Donnelly & Inglis Media And Church Maynooth Conf 2008

Donnelly & Inglis Researching in the Church in Ireland NUI Maynooth, Ireland 22nd
October 2008
Work in progress – do not cite.
Please contact susiedonnelly@gmail.com for details.
Media Representations of Clerical Child Sex Abuse:
Understanding Secularisation in 1990s Ireland
Susie Donnelly MSocSc & Prof. Dr Tom Inglis
School of Sociology, University College Dublin
ABSTRACT: Insufficient attention has been paid to the relationship between the
Church and the media. Using Ireland as a laboratory for study, we argue the rise in
media as the public watchdog and social conscience of Irish society can be linked to
the secularisation of Catholic Ireland both at a macro-level in terms of the decline in
the institutional power of the Church and at a micro-level in terms of decline in
institutional participation and trust. The paper describes and analyses how the media
has become a major player in the field of religion while, the Catholic Church is no
longer able to limit and control the media as it once did. This transformation is most
evident in reports of Clerical Child Sex Abuse (CCSA). Further analysis highlights
sharp declines in institutional religiosity during the 1990s when reports of CCSA
were commonplace. Smaller declines in spirituality suggest a shift towards more
personal, privatised forms of religiosity.
The Irish Times, 27th
October 2005: 16

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Introduction
The debate about secularisation in the West has tended to ignore the influence of the
media. Defenders or opponents of the secularisation thesis rarely identify the media as
having any influential role (Bruce 2002; Greeley 2003; Hervieu-Léger 2003; Crockett
and Voas 2006). By examining the relationship between the Catholic Church and the
media, we argue that the media played two significant roles in the secularisation of
Ireland. At a macro structural level, the influence of the Catholic Church over the
media has declined. It is no longer able to limit, let alone control what media
organisations do or say. The decline in the symbolic domination of the Church
mirrored a general decline in its influence over the state and other social institutions.
The Church no longer holds a monopoly over Irish morality (Inglis 1998a). At a micro
level, the content of media messages promoted and developed a way of being in the
world – a habitus (Bourdieu 1990) – which was often at variance with the Church’s
teachings. During the second half of the twentieth century, in a slow but relentless
shift in the balance of power, the media began to play a major role in moulding public
opinion, shaping morality, and forcing institutions and organisations, including the
Catholic Church, to use their services, embody their language and practices and make
themselves publicly accountable through them (Conway and Kilcoyne 1997). More
significantly, the media began to investigate and interrogate religious personnel and,
in playing its role as the Fourth Estate, replaced the Catholic Church as the social
conscience and moral guardian of Irish society (Inglis 2000). Media coverage of sex
scandals in the Irish Catholic Church, particularly the way it dealt with Clerical Child
Sexual Abuse (CCSA), highlights the dramatic change in the balance of power.
Within a short number of years CCSA went from being a story that could not be told
to one that had to be reported and, indeed, was covered in significant detail. The
Church and many of its priests and religious order brothers quickly went from being
represented as paragons of virtue, as self-sacrificing national heroes, to being depicted
as self-serving masters of evil.
The Republic of Ireland is, then, a good laboratory to study contemporary
transformations in religion. Many indicators suggest that not only is Ireland still very
religious but also very Catholic. In the Census of Population in 2006, almost nine in
ten people identified themselves as Roman Catholics. These Catholics have some of
the highest levels of religious belief and practice in Europe (Fahey, Hayes et al. 2005).

