Introduction: The Incomparable Decline and the Neo-Colonial Amplification

Ireland used to be dedicated to the Virgin Mary or Madonna and the fruit of Her Womb or Matrix being the Mediatrix and the Papal intent of the Catholic Church. But a generation ago it got a simulacrum with the Virgin brand, Fruit of the Loom, Madonna the pop star, The Matrix film, mainstream Media and PayPal. Is the change really only about the obvious and repression-abuse-patriarchy-scandals paradigm? Old Republican Ireland recently had kneecapping for traitors while new Ireland is more defined by Kneecap, Niqab, celebration and reward of all sorts of perceived treachery to the previous tradition.

I support people choosing. If they reject the Church, so be it. Many reject it citing abuse of girls or women. Yet most of the sexual abuse was against boys in institutions and schools. The principal critique in relation to women occurs in the context of motherhood and institutions. We need to be precise and proportionate, aware of the broader context. We must also examine simplistic explanations of anti-clericalism that reduces all to inevitably bad priests and nasty nuns peddling fairy-tales in sadistic habits. Let’s go forward - just realise where you’ve chosen to go.

The colonial administration and the Free State and Republican civil services that inherited the administration were ultimately responsible for these systems. Neither were the industrial schools nor Magdalene laundries originally set up by the Church. But they are left holding that baby from the poisoned chalices they assumed from administrators and must take appropriate responsibility. Corporate neo-colonialism has used such dysfunctional aspects of apparent independence to launder their own colonial origins and culpability and remove another potential impediment to the technocratic society.

I used to live in what was said to be the most Catholic country in the world (Ireland) before moving to one of the most Protestant historically (Scotland) and on from there to what was (up to recently) the worlds most secular land (Sweden). The transformation in Ireland is remarkable but under-explored in its totality. I don’t see much evidence of people regretting their choice to go along with change. Most women seem to see the position as far far preferable and men too. Many seem very content and even jubilant. In that story Ireland is routinely paraded as a past horror for women, up to recently, even though on international comparators it often ranks very close to Sweden.

Yet paradoxically we have disturbing obscured histories in Sweden such as mass sterilisation of over 60,000 from 1934-1976. Hundreds of patients of a mental home in Vipeholm were subjected to experiments which inflicted tooth decay without consent. In the 1940’s and 1950’s over 4,000 thousand lobotomies were performed. Needless to say none of these had anything to do with the Catholic Church but all to do with science. Science is still the poster-boy for rationalism and the Catholic Church the whipping-boy. Science is sanctified and the Church scarified. But perceptions are one thing and identifiable phenomena another. The misdeeds of science are not made into a constant and coherent critique whereas misdeeds of religion and especially Catholicism are always amplified or at times even fabricated. The Swedish state (with the help of its established Protestant Church) also ran residential schools to integrate the Sami, the indigenous or nomadic people of the North. Yet let not facts get in the way of a good story. The scientists in their white coats may contrast with the black clergy and listing of their horrors or rehearsing black legends is no reason for comfort as we hop from the frying pan into the fire.

The astonishing phenomenon of decline in Catholicism in Ireland is grossly over-simplified. Part of that decline is informed by factors I think are determinative for our new world. Therefore Ireland is a useful case-study. Coming therefrom, I witnessed some of these forces. Some seem to be missed by outside observers, not identified by scholarly works or conveniently ignored for ideological reasons and propagandistic narratives of progress. The Church was repressive, conformist and outwardly obsessed with purity we are told. Fair enough. But we are to forget all historical constitution of its culture in Ireland right back to the first international code for protections of rights of non-combatants from the monks in the 7^th century. We are to forget the Church was involved in persuading women to give up prostitution in Dublin. It had the largest red-light area in Europe into the 20^th century from the mid-19^th century up till it was closed down 100 years ago after the British Army departed. A few years before this in 1918 Lenin was ordering the shooting of sex workers in Russia. Whilst analyses usually focus on one aspect of what the clergy did, they seldom focus on the full context and what is done by secular actors.

Ireland still has some Catholicism but is no longer the most Catholic country in the world as it had been described by some. Catholicism is being put into the shadows once more, more underground. Mosques are coming quickly with other denominations and even pop versions of Protestantism as well as other Oriental traditions.

There was a steep-fall from highs of 90% church attendance. The 1937 Constitution is the root of title of the Republic of Ireland (only so named in 1948). Therein the special position of the Catholic Church was recognised, only to be removed in 1972 by referendum. Ireland joined the EEC (as it was in 1973) that grew into the EU.

It was that generation and to a lesser extent the previous one which defined the high-water mark of Catholicism. However it is a mistake to overestimate the historical political significance of the hierarchy. Ireland has had Christianity for 1,500 years (and most likely quite a bit more). For much of that time it was persecuted and later outlawed. The Church provided vital social services when no one else did. Those narratives are forgotten and denied. So we are really asking what happened in the last two generations after WWII, especially from the 1960’s onwards. Indeed assassination of the first President of Irish Catholic origins (who came to Ireland a few months before he was shot) corresponds to commencement of the decline.

