“Bouncy castle Catholicism” is not really an accurate description of Ireland’s relationship with the Church.

The institution’s hold over the Irish population has very little to do with the single day in a child’s life when, aged seven or eight, they are trussed up like miniature newlyweds and sent off to hustle wads of cash from neighbours – a tradition that is as weird as it is enduring.

Still, affection for the rite of Communion, Confirmation or even the prospect of a church wedding cannot on its own account for the Church’s continuing grip on Irish society.

Not given all we know about its institutional wrongs – its aiding and abetting in the crime of child abuse, its institutionalised misogyny, its homophobia, its insistence on blind faith and conformity, its stubborn defiance of science and reason.

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Ireland’s relationship with the Catholic Church is messy and complicated. It is an institution that makes many demands of its members – it insists on magisterial control over their most intimate thoughts and behaviours; it instructs them that they must enrol their newborn children as life members or risk them going to........

© The Irish Times