A new poll shows that only half the country’s Catholics go to Mass at least once a week, a drop of a sixth in five years.
Polls have been showing steadily falling Sunday congregations from the very high levels of the 1970s — 60 percent in 1998, 66 percent in ’96, 79 percent in ’91, 85 percent in ’86 and 91 percent in ’73.
The TNS/MRBI survey for RTE’s “Prime Time” program found the recent decline in Mass-going has been steepest in the rural parishes, where attendance rate is now 60 percent, down from 77 percent five years ago.
In urban areas it is 43 percent, down from 48 percent in 1998.
Many key aspects of church teachings are being questioned.
One in 10 don’t believe bread and wine becomes the body and blood of Christ at consecration, 38 percent disagree with the doctrine of papal infallibility and one in 20 don’t believe Jesus was the son of God.
One in 10 also don’t believe in life after death, 13 percent don’t believe in the Virgin birth, only a quarter approve of clerical celibacy and two-thirds disagree with the statement that there should not be women priests.
However, church leaders will take comfort from the finding that 87 percent of Catholic parents would prefer their children to be raised as Catholics and 49 percent believe priests play an important role in society — a higher rating than for politicians, lawyers and journalists.
“I think there is a greater freedom now among people to question beliefs and teaching of the church,” Killaloe Bishop Willie Walsh, regarded as one of the most liberal members of the Hierarchy. Told RTE last week. “I think that, of course, one would like that everybody would believe every detail of church teaching. But that would be to live in an unreal world.”
On sexual matters, the poll findings tended to the conservative. About a quarter believe divorce is morally wrong and over two-thirds are against remarriage in a church.
Abortion is regarded as morally wrong by 60 percent and 45 percent believe homosexuality is morally wrong.
The pollsters asked Catholics whether they mainly blamed church or state for the abuse of children by clerics in the church-run, government-regulated child-care institutions.
The state is blamed by 6 percent, while 25 percent place most of the blame on the church.
However, 64 percent blame both church and state equally, while 5 percent do not know.
TNS/MRBI conducted the poll among 1,000 adults representing a cross-section of the population aged over 18.