Often people focus on one particular reason. Often they ignore huge actual forces such as tv. Insofar as my broader critique is based on transmutation of empires (especially the Atlanticist one) through scientism into globalising forces aiming to secure scientocracy and technocracy, some of these factors are on show. Ireland has not just changed entirely of its own accord. Much is fomented and framed by creation of conditions which tend to certain results. Anti-Catholicism is generally ignored as a relevant force. There are daft explanations. I suggest Ireland is no longer Catholic for a number of reasons not unrelated to the intentional deconstruction of society for a new order which is against religion, nation state and the family. That new order is a transmutation of the old one and very closely allied to the Atlanticist empire in a future cybernetic AI form.

To comprehend models of cybernetic governance we should consider the method of amplification of factors desirable for a position that diminishes opposition in tandem with attenuation of problems in a counter-position or positives in your opponents’ one. The cybernetic model becomes like black magic and part of the secular sorcery. It involves in my view an intentional de-sacralisation and substitution of the sacred with simulacra suitable for a new regime of total technological, materialist, corporate governance predicated on management of sensations pending full control of the collective nervous system. I explained this in my book on AI-Govnerveance. We must take consequences of choices and be aware of what is happening which I believe is a capture and demise of the human spirit and humanity itself.

Ireland is an alchemical cultural crucible where a venerable Catholic tradition is being transmuted into materialist gold as religious institutions crumble into the ashes by the white heat of constant revolution. The revolutionary spirit of the liberation of feeling espoused by Rousseau is all over. The fact that he abandoned his five children to a home with higher mortality rates than Ireland might ask another question. This discussion does not deny the reality of what happened but cautions about the uses of amplification by non-neutral activist forces.

Here are a range of factors at a number of levels of perception and practice in no great order that operate interactively. They can be grouped in Church and State governance, legal and regulatory, media production, socio-techno or sociological and geographical or demographic. While you may dispute my overall contextualisation or interpretation of what is happening, the particular factors are hard to refute though the weight attached varies. There is overlap at times but the emphases are distinct. Others will argue the reason why Ireland is no longer a Catholic country is because it not modernise even more. I think that such ultimate modernism will be the swansong of Catholicism into oblivion, as it is clearly intended to be.

100 Factors in the Complex of Irish Catholic Decline

1. Abuse: Abuse scandals justifiably appear on the top of the list for many as studied in Ferns, Ryan, Murphy, Cloyne etc. Abuse of trust and exploitation were more pronounced in terms of legitimate expectations. Let us accept good evidence in sound studies. The Mother and Baby Report and the McAleese Report dealt with the mother and child context.

2. The phenomenon of hypocrisy: Scandal led to the sense of a false practice of religion in general, disillusionment, anger and a sense of superiority of unassuming common decency. Unlike with the Civil Service, the Church was exposed. This devastated further vocations and recruitment already under pressure from a changing culture.

3. Poor internal governance, management and a failure to catechise: The Church structures were inadequately attuned to massive socio-cultural upheaval with a lack of responsiveness, anticipation, genuine apologetics and convinced, persuasive advocacy or compassionate application of its moral positions in strategic and informed ways.

4. A lack of transparency: It failed to have a culture of exposure of wrongdoing and taking appropriate action in relation to protection of children.

5. Ineptness of the hierarchy: The hierarchy had shown no indication at the relevant times of any ability to comprehend the modern cultural context they were engaged in a way they were convinced of, cognisant of their obligations of good personnel management. It has consistently been out-manoeuvred in strategy and tactics by opponents. This was in stark contrast to its own extensive warning in important documents about modernism, rendering the culpability worse.

6. Apparent loss of faith among the clergy: Whether through adopting scientism or being influenced by science, liberation technology or socialism, many clerics rejected Church doctrine for a social gospel convinced by scientistic explanation that invited new naturalistic strategies. Horizontal mundane transactions and aspirations explained replaced vertical transcendent inspiration believed or experienced.

7. A failure to abide by or apply its own teachings: The Church did not practice what it preached. Not only in relation to wrongdoing but the Church appears to have acquiesced or become inactive in practice on issues like contraception, abortion and so on. Now we are told the Irish population is unsustainable and must be supplemented while Elon Musk talks about ectogenesis to solve the population crisis. There was a great loss of nerve and nous.

8. A failure to comprehend modernism as the greatest of all heresies. Pope Pius X had warned about rejection of objective truth for subjective sentiment, still many embraced a blind desire to be ‘modern.’

9. A failure to draw on the Irish synthesis of traditional culture and Catholicism: Irish Catholicism historically has been close to nature and was potentially adaptable to protecting the natural world. The Church failed to do so or emphasise the tradition and appears to embrace the secular climate agenda.

10. Vatican II and demise of the Latin Mass: Its alteration in the 1960’s and the introduction of the vernacular combined with the priest facing the congregation - for some made the priest a performer (and a poor one at that as the new competition by pop stars was unleashed). The changes facilitated all sorts of novelties not possible in the traditional rite.

11. The phenomenon of demystification: Vernacularisation and modernisation in implementation of Vatican II were inconsistent with mystery, continuity and tradition and unable to compete with new cultural, futuristic appearances of certainty and physical awe of mystery purportedly explicable by science. There was a supernatural claim lost which entailed a psychic impoverishment.