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The European Values Survey (EVS) in 1999 showed that nine in ten Irish Catholics
believed in God, the divinity of Christ, and in heaven. Almost half of Irish attended
Mass at least once a week. Another half prayed at least once a week.1
At the
structural level, there is another story to be told. The power and symbolic domination
of the Church was weakened through a steady decline in vocations. In 1966, there
were 1,409 vocations (to become priests, nuns and brothers) to the religious life in
Ireland; by 1998 this had declined to 98 vocations (Inglis 1998a). At the same time,
the State began to divorce itself from the Catholic vision of Irish society that the
Church had been able to persuade the State to adopt during much of the twentieth
century, especially after Ireland became independent in 1922. Indeed a 1972
referendum, the Irish constitution was amended such that the “special position” of the
Roman Catholic Church was no longer recognised by the State. From the early 1980s,
the State began to pass legislation that was in direct opposition of Church teachings,
particularly in terms of making contraceptives freely available. But the media also had
a major impact. Much of the content of the media messages were in direct
contradiction to a family and community life based on the virtues of humility, piety,
chastity and self-denial. In the 1990s, the media became more dominant. It began to
openly resist and challenge the authority of the Church. It began to try to make the
Church accountable; forcing priests and bishops to move away from a rhetoric of
Catholic devotion, conviction and obedience to more rational, reasonable and ‘media-
friendly’ presentations of its teachings and policies.
In this paper, we focus on clerical abuse in Ferns (a diocese in the south-east
of Ireland). Specifically, we discuss how the case of Fr Seán Fortune was covered by
the media, and how it quickly went from being a local to a national story, eventually
leading to the establishment of the Ferns Inquiry – the first investigation of the
Catholic Church undertaken by the State. We argue that the intrusion of the media and
the State into the affairs of the Church played a significant role in the demise of the
institutional authority of the Church and can also be linked to transformations in the
pattern of Irish religiosity.
We place the media coverage of CCSA within the context of a general pattern
of decline in institutional adherence and secularisation. We use data from the
European Values Study (1981 to 1999) to describe a general decrease in institutional
religiosity, particularly in terms of religious practice and adherence to the Church.

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However, during this time levels of personal spirituality remained relatively stable.
This may be an indication of religious practice and belief becoming less institutional
and more personal and private. We suggest that the reporting of CCSA scandals
throughout the 1990s may have been an important factor in this move by Irish
Catholics away from the Church and a more institutional form religion. When
comparing Irish religiosity over time and across countries, we find that the move
away from institutional to non-institutional religion – believing without belonging –
can be observed elsewhere in Europe. However, the rate of which this occurs,
particularly in the 1990s, appears to be unique to Irish society.
The Media and Religion
The relation between religion and the media in the West, let alone the role of the
media in the decline of power and influence of churches, has not been subject to
significant sociological investigation. With some exceptions (Lundby 1990), most of
the investigations have been confined to America (Silk 1995; Stout and Buddenbaum
1996; Hoover and Lundby 1997; Hoover 1998; De Vries and Weber 2001). Many
studies have taken what Stolow characterised as an instrumentalist approach, that is
how religious organisations and groups have made use of the media as a means of
promoting their messages (Angell 2008). There has been very little empirical research
on the influence of the media in undermining the power of churches either in
subverting and challenging their ethos, teachings, beliefs and practices or in
investigating their activities and making them publicly accountable. The absence of
research is linked to an absence of a theoretical model within which macro long-term
processes of structural transformations can be linked to changes at the micro level in
patterns of religious belief and practice. We suggest that Bourdieu’s concepts of social
fields and habitus provide a useful theoretical paradigm (Bourdieu 1990; Bourdieu
and Wacquant 1992; Bourdieu 1993).
Following Weber’s concept of social spheres, Bourdieu argued that we should
conceptualise social life as revolving around numerous different, but often over-
lapping, social fields. Each social field is characterised by a predisposed, almost
automatic, but nonetheless flexible and adaptable habitus or way of seeing, reading
and interpreting people and events. This habitus is structured by the discourses and
policies of the dominant institutional players in the field. Any analysis of the religious

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field in Ireland or elsewhere would begin then, with a description of the dominant
institutional players (churches, sects, denominations) and their teachings which
structure ways of being religious, and the religious habitus.
The debate about the nature and extent of secularisation has shifted away from
the power and influence of religious institutions and moved to religious action and,
specifically, to issues such as ‘believing without belonging’ and the individualisation
and privatisation of religious belief and practice (Davie 1994; Crockett and Voas
2006; Glendinning and Bruce 2006; Houtman and Aupers 2007). However,
Dobbelaere pointed to the importance of structural transformations and argued that as
well as a decline in religious belief and practice and the importance of the
supernatural and transcendental, secularisation also takes place at a structural level:
within religious institutions (the emergence of liberal-individualism and a softening of
rules and regulations), and within society (the decline in power of religious
institutions over other social institutions). More recently, Taylor has argued that
secularisation revolves around a decline of religion in public life, a decline in
religious belief and practice, and an increase in the level of debate, critical reflection
and scrutiny of religion. We argue that this third dimension is directly linked to the
growth of the media and the way in which it has reported and challenged religious
teachings and institutions which were beyond debate and discussion.
The more general task is to show how these macro and micro transformations
are connected and how they have taken place in different societies. What is required
in the Irish case is a long-term historical perspective that is able to link changes in
institutional structures within Irish society to changes in habitus and practices. There
has been a paucity of empirical investigations, particularly case studies that have
sought to trace the connections between long-term structural change – in our case
between the media and the Catholic Church – and changes in religiosity.
The decline in belonging – institutional participation – is related to the decline
in the power of churches to influence, limit and control what happens in other social
fields such as the state, the media, health, education and social welfare. But while the
debate about secularisation may have shifted towards religious action, it is important
to recognise that the decline in the power of religious institutions as significant
players in different social fields, is a critical aspect of secularisation. It is the decline
in the ability of churches to influence the thinking, policies and practices in other

