THE IRISH “do not shop around” when it comes to religion, Prof Tom Inglis has said. Studies done at UCD had found that “there is a new type of Catholic emerging in Ireland,” he added.
Based on these studies, he suggested that “there are four types of Catholics in contemporary Ireland”. Dr Inglis, associate professor at the school of sociology in University College Dublin, was speaking at the
Alternative Spiritualities: New Religious Movements and the New Age in Ireland
conference in NUI Maynooth, which began yesterday.
What was remarkable about the 2006 census was “the small number of people who were categorised as belonging to other stated religions [8,756],” he said. “This represents 0.2 per cent of the population. Moreover, it is down from 8,920 in 2002.”
And whereas the 2006 census indicated significant increases in the number of Buddhists (6,516), up 67 per cent from 2002 and Hindus (6,082), up 96 per cent, “it should be noted that over half of those who said they belonged to minority religions, were non-Irish nationals,” he said.
It suggested that the increase in those numbers was also related to immigration. He continued that this apparent lack of religious adventurism on the part of the Irish was “related to the monopoly position that the Catholic Church developed in the religious field from the 19th century. During this long reign, the church effectively managed to eliminate any form of opposition, or thinking outside of the Catholic box”.
It seemed Irish Catholics are “happy to see and understand themselves as Catholics, and are not willing to change, except to leave religion completely,” he said.
But, he said it would be wrong “to think that Irish people are completely religiously unadventurous. The results of some recent qualitative research carried by myself and other colleagues in UCD, suggest that there is a new type of Catholic emerging in Ireland. I have suggested from this research that there are four types of Catholics in contemporary Ireland.”
He said that a European study in 1999 found that “17 per cent of Irish Catholics did not believe in life after death”.
He said many individualist Catholics were more concerned with this-world forms of self-realisation and perfection.He also said that “there is little evidence to show any major new appetite for new ways of being religious” in Ireland.
"FOUR TYPES OF CATHOLICS":
(i) Orthodox Catholics who remained “loyal members of the institutional church”
(ii) Cultural Catholics who identified “more with Catholic heritage and being Catholic”
(iii) Creative Catholics who not only choose “between different [Catholic] beliefs, teachings and practices, but mix these with non-Catholic beliefs and practices”
(iv) Individualist Catholics who “identify themselves as Catholics, but [do] not believe in some of its [church’s] fundamental teachings”