12. Constancy and continuation of anti-Catholic forces: Irish Christianity had a long history of persecution with a relentless sequence of assaults that are ongoing. This included centralising forces in the Church itself, piracy and robbery, Vikings, colonisation, Norman displacement of traditional practices, Protestantism, British genocidal campaigns, imperialism, scientism, naturalism and so on. The consequences of famine, emigration and persecution had a cumulative effect that allowed a generation led by the unfamiliar carrot of uncommon comfort delude themselves about some sort of physical paradise or promised land having been gained by material means. The carrot worked best against Catholicism.

13. Priestly performativity: Priests were expected to perform by the modern Church. Singing priests and so on seemed to be a peculiar spin-off of the priest as performer rather than engaging in a liturgical sacrifice. Priests could not compete. Stage Irishness was supplemented by stage priestliness in a deep ontological shift. Some priests became self-pastiches and parodies as the centre in Rome signalled the need for appearance of modern performance instead of the reality of significant sacerdotal and sacramental engagement.

14. Undue Trust and deference to emergent establishment: The necessity of apparent accommodation to colonial conditions may have transferred and resulted in a degree of complacency and inappropriate deference in the ordinary people based on the historic trust of an anti-establishment clergy.

15. Lack of an agentic Catholic intelligentsia: The artistic sphere and its leaders were more defined by characteristics which were anti-Catholic, or not pro-Catholic, despite the preponderance of the population. There were no great intellectual activism save for journals like the Dublin Review. Even poets like Gerard Manley Hopkins had died in obscurity. There was no robust, successful defence of Catholicism against modernism. Daniel O’Connell may be cited as a counter-example but that was in a particular political context. The Catholic Irish were kept out of many systems through discrimination, often spoke Irish and lived in a communal, oral culture. Cultural production of art began to favour anti-Catholic material. Not many Catholic thinkers arguably did come later through the cultural filters into the popular imagination. Unlike elsewhere in Europe, the Irish Catholic aristocracy had been devastated and dispossessed after the Cromwellian era.

16. Tarnishing of Catholicism by sectarianism: Secular media forces presented the conflict in Northern Ireland as purely religious, conveniently ignoring its plantation and colonial origins and increasingly Marxist and socialist influence on the IRA. The linking of terrorism to Catholicism as a cultural force enabled its practice to be confused with its context and tarnish affiliation through troubling supposedly ‘sectarian’ or ‘Catholic’ actions that were clearly unCatholic.

17. IRA takeover and treachery in Republicanism: Traditional Irish Catholicism was confused and duped by Marxism and intelligence infiltration (particularly in the 1970’s) to identify cultural Catholicism with Catholicism as the modern IRA vampirised national/religious sentiment.

18. Leverage of referenda and test cases: Politics created a legal tactic to catalyse change, re-framing a cultural villain. The selection and successful leverage of test-cases in areas linked to moral choice and the Catholic Church around contraception, abortion and homosexuality used exceptional circumstances to alter rules. In that success the Church would lose purchase as social norms were re-engineered. It was presented often as a shadowy source of all grievance even if, for example, the ban on homosexual acts was initiated by the British Empire at a time of expanding scientific enterprise. Once the exception is levered it easily becomes the rule and displaces the existing norm through newly acquired legal legitimacy. The actions started for policy and political reasons and none were to promote the Church.

19. Church association with state authority: The Church from the mid-19th century, but especially in the early 20th century, was made co-dependent on a weak administrative system. Instead of supporting the underdog, it became associated with establishment of a surrogate state apparatus. As twins, state and Church were entangled and it was an easy target for a state that later became flush with foreign money as the Church hierarchy became a busted flush. Catholic individuals like William Martin Murphy who lead the employers in 1913 contributed to a perception of the Church as reactionary and a part of the modern economic order.

20. Governance failures of the Civil Service: The Civil Service escaped critique when they deserve a lot more. Many failures were projected onto nuns and priests. Bureaucrats literally point the finger away from their own failures which continue today with disappearance of children in state care! Who examines them? There was constant complaint from religious orders over the lack of State support for institutions the State had ultimate responsibility and oversight of. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Who will guard the guards themselves? Irish Catholics complain of harassment from guards (police) when advocating Catholicism today.

21. The Papal visits, popular not prophetic: The magnificent reception of Pope John Paul II in 1979 may have had negative consequences and was a turning point. The Pope appeared more as a performer in some ways and it may have induced a degree of complacency. The sacred was assumed into the ‘society of the spectacle’. The Pope reassured while encouraging the EU which denationalised Ireland. Pope Francis visited in 2018, corroborating the transnational context of Ireland and furthered denationalisation sentiment that endangers any indigenous Catholicism. Papal support of the EU was disastrous for Irish Catholicism as John Paul played a game of checking the New World Order and lost. How much better would better management have been instead of pop concerts? When the cat’s away…

22. Emigration: Once the Church appeared to be part of the establishment in a visible way, then the phenomenon of emigration could be notionally associated therewith. Emigrants were exposed to more secular values in a context where they were often materially better off. The domestic Irish context could be apparently linked to the regressive spiritual and reproductive preoccupations of the Church. Local communities were hollowed out as the Church infrastructure had expanded to its likely maximum. We have patterns of emigrants embittered by primarily economic and socio-cultural forces who experience material success abroad at a time of post-War demand for labour in Britain. They attribute divergence to the Church’s grip notwithstanding the old empire was responsible for both contexts of boom in Britain and bust in Ireland. Some of the Irish generation that suffered stigma for their Irishness refracted that back from the UK with their negative portrayals in art, film, plays and tv.