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social fields which is linked to a decline not just in religious thinking or habitus but,
more importantly, to a decline in religious practice. There is another important
dimension to this argument. As well as churches losing their influence in other social
fields, they have been less able to fend off the interference on non-religious
institutions in the religious field. In particular, the state and the media have become
dominant players in the religious field in Ireland. The state increasingly treats the
Catholic Church as any other legal institution and religious personnel like any other
citizens. This was most evident when, in 1998, child abuse victim Colm O’Gorman
attempted to sue the diocese of Ferns. The Church attempted to claim diplomatic
immunity but were found to be equivalent to any club or social group. The diocese
eventually admitted negligence and settled. The impact of the media has perhaps been
even greater. Not only do many of the messages of the media run contrary to the
teachings of churches, but the media in the West have begun to see churches – which
were once ‘sacred’ institutions – as potentially profane and to investigate, document
and analyse their activities and personnel.
The Media and the Catholic Church in Ireland
The coverage of CCSA in the media has to be placed in a long-term historical context.
During the last half of the twentieth century there was a gradual shift in the balance of
power between the Catholic Church and the media. This can be analysed at an
institutional level: the Church ceased to be a dominant player in the media field while
the media became a major player in the religious field. This shift in the balance of
power was linked to a change in habitus. The messages of the media were often
contrary to those of the Church, particularly in relation to sexuality. What was once
hidden and forbidden became exposed and acceptable.
During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries the Catholic Church developed a
monopoly position in the religious field in Ireland. This dominant position enabled it
to become a major institutional player in other social fields, particularly the state,
family, education, health and social welfare (Inglis 1998a). The Church was also a
major player in the field of the media. Although it never developed its own
newspaper, radio or television station, it was able to limit and control what was
published and broadcast (Adams 1968; Woodman 1985; Boland 1999; Rockett 2004).
This symbolic domination operated in three different ways. First, until the 1970s the

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Church was able to ensure that the media printed and broadcasted stories and
programmes that were in accordance with its teachings and did not print or broadcast
stories that were contrary to its interests.2
Up until the 1950s, there was determined
effort through various movements ‘to make Ireland more totally Catholic.’ (Whyte
1980). A very strict censorship of books and films operated up to the 1970s
(Woodman 1985; Rockett 2004). As Murphy pointed out, this formal censorship
created a habitus of censorship. ‘Official censorship created layers of unofficial, self-
righteous, busybody censorship in many a local community’. Writing anything critical
about the Church was almost taboo. An employee of the supposedly secular The Irish
Times noted that journalists in that paper, ‘had to avoid writing about any subject in
which criticism, even if justified, could be construed as criticism of the Church’ (see
Inglis 1998a). This habitus of the Church being beyond criticism lasted through the
1980s. Matt Cooper, former editor of The Sunday Tribune noted in 1997 that the
Church had ‘got it soft for too long – its comments and statements were reported but
not analysed or commented upon’(Cooper 1997). It was not until the 1990s that the
media were able to undertake the type of investigate journalism that forced the Church
into explaining and justifying its actions and policies.
Second, the Church was able to secure regular and ample coverage of its
events and to have the media comply with its demands. Albeit a secular newspaper,
up to the 1990s The Irish Times devoted pages to newly published Papal Encyclicals.
Despite regular protests proclaiming sectarianism by the state public broadcaster,
Radio Telefis Éireann still broadcasts (on radio and television) 18 peals of the
Angelus prayer bell at noon and 6 p.m. (Cooney 1999; Cormack 2005). Third,
although the Church was (and still is) the single largest interest group in Irish society
and traditionally has seen itself as the social conscience of Irish society, its leaders
rarely engaged in discussions and debates in the media (Ryan 1979). As Inglis (2000)
points out, following Bourdieu (1998) this may have been a refusal to enter into
discourse where the agenda, format and rules for making contributions are defined by
the media. But it is also that the Church refuses to make itself accountable to the
media which, increasingly, see themselves rather than the Church as the conscience of
Irish society (Browne 1997). The Church has begun to recognise this shift in the
balance of power. In 2007, Archbishop Seán Brady noted that the moral and social
authority of traditional institutions, such as the Church, had been ‘partly replaced by

