Last weekend's abortion referendum was a defining moment for Ireland and a defining moment for the Roman Catholic church.
Since Éamon de Valera drew up the constitution of Ireland in 1937, believing that the Catholic church was central to Irish identity, nation and church have been inextricably linked. Now, with the people of Ireland voting to back abortion – and therefore rejecting the teaching of the Catholic church that is opposed to it – there has been a severing of that link. It is not the only place in Europe where the church is in trouble, for across the continent it has become caught up in different nations' struggles over their identity.
Many people connected the referendum result in Ireland to the sex abuse scandals that have beset the church there in recent years and caused a loss of authority. While the scandals hastened an end to Catholic Ireland, it is not so clear that they caused it. Rather, it is Ireland's reinvention of itself that led to this result. When the taioseach, Leo Varadkar, described the referendum result as a “quiet revolution”, he was borrowing a phrase first used about the province of Quebec. It, too, was once devoutly Catholic; it, too, has become remarkably secular in recent times. Both places have a history of being suppressed by the English. Quebec's people once held on to their French tongue and heritage and their Catholic faith as expressions of being Québécois. But as Quebec province gained more autonomy and the Canadian government gave French equal status with English as the official language, so Catholicism became less prominent a part of Quebec's identity. In Ireland, as relations with Britain improved, and the Troubles over the border waned, so the need to cleave to the church as part of Irish identity has declined.
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