23. De-Sabbathing, Sabbathage: Sunday trading and sports represented an inevitable commercial and cultural Sabbath sabotage that over time helped dislodge the Church in social-cultural contexts like a motorway diversion. People are lured to choose between mass and other activities for their children or selves.

24. Clericalism: The significance of ‘clericalism’ is cited as one really significant point. Priests too often misused their power. Oddly enough, clericalism seems to now be popularised from the Church itself, signifying new directions and used even to criticise the laity. It seems to vindicate anti-clerical forces whilst preparing for more modernisation and perhaps changes in ordination. But the internal objection, rejection or concession of clericalism is also related to the phenomenon of anti-clericalism.

25. The reductive identification: Clericalism meant that bad behaviour of the clerics undermined not just the institution but the beliefs they had not practiced.

26. Clandestine, secret and esoteric societies. Political parties, left wing organisations and Freemasonry could be cited. Joyce joked that Theosophy in Ireland was a Protestant sect. The Orange Order is clearly anti-Catholic.

27. Infiltration: There have been many arguments of infiltration by modernist or anti-Catholic forces. George Dillon wrote about this in the late 19^th century. By definition such claims are hard to prove but historical analogies can be made from other studies especially later in Scandinavia by communism. Maximilian Kolbe was galvanised by a Masonic march in Rome in 1917 saying that Satan would take over the Vatican. The fruits of modernist forces are plain to be seen in Ireland.

28. Wolf-in-sheep’s-clothing: Obviously those that came into the Church for sexual gratification are a dark aspect of the story. Independently of that context Fabian advocates used that symbol for social change. “Pray for me, that I may not flee for fear of the wolves” said Benedict. He did flee. Malachi Martin predicted a Pope would be made resign by anti-Catholic forces and a process that looks like the synodality one that could lead to an imploding institution.

29. Exposure to newer versions of anti-Catholic force: Older biases were supplemented by devastating Gramscian, ‘Eurocommunist’ influence. Both crony capitalism and communism serve the same materialist master and diminish the Catholic Church’s role.

30. The Culture Wars: The historic ‘Kulturkampf’ led by Bismarck in Prussia was related to the subsequent Gramscian communist attack on Catholicism and they both merge in crony-capitalist-communist deconstruction of Catholic ethos. We see this in a combined rejection of spiritual analysis.

31. NGOs: These and GONGO’s are Trojan horses and agents of commerce or communism, both materialistic. Opponents classify the Church as the largest NGO in the world and want to undermine it through NGO’s.

32. Atlanticism: Ireland was let go by the Empire, but its strategic relevance continues for NATO. Irish nationalist and Catholic sentiment was unlikely to change its neutral position. There was arguably a strategic interest in undermining the hold of Catholicism.

33. New World Order: We were warned by Pope John Paul from the time before he was Pope. According to the book by Wells, the NWO which is a neo-colonial, neo-imperial force is dedicated to eradicating nation state, family and religion.

34. NWO Anti-Catholicism: This was clear in the cooperation of Margaret Sanger and H.G. Wells on his remarkable proposals for bombing Rome. Ireland has been devastated by the NWO agenda which is an active political reality.

35. Tactic and philosophy of deconstruction and anti-hegemonic activism: The influence of cultural transformers and influencers is often driven by a conscious ideological or political goal to fragment hegemony for a new materialist, secular one, steered by a complementary materialist combination of both left and right.

36. Complication of the concept, institution and operation of family: The family is a target of rebellion in the work of Marxists, feminists and constructors of the new transnational corporate order. Its existence was in jeopardy in a recent referendum in 2024. The Irish laboratory was tested to its limit and the practice is to try again until they get what they want. Attack on the family is a depressing amplification in the production of literature.

37. Anti-clericalism: Anti-clericalism is a consistent, recurrent, revolutionary or philosophical position or phenomenon consistent with a number of political stances for hundreds of years in Europe. It pre-existed modern Catholic Ireland and was cultivated in various contexts such that there was plenty of receptivity for the many mistakes.

38. Third-level education: University and college enhanced secularity whilst advocating progressive causes hostile to Church dogma.

39. Movement to cities: There are four elements. The first was a movement away from land and community to cities in Ireland for opportunity. The second was the growth of cities in Ireland with a change in community attitudes. The third was a mass movement of the last two decades of other nationalities and religion into Ireland. The fourth was the enhanced cultural malleability of networked urban dwellers. This shook the Catholic base.

40. De-communalisation: In a rural community determined by local relations and self-reliance the Church was a hub that creates a common point for congregation and continuity through vicissitudes of life and death. De-ruralisation, mass transport, out-of-town shopping centres, by-passes, cars, mobility and networks of interdependence based on commercial arrangements make the centre not as important and reinforce disintegration of cohesion. New allegiances circumvented the local church and community expectations.

41. De-nationalisation: This is a function of globalisation, whether technological, economic, corporate, commercial, regulatory, technical, legal or cultural. But it is a globalist political agenda which has also infected the Church unduly. The Church is failing in its local incarnationalism in favour of a false united universalism.

