Census 2022: 10% reduction in Roman Catholic numbers

SFAIK the way it works in Germany is, if you're registered as a member of a church but you no longer wish to pay the tax, you notify the tax office (or some other office of the state) that you have left the church, and they notify the church. The church notes in its own records that you are no longer a member, or they don't note that — the tax office doesn't care, and you being exempted from the church tax doesn't depend on what entry the church does or doesn't make in its own records.

The system doesn't include any requirement for the church to delete its records relating to you. If you want that, you'd have to approach the church directly to seek it, and presumably you'd be relying on the same GDPR-based or other arguments that you would be advancing in countries with no church tax.

This is true. Lived in New York for a time had some friends of that persuasion. Weren't religious in any way but called themselves Jews.

It's a cultural thing.

Bit like Holy Communions here. It's an Irish rite of passage. Most people just go along with it, part of our tradition.

definitely going jedi on the next one!

Oh don't worry, under the recently appointed archbishop the RCC Dublin Diocese is making plans to cash in big time.

@nozzferrahhtoo Yes there are some very nice churches around but, at least in Dublin, there are huge numbers of 60s/70s concrete monstrosities that are nothing other than carbuncles on the streetscape. e.g. the recently demolished aircraft hangar-like structure in Finglas that they could never heat or fix the design flaws.

People always seem to rejoice at the demise of Roman Catholic church and Christian churches in general as if it will herald in a new enlightened era.

However, as a non believer, I'm forced to acknowledge that from what I can see religious societies have more content/happy populations. Knock yourself on Google scholar, but there seems to be a general trend.

Whether it's the community/structure/need to be led organised religion has provided some basic need in communities since the dawn of time; why else do they survive and thrive?

Where is Atheism Ireland active in the bereavement/counselling/spiritual field? If they aren't where do they expect people will go when they hit upon difficult times?

They will go somewhere.

Maybe the practice of stoicism might be answer for some, but some will need the social connection that comes from religion to be filled elsewhere.

When something you don't like is falling down don't be surprised if you don't like it's replacement either

There is nothing worse than having to sit through a fecking mass (for no other reason than the bride thought the church would look nice in the photos) then have to drag your arse miles away to the actual venue where the relatively fun parts happen.

So much easier and more pleasant to have the ceremony at the reception venue. The mainstream churches are too up their own holes to allow this however. That's their problem and only a minority of weddings in Ireland now take place in a church.

Don't the less religious scandanavian countries show more content populations at times too, including higher per capita levels of charity, than their religious counter parts? I am not sure how safe it is to declare that religious societies in general are the happier. Further to that, one would then have to explore the correlation/causation error to see if it applies. Even if happiness were higher in societies were religiousity was higher.... that is a correlation and nothing else. It could be that the happier you make people, the more time they have to invest in hobbies.

It also depends, I would imagine, on how religious the society actually is. If you find turning up the dial on religion in a society causes a correlatation in increasing happiness.... I think you will find if you keep turning the dial higher and higher, the correlation will reverse. There are some very bloody miserable highly religious areas in our world.

Christopher Hitchens had a partially relevant answer to your point however. A radio interview with an evangelical broadcaster had the guy try to get Hitchens on the spot to admit something similar to what you are saying here. He demanded "You are to imagine yourself in a strange city at night and a group of men are walking towards you; would you feel safer or less safe if you knew they were coming from a prayer meeting?".

To which Hitchens said "I have been in that exact situation you describe. I can answer that question without even leaving the letter B. In Bethlehem, Bombay, Bosnia, Belfast, Beruit, Belgrade, Bagdad. Where if you see a group of young people coming from their religious meeting of choice, you know exactly how fast it is you should run".

I am not sure it was ever the remit of Atheist Ireland to do anything but promote as their mission statement says "an ethical, secular society where the State does not support or finance or give special treatment to any religion.". So demanding they be active in the field to counsel people for bereavement is not really useful. It is not their place.

Nor are they suggesting you do NOT get your emotional releief from religion either. They are perfectly happy for you to turn to religion in your time of emotional need if you want. They just want to ensure the state is not supporting or financing that decision by giving special treatment to your religion.

Micheal Nugent the long time chairman of atheist ireland has campaigned quite heavily on "Right to Die" issues too. To the point he admits he was ready and willing to go to prison by helping his sick wife to die should her pain become too much. She passed on her own however of her illness.

That said though, quite a lot of atheists do talk about the very concerns you bring up. Sam Harris would be the first of the "big names" of atheism to spring to mind and he often does talks on the subject of death, grief, well being, spirituality, and more. When Christopher Hitchens died he threw out the script for the talk he was going to do, and did an entire talk on death and coping with death instead.

The atheist illusionst Derren Brown has also written books on happiness without religion involved, and has written of his discovery of the stoics and their philosophy.

What struck me over the years, especially early on around the time Atheist Ireland was being founded... was not in fact how few self described catholics went to mass.

Rather I was always struck by how few of them ever bothered to own, let alone read, a Bible. To the point when I actually showed a Christian a Bible, they were shocked how BIG it was.

This was because whenever they heard something from the Bible in school, or the few masses they actually attended, they were hearing the same small hand picked passages over and over again. So they thought they had heard everything that was in it. Which is kind of like thinking having read the "Foreward" to the Lord of the Rings books, they have read the entire text :)

When they were actually shown a Bible by me, including how many pages it has and how small the font was on each page, and therefore the sheer volume of content in it........ they were often jaw dropping shocked by it. They had literally no idea.

Now I am not religious and never have been. I was actually rather slow and naive to the point when the Bible was being read to us in school I thought it was "Story Time" and I was embarrasingly old (12 maybe?) when it first hit me "Hang on a second..... people BELIEVE this tripe???".

But.... when I imagine myself to be religious....... and I imagine my religion of choice believes that this god has total dominion over the eternal well being of my soul....... and said god wrote or inspired a book on the subject...... I can only imagine I would be compelled to go out of my way to obtain and read that book. Over and over and over again probably.

So that these supposedly religious people have not even bothered to acquire one, let alone turn to page 1..... has always baffled me somewhat. It makes one somewhat sympathetic to Daniel Dennets hypothesis that the believers "believe in belief" rather than actually have that belief themselves.

I that sounds a bit unbelievable tbh. The bible is known as a large book. Not War and Peace large, but I doubt anyone has any notions that is short story. They may not own a bible, but most people will see them all the time. Most hotel rooms for a start have bibles in the bedside drawer.

But maybe people are recalling the small new testament they give you when you make your communion/confirmation - a palm sized version with very light paper and a tiny font. If you picked up a full (old and new testament) bible, with normal pages, such as a gideons bibles, it would be much bigger than you remember.

Don't mean to be picky but immigration is people coming into a country and emigration is those leaving their own country, so you have it arse about face. Poles etc are immigrants, not emigrants.

Thanks, i keep getting them mixed up