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the 'authority' and influence of the ‘mass media’ (McGarry 2007). The change in the
institutional balance of power was linked to a change in habitus and practice. During
the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the Church controlled the socialisation of each
new generation through its ownership and control of most schools. Through these
schools, the Church has been able to maintain its symbolic domination in the home.
Its teachings and rituals were passed on to each new generation, particularly through
mothers who had become central to the Church’s monopoly over morality and
spirituality (Inglis 1998a).
In the early 1970s, 90 per cent of Irish Catholics went to mass once a week
(Nic Ghiolla Phádraig 1976). However by 1999, this reduced to 66 per cent of Irish
Catholics attending mass once a week or more.3
The rapid expansion of first radio and
later television ownership meant effectively that more Irish Catholics began to spend
a greater amount of time with the media than they did in the Church. More
significantly, the home became infiltrated with practices and messages that were
anathema to the teachings of the Church (Inglis 1998a). Gradually, ritual practices
such as saying the rosary and going to the local church for devotions and novenas
began to die out. The more the media infiltrated Irish homes, the more they began to
influence what people did and said. The dominant habitus of piety, humility and self-
sacrifice began to be replaced by a secular habitus revolving around materialism,
liberalism, hedonism and self-fulfilment. Pleasures and desires were stimulated rather
than repressed (Inglis 2006). A modern generation began to develop a new
understanding and appreciation of sexuality, particularly through teenage and
women’s magazines. Sexual expression and fulfilment were openly encouraged. This
was linked to an encouragement to critically reflect and talk about sex. A Stay Safe
programme was implemented in primary schools in the 1980s to prevent child sexual
abuse. It encouraged children to say ‘No’ to adults who tried to abuse them and to tell
someone who they trusted (Inglis 1998b). Such measures facilitated by the state and
promoted by the media played a role in preventing and heightening awareness of child
sex abuse in Ireland. Arguably, the gradual social recognition and public debate
surrounding this issue finally enabled victims to disclose abuse which may have
occurred many years or decades previously.

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Irish Clerical Sex Scandals
The first scandal to shake the Catholic Church in Ireland was, in retrospect rather
venial. In January 1992, Conor Brady, then editor of The Irish Times, received a
phone call informing him that Eamon Casey, the Bishop of Galway, had had an affair
with an American woman, Annie Murphy, in the 1970s who had given birth to his son
and returned to live in her native country. At that time, Bishop Casey was one of the
most well-known Irish bishops and regularly participated in the media. Conor Brady
was extremely cautious about running the story. The Irish media have generally been
reticent to report on the private lives of individuals, especially when there was no
evidence that it interfered with their job. Brady consulted a senior expert on canon law
in the Church, who warned Brady that if he could not prove the story was true, ‘the
church will destroy The Irish Times’ (Brady 2005). Brady arranged an interview with
Bishop Casey, but he never turned up. Later the same day, the Vatican announced that
he had tendered his resignation and had flown to a secret destination in South
America. Brady maintains that the fall of Bishop Casey was a monumental event in
Ireland. It was, he said, ‘a shocking revelation of the gap between what the Catholic
Church preached and what some of its leading figures practised.’ He went on to claim
that ‘the dramatic fall-off in religious practice, the steep decline in vocations to the
religious life and the near total loss of authority by the institutional church’ could be
attributed to the fall of Bishop Casey (Brady 2005). While Brady’s claims may be
exaggerated, the story did anger and disappoint many Irish Catholics. As one of the
participants in a study by Hilliard concluded ‘[the Casey saga] knocked all the
religion out of people ... It lowered the priests down to nothing’ (Mrs McDonald
8:246 quoted in Hilliard 2003). Another participant described the impact on her as a
Catholic mother,
I can't describe to you what it did to me inside, it was like there was a hole
there that could never be filled. The shock I got, personally, that day! The
more I thought about it and the things that followed I can say it damaged my
whole life. This was a great opportunity for (daughter) to have a go at me so
she came in to see me…well Mam she said what have you to say for yourself
now?…I said I had heard about Bishop Casey that morning telling her I
thought he was ill. I sat there and I hadn't the answers for her but I said to be