42. Toxification: The idea of toxification indicates a materialist tactic comprehensible to that materialistic mind. It takes the language of inorganic physicalism and applies it to organic and socio-cultural contexts in a way typical of scientism. To achieve progress everything inconsistent with the narrative will be made toxic. That includes the past, history, masculinity, humanity, culture, nostalgia, sainthood, stoicism, language, individualism. The Church has been identified as toxic in many respects.

43. The collapse of distance: The nature of technology created the global village and reduced previous power of the extensive Church network embedded in culture.

44. Cultural CART: Communications, Art, Recreation and Transport allowed vehicles of commerce re-create culture.

45. Air transportation: The processes of transformation were facilitated by the growth of mass air-travel in particular. This emerged from the quasi-military context of the Berlin airlift. Before Virgin and other airlines operated, Dublin-London was one of the dearest routes in the world. More people would come to Ireland as tourists and then asylum seekers, refugees, economic migrants and people exercising EU rights of free movement. The airlift is transformative today.

46. Opening up: Ireland became the ‘most open economy in the world’ and openness is inconsistent with heterogeneity and involves postmodernist disruption, especially to narratives associated with cultural and Christian and especially Catholic continuity.

47. Channelling: Communications, culture and transport channelled to create a sort of cultural liquidity or liquid modernity that functionally erodes or displaces the existing centrality of embedded systems, especially ancient Catholic ones. As tv, radio were made available, road networks were altered as was telephony and wireless to facilitate pervasive communication and converging regulation for national and international commercial control displacing the primacy of existing local nodes.

48. Homogenisation for heterogeneity: Commerce makes things the same as it opens up and enforces standardisation whilst destroying local distinctiveness.

49. Multiculturalism: Prior mono-culturalism cannot survive multiculturalism by definition and and furthermore may be eradicated lest it seeks to rewind the clock. This leads to the phenomenon of the ‘ghost host community’ as I have called it. The national/Catholic connection cannot survive in the same way in such a context.

50. Globalisation of the political class: Irish politicians altered their allegiance by meetings, commerce, networks, take-over, NGOs and incentives to Brussels, Strasbourg, Geneva, Davos, Bilderberg, Beijing and Boston. The cultural and historical connections of Geneva with Calvinist and secular strands in opposition to Rome are plain. Switzerland also had an influence on promotion of modernism in the Church.

51. Membership of the EU: Sovereignty was ceded and pooled and subjected to a much narrow, economic and technocratic mode of governance that privileged commercial freedom over cultural homogeneity, national affiliation and allegiance.

52. Leverage of secular human rights and social and economic governance: Mass change can occur through human rights re-engineering subject to dedicated political goals. Many developments have been at the expense of the Church. H.G. Wells was instrumental in the modern UN human rights agenda. The person is reduced to a narrow sense of dignity decoupled from the divine connection or claim, notwithstanding the Christian origin of human rights. Now activists want to change the Church by projecting human rights into its internal system.

53. De-coupling from national and cultural Identity: Irishness has been re-defined after membership of the EU, membership of other international systems and commercial refashioning. It is no longer cohesive and monolithic but cosmopolitan. Irish identity was closely linked to Catholicism. Commerce, culture and promotion of other identities have dissolved those attachments in favour of globally-constructed ones. LGBTQ+ involves identities often in opposition to traditional national and Catholic identity. Irishness and Catholicism will not mutually reinforce each other in the reflexive way they once did.

54. Growth of power of communication media: Tv, books, films, videos, CDs, computer games and AI become beacons and deacons of distraction by recreation and reduce the relative power of religious appeal.

55. The propaganda model: The acknowledged management of media by elite interests leads to presentation, selection and framing of secular themes and issues relevant to it. The system often became hostile to tradition and religion and especially Catholicism from the Reformation onwards. Systemic epistemic control ousts existing models.

56. Technical and economic dependence and integration: Cars made us dependent on oil. Oil made an excuse for war. Finance made us beholden to external forces. Exposure created vulnerability and entanglement allows leverage and influence. Interests and needs becomes reduced, rationalised and determined by foreign nodes and interactions. We are dependent on IT networks as well.

57. Managerial revolution: Increasing corporate and state power meant institutional needs replaced spiritual and religious imperatives. Ironically, the Church that excelled in transnational administration once was replaced and overshadowed by corporate contexts in culture. This revolution is linked to future technocracy.

58. Amplification of abuse. The interpretation of accepted abuse evidence also requires nuance. There must be some appreciation of failures of an impoverished, under-attack new state inheriting a broken system in an historically-abused nation. I do not of course deny the shocking evidence but note the disproportionate amplification. For example, there has been a huge amount of endemic sexual abuse in the pop industry. Yet no one will decry the institution of pop music as intrinsically wrong. There has been much abuse by lay teachers, coaches, royalty, military people, medical staff, fellow students in boarding schools and so on as everywhere else. The Church covered up, was poorly managed and that accelerated disintegration but others have incentives to amplify.

