Shortage of Catholic priests.

Churches are already consolidating. It was announced back in 2018 that Limerick churches would be sharing priests.

It's the same with the vast majority of the bible bashers in America.

Give them a quote about peace and respecting all people. The response is "that's just woke crap". Tell them it's a direct quote from Jesus in the Bible. Watch their heads do several turns, before they say "I don't think that's true, I'll have to check it out".

Religion for them is not about faith, it's simply a tool to help them pretend they're better than others.

Within rural Dublin Diocese, our parish is sharing a priest with at 3 parishes, covering 5 churches.

How did she react when you told her she was essentially Anglican? Although, "come up last if you require gluten free" has been going on a while…

I've a friend who thought the RCC had a vow of poverty, how I laughed.

She also had no idea the Dominicans were essentially stormtroopers of their age.

Aside from obviously providing the sacraments to those who expect them what is there for a priest to do?

I had a school friend train in a seminary for two years in the late 80s. He said an awful lot of their time was spent discussing how to negotiate civil law. He vocation was driven from the outset by a desire to serve community, but the primary emphasis on combatting the law over pastoral care left him disillusioned. Too much politics was his summation.

The RCC was most probably too concentrated on coverups to miss their core mission.

They did get treated with kids gloves though. I'll never understand how there wasn't protests on the streets in 2002 for the government cap on compensation the RCC had to pay. People were probably too busy buying houses off eachother to give a fig.

Jesus said this about money

“If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me” (Matthew 19:21).

“No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money” (Matthew 6:24).

This is why Christianity is not very popular in Ireland. Lots of other more obvious ones but the difficult aspects of Christianity are too hard to fathom and follow in our wealth and greed worshipping society.

Communion and confirmation are popular because you get to flaunt wealth and give money to your dependents and relatives. I.e. not very Christian.

😁😁😁

Disclaimer: not a practicing Christian, but just calling it out.

They're probably basing their numbers and requirements off the census, rather than attendance at mass, and convincing themselves that 69% of the population are catholic.

There were some serious child protection issues uncovered in a dioceses school I had two kids in (no longer there). When it was pointed out that the school was not following the Dept of Education child protection guidelines, the legalistic response to parents was "they're only guidelines, so its not mandatory to follow them....".

ah no, god will make them, just like he made adam and eve

Don't be giving Revenue ideas

LPT - local priest tax

All Henry viii did was privatise the franchise.

What I'm trying to say is that being a Christian and raising a family is very hard in a capitalist consumerist society. It's dog eat dog. Survival of the richest.

If any of the abuse survivors heard about proposals about a tax to support an institution that gave them so much suffering in the past; Could you imagine the amount of anger coming from the abuse survivors themselves if they heard about them on a public forum. The level of anger will still be quite severe towards them who supports such a proposal.

The survivors wouldn't tolerate people who live in this country giving state enforced financial support to an institution that gave them so much pain & suffering in the past. They might call it an enforced act of hypocrisy; especially when some of the remaining abusers in the church from that horrific period of abuse are still present in parishes all around the country.

I don't think we have heard more stories from any of the remaining abuse survivors either.

The feelings of anger are still quite raw among those who have not got any form of proper justice from the state in how they dealt with their pain from the abuse. The scandals surrounding what happened within the Mother and Baby homes and the Bethany homes have still not been fully resolved to this day. And all of those faults from those scandals still lay unresolved within the hands of the state in how they kept it away from us behind closed doors.

It would certainly separate the sheep from the citizens.

As I understand it I think adherents of established churches like Anglican, Methodist and Presbyterian can divert some of their tax to their churches, I don't think it's a huge amount, but in principle all taxpayers burdened with the 2002 cap on RCC liabilities should have the right for a refund.