in their percentage of non-practicising Christians raising their children to be Christian, while no other country has as few non-practicising Christians raising their children outside the Faith altogether.
This is the kind of detail that should give those most inclined to be critical of ‘lukewarm’ Christians or to dismiss them in Communion season as ‘bouncy castle Catholics’ pause for thought.
Yes, Matthew’s Gospel indeed has Jesus saying “he who is not with me is against me, and he who does not gather with me scatters”, but Mark and Luke, it is worth remembering, records Our Lord as saying “anyone who is not against us is for us”.
Our grounds for hope may be slight, but they’re real for all that.