59. Amplification of resentment: Specifically, abuse, yielding of state functions to the Church, often for convenience of the new state, identification of the Church with authority when it had been historically anti-establishment in Ireland. Commerce, communism and socialism contributed to a narrative that increased focus through the propaganda model on legitimate and understandable grievance and resentment. Not just the abuse but the understandable and legitimate reaction thereto was amplified. Resentment is a fuel for transformation.

60. The British broadcast spell: Irish homes fell into the free footprint of British tv channels. Channel 4 was breaking boundaries beyond national boundaries. This allowed circumvention of cultural restraints in Ireland, promoting modernity. This underestimated external force became internal in the homes, hearts and heads through comedy, pop, football and so on. Much that was popular dissolved existing attachments. We are to presume otherwise that the UK coming out of war with total control of media, developing tv, with strategic interests in Irish mind-sets was providing neutral entertainment.

61. Hollywood shift: Hollywood was highly informed by Catholicism and films about nuns, priests, saints and Jesus were common from 1934-1968 constrained by codes of decency. Then Hollywood shifted into a more challenging, transgressive and ultimately anti-Christian and more anti-Catholic mode in a generally deconstructive way. This affected Irish culture.

62. Literary critique: Writers like Edna O’Brien took a perspective very critical of the Church as had Joyce and writers like John McGahern, Roddy Doyle, Frank McCourt and John Banville.

63. New idols: Before the 1960’s - political, mythological and religious figures were held in high esteem. Film, tv, newspapers and radio then suddenly produced new role-models that became idols. Elvis, the Beatles, George Best, Muhammad Ali, cowboys, singers and sports people were heroes. Now it is more explicit as the idea of ‘Pop Idol’ shows. Such shows ask the participants what would it mean to win? ‘Everything’ is the standard Faustian answer. These occupy the minds that would have been more peopled with religious figures once.

64. Glamorisation of crime and iniquity: Good role-models were replaced by bad and criminals were given much more attention than they deserve with pet names in a process of attentive substitution and inversion. ‘The Monk’ was one such criminal celebrity who is more recently involved in politics. In general, the public were presented with an inversion of role-models where the sinner becomes the popular saint and the popular saint the sinner.

65. Rise of fantasy: The cultural of significance of books like Harry Potter and phenomenon of computer games represented reification of a new realm of fantasy that occupies significant mental real estate. This parallel psychic domain prepares for a spiritual simulacrum.

66. The process of dispiriting: The force of modernist attack was psychically dispiriting to Catholics while scientism implied the spirit did not exist and was thus literally dispiriting.

67. Ridicule of Catholicism: Marx’s daughter emphasised how effective ridicule was to the working class. Father Ted followed comedians like Dave Allen, broadcasting from England. We could add The Life of Brian and so on. These phenomena acted as an active catalyst as their makers acknowledge. Anti-clerical themes continued in literature. Rural Ireland was ridiculed by urban writers and Catholicism was presented as backward and absurd.

68. Increased choice and pluralism: Liberalisation, rejection of authority and identification with new religions in competition affected Catholicism. Mormonism, Scientology, Islam, Buddhism and other options became available. A new culture of ‘angry young men’ and women in defiance of traditional roles undermined latent authority systems. While Ireland does not do well in the Eurovision now, it won many times in the past. It seemed like the crow that dropped the cheese, if not to a fox, then to the Celtic Tiger. You might have been happy with a drink of whiskey and a sausage at a wake a couple of generations ago or a visit to the pub on market day, now you expect South African wine and chorizo. Your spiritual fare becomes a commodity or product to be chosen and consumed.

69. Affluence, modernisation, materialism of prosperity: Modern materialism was novel, pervasive and interrelated. The greatest modernisation was in the Church itself and thinking of the priests and hierarchy. The Novus Ordo came in for a new world. A new creed of consumerism outside was made possible and a replacement web of art, fantasy, entertainment and philosophy produced a new existential accommodation with a novel complex of meaning. The cornucopia of Celtic commerce erased a dream of a frugal spiritual homeland. Recreation expanded affiliations beyond borders. Novelty became an end in itself to get ready for the new world not the next. Materialism became a very popular philosophical base displacing Catholic beliefs.

70. Changing values of modernism and postmodernism: Exposure to capitalism, consumerism and commodification facilitated by new networks instantiates a different set of values. Stoicism, fatalism and interdependence in the rural community are replaced with attitudes of entitlement, high expectations and independence, often promoted by commercial contexts. Virtue is re-designed and repurposed to the needs of system.

71. Changing of norms and practices: Thus the standard, traditional view of nation and nationalism and sexual identity or roles can now appear or be represented as hateful in a secular, cosmopolitan, cultural kaleidoscopic context defined by that condition. Catholicism becomes less acceptable and is squeezed and strait-jacketed culturally. It becomes harder, or even unlawful, to practice what you preach or is preached to you as a Catholic.

72. Sport is Spirit with an ‘o’ for the I: The presentation of sport, especially football, as a new sort of religion or spirit-sport is underestimated. Respected writers now equate sporting matches with religious experience. The Irish supported clubs in the UK. Celtic and Liverpool are both associated with the song You’ll Never Walk Alone. This is like a secular hymn. Figures like Best and others were often referred to in godlike terms. Rituals, transcendence and identity were translated into mundane terms. The Last Supper mockery at the Olympics 2024 in Paris indicates a deliberate parodying and appropriation of cultural and religious Catholicism. Celtic Park for Celtic (set up by a priest in 1888 for Catholics) is known as ‘Paradise.’

73. The religion and church of popular music: The subjection or exposure to mass, constant emotional priming by music is a phenomenon that became normal but had not been. It becomes self-evident that the locus of community and gravity of moral agency become reconstituted by a constant diet and shaping by songs stuck in the groove of love. Love, love, love. All you need is love. This love is more transactional, down to earth and less divine. Some traditional songs in Ireland lost verses about Church i.e. the original Spancil Hill song. Church was not cool, not part of the agenda. Lennon was not joking when he declared the Beatles more popular than Jesus. That the music industry was full of sexual abuse with figure heads lie Jimmy Savile has not received the same institutional attention the Church legitimately has. MTV had a logo not unlike the miraculous medal seemed like a miraculous, material simulacrum of the commitment to the Virgin. I read recently about Oasis in Dublin and it was described consistently as a ‘Biblical’ whatever that means. Music is part of the religious simulacrum with idols and ideology.

74. The new altar screen and icons: Idols, sport and boundary breaking images, ideas and ideologies came on screen. The world was interested by new authority figures, new priests. Old priests tried to compete but could not. The Catholic Church once was a significant tableau in society producers of icons. It was a window to God. Now an icon is some reduced symbol on your screen. The iconostasis of altars is now the icons of your screen altering our experience of the world.

75. The canvas, abstracting the incarnated: Painting used be a predominantly Catholic affair in Europe predicated on a common narrative around the life of Christ. The Renaissance made those images pervasive. Modern and abstract art represented a shift from focus on the person and especially Christ to a range of philosophical and pseudo-philosophical abstractions tending to posthumanism. Some had suggestions of previous references. For example, Mark Rothko’s paintings are often referred to in quasi-religious terms and they do have a reference, intentional or not, to the covered paintings at Easter in Catholic Churches.

76. Mutual reinforcement of changed norms: The vectors of change can be used to collectively reinforce each other in a converged reflexive way. Thus sports people can be used to influence attitudes about gender and sexual identity or racism. The Irish football team knelt down in Budapest before a match with Hungary in solidarity with BLM. Thus de-sacralisation of the kneeling gesture associated with religion and transcendence continues in different popular contexts, re-purposing rituals.

77. Transferrable acquiescence: The habit of colonial adherence and even undue submission to the Church combined with the formidable force of mass-media in the context of organised and directed cultural re-alignment led to an outsourcing of agency. This made Ireland most acquiescent to drastic and rapid economic and cultural change as a new quasi-religion of globalist technocratic hedonism and hygienism.

78. Scientism: Through the obvious power of US technology, atomic bomb, Apollo moon-landing, sci-fi, military technology, communications technology and so on, the claims to an all-encompassing demonstrable sense of scientific power was levered into an attitude of scientism that claimed knowledge and authority beyond its domain.

79. Agnosticism and New Atheism: Associated with scientism was a spiritual deconstruction. Dawkins worked in Ireland in parallel to the radical Thatcherite and Reaganite commercial individualism. 9-11, was used to attack all religion and that became anti-Christian and anti-Catholic as well. I was surprised to hear how younger people in Ireland referred to Dawkins as a clear winner in the debate about who we are.

80. Rise of humanism: In conjunction with science rose a non-religious humanism. Humanism was an active force that informed public discourse and became an alternative over time or an attitude that was very much promoted. People began to have options for humanist weddings and ceremonies, removing the sacrament . I know many are attracted to this.

81. Neo-paganism: There was a rise of neo-pagan movements or sentiments with ancient claims or references linked to the earth and often hostile to Catholicism. This was promoted by various segments like media, artists, etc.

82. Hygienism: The power of techno-science and scientism led to a new emphasis on medical physical control as a quasi-religious ritualistic substitute. There is plenty of evidence of a complex left-brain total idea of fuller medical control and planning evident in advertising, medical discussions and public health policy. Some labelled it hygienism. The extent of this power as an almost religious substitute was manifest during the remarkable compliance of a supposedly rational, modernising, independent, individual culture during Covid.

83. Feminism: Woman wanted more control of their lives and bodies. This involved a wider ideological population and birth control strategy.

84. Individualism, selfism: A new era of individualism, experimentalism and selfism meant assumptions of the Church were undermined whilst being insufficiently challenged about their costs and consequences.

85. Re-creation distraction: Alcohol, drugs, sex and rock and roll and sport created a whole generational shift. People and society were literally re-created from their previous positions. Society gets distracted from traditional contexts. Distraction leads to less attention and that lack of attention allows scope for cultural re-creation.

86. Soma disablement: But it is more? Guinness is good for you might be Guinness is God for you. Try whiskey ‘the water of life’. Lift up your spirits. The Huxley equivalent of lotus-eating indicates how society is pacified and stupefied by a mixture of drugs, physical, psychedelic and physiological. Thus Yuval Noah Harari foresees a population entranced by video or computer games. Psychological states are increasingly medicated. The demise of religion as the opium of the people sees cities around the world increasingly home to urban zombification. So not only does Soma (of whatever type) weaken existing attachments and create poor substitutes but it disables agency. The cultural class celebrated cocaine whilst ignoring the social consequences. Cocaine chic had many victims. While all these forces may seem neutral and accidental, they usually come from the techniques of science, the deep state, military intelligence, crime or a combination.

87. Futurism: Ireland bought a picture of the future where technology solved all ills and gave all delights. Certainly it could be described a as Faustian bargain. But it was implicit in economic policy as well. Futurism centres on love of the machine. Physical presents and futures are placed in contradistinction to post-mortem promises of Catholicism.

88. Excision and retouching: The Stalinist policy of retouching photographs to remove, removed people applies to the historical reorganisation that is part of the futurist, techno-scientific agenda. Irish people should forget oppression, persecution and the Famine and worry instead about how outsiders and economic migrants perceive them. Much of the past is being retouched and the Irish is being remade as the oppressor who needs to get with the program to atone for imaginary past sins while ignoring actual present ones.

89. Cultural revolution: The totality of commercial, corporate, communist and capitalist forces represents a revolution that aims to alter society and nature irrevocably. The Catholic Church can only be tolerated pending its perishing if it is assimilated or compliant. Cultural revolution is defined by comprehensiveness and pervasiveness.

90. Permanent revolution of the dynamo, automobiles and automatics: People underestimate the effect of mechanical systems and their constancy and how the dynamo influenced many futurist thinkers. Roads changed Ireland. Electrification was critical. Communications altered communities. Today we can add computers and mobiles, tomorrow brain chips. Windmills become more noticeable than the spires of churches. Society changes through constant turning. Permanent revolution describes a specific idea of revolution advocated by political actors in Ireland but also points to praxis of continuous change with the objective of transforming society. It is not addressed at only one institution but all and will not stop till it is achieved. That will involve no Catholic Church as we know it.

91. Increased external erosion and exposure of homogenous views: If the Republic of Ireland was nearly all Catholic, the total complex of increasing techno-cultural exposure to outside influences was most likely to involve non-Catholic and anti-Catholic forces. Catholic homogeneity is quickly being replaced with a new version, where a large segment of the population is more concerned with aligning with the establishment (practicing no forgiveness) than the mystical body of Christ.

92. Civil jurisdiction assertion and compensation: In Donoghue v Stevenson 1932 the principle of negligence was articulated as a legal consequence of the duty to love your neighbour by the House of Lords. The idea of compensation and attendant expectations incentivise punishment of mistakes in a very real and justifiable way which are difficult to defend in a context of adverse publicity, bad record-keeping and actual abuse. Many institutions have had to close. The law becomes arbiter of justice within the Church undermining the long separation of jurisdiction but partly justified by the Church’s failure to self-police. The separate jurisdiction was what Thomas Becket died for. Benefit of clergy and sanctuary were unique aspects of the Church. It ends with the church being changed by civil law and human rights.

93. The crystallisation of the ‘Ahrimanic’ force: Steiner defined the materialising spirit as Ahrimanic. He would see that in Ireland if he alive. We can see this as a spiritual force or an autonomous complex or archetype if you will.

94. Committing to Mammon: Jesus referred to Mammon. You cannot serve both God and Mammon. Ireland is choosing Mammon and not the Catholic Church.

95. The increase of the Luciferic force: Steiner also saw a Luciferian spiritual force as being a danger associated with the modern world and an ethereal sort of rebellion of inflated selfhood. This replaces Christ. That is also in the Christian tradition. That would be identified in Ireland by such thinkers.

96. The wielding of the diabolic: You do not have to believe in the devil but may see a range of representations, call them artistic if you wish, which advocate a Satanic or devilish force as a deconstructive and divisive agent. Some obvious aspect got into the Church as well. Bernal the influential Irish crystallographer is now celebrated in Ireland though he saw us being turned into silicon in The World, The Flesh and the Devil.

97. Bad actors and terrible theatre: If you do not see anything as capable of being diabolical there is also the idea of ‘bad actors.’ It describes some within the Church and many in public life. They are bad actors when they do not do what is expected in context and have other aims. Many are increasingly also being exposed as literally bad actors who are also bad actors, coming from a line of media inclination and a tendency to like their own voices. They will continue the anti-Catholic agenda. The theatricality of politics and orchestration of issues is more obvious as time goes by.

98. Weaponisation of the seven deadly sins: Pride, greed, lust, envy, glutton, wrath and sloth became admirable i.e. looked at through media and attractions. The Catholic Church cannot remain relevant in that context of the inversion of its mission.

99. Alternative options: Education has been wrested from the Church partly through the deliberate presentation of alternatives calculated to reject their role and partly by hollowing out what is still presented as Catholic-run education.

100. Symbolic removal: The indicators and signs of the Church in hospitals and other institutions have been opposed and obscured.

The mass individual choices about not going to mass were more determined by a combination of the control of mass culture in a way calculated to increase power at the expense of other potential competitors especially the Church in Ireland. Therein is a collective pact facilitated by relative material comfort that was guaranteed temporarily for one generation at least at irrevocable cost. While it may seem Ireland has left behind a cultural totalitarianism, it is most likely to experience a full one with the new tech-empire and globetechgov on the way instead. Catholicism can only be cured with intelligent, persuasive, informed activism of its members comprehending the game to the end that they are engaged in. But most seem content so good luck to them.