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honest it is a bigger shock to me than it will ever be to you. (Mrs Bohan 10:26
quoted in Hilliard 2003).
Soon after the Bishop Casey scandal, it was revealed that another nationally famous
priest, Fr Michael Cleary, had had an ongoing affair with his housekeeper Phyllis
Hamilton who had given birth to his son Ross. Fr Cleary was also a regular participant
on national radio and television. He had his own talk show on a Dublin radio station
for a number of years. It was only after he died that it emerged he had helped shelter
and protect Fr Tony Walsh, a fellow curate in his Dublin parish, and one of the
country’s leading child sex abusers.
However the first, and probably still the most notorious “paedophile priest” in
Ireland, was Fr Brendan Smyth. In 1994, Smyth pleaded guilty to 74 charges of sexual
and indecent assault involving children. He was sentenced to 12 years in prison,
where he eventually died. The media coverage of his court case represented Smyth as
a cold, callous, calculating abuser. But there was another factor that added to his
notoriety. He had been charged in Northern Ireland but, at the time of charging, he
was living with his religious order in the Republic. There had been ongoing problems
processing extradition orders between the two jurisdictions. Eventually, the Royal
Ulster Constabulary (Northern Ireland police force) filed for his extradition. It later
emerged that this request lay dormant in the offices of the Irish Director of Public
Prosecutions for over a year. The controversial handling of the extradition eventually
led to the resignation of Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Albert Reynolds and the
President of the High Court, Justice Harry White.
Sex scandals within the Catholic Church over the latter half of the 20th
century
have, then, involved both paternity cases and the sexual and physical abuse of
children by priests, brothers, nuns and bishops.4
The cases of Casey, Cleary and
Smyth provide an insight into just some of the kinds of clerical sex scandals which
were featured in the Irish media throughout the 1990s. However, there have been
many more. The Ferns Report identified over 100 allegations of child sexual abuse by
21 priests in their diocese since 1962 (Department of Health and Children 2005). The
archdiocese of Dublin revealed figures indicating more than 350 allegations of sexual
abuse involving over 100 of its priests since 1940 (McGarry 2006). From the 1990s
onwards, clerical scandals were frequently revealed through the media. A large

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number and variety of clerical sex scandals came into the public arena over a
relatively short period of time. A possible explanation might be that by the 1990s
more and more people started to feel less regulated and dominated by the Church,
which further contributed to enabling victims to come forward and disclose their
abuse.
From Fortune to Ferns
The disclosure of clerical child sex abuse in the media can be described as a subject
which, due to the power and symbolic domination of the Catholic Church in Irish
society, could not be reported to one which had to be reported. This is most apparent
in the recent history of the Ferns diocese, described in a banner front-page headline of
one tabloid as the ‘most evil diocese in the world’(Vousden 2005).5
The Irish Sun, 26th
October 2005:01
In 1990, a regional newspaper within the Ferns diocese, The Wexford People, carried
a front-page story of a CCSA case which led to the conviction of local priest, Fr
James Doyle. Doyle pled guilty to the charges and received a suspended sentence. An
hour after the newspaper was published, the office of The Wexford People was
inundated with calls protesting the story. By that evening, the townspeople had
gathered in front of the office building in Wexford’s main street and proceeded to
burn copies of the newspaper in a mass demonstration. Complaints against the
newspaper continued for weeks and there was even a campaign to boycott any product
or service which used The Wexford People for advertising.6
Five years later the case
of another local priest, Fr Seán Fortune, accused of child sex abuse was carried by the

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newspaper. This time there were no public demonstrations or threat of boycott
(O'Connor 2000). Within the space of five years the notion that a priest could be a
paedophile went from being an idea beyond the realm of possibility, provoking a
defiantly aggressive reaction, to something that could be contemplated. This work
seeks to describe and analyse the process by which this change in attitude towards the
Church occurred during the 1990s.
In February 1995, Colm O’Gorman made an official complaint of CSA against
Fr Seán Fortune to Wexford police.7
Like many other CCSA victims in Ireland and
internationally, the Gorman family’s attempts for recognition and retribution from the
Catholic Church for these crimes would prove to be unsuccessful. Ultimately, the
media played a central role in exposing this issue to the wider public. The suicide of
Fr Seán Fortune, in March 1999, prompted the first newspaper reports naming
Fortune as the priest charged with child sex abuse. Throughout the four years of this
case, the media pressured Church authorities for answers, particularly Bishop of
Ferns, Brendan Comiskey. Comiskey was responsible for Fortune and, despite being
aware of many complaints of abuse against him, repeatedly placed Fortune in parishes
where he had access to children. However, journalists investigating this story were
met with what has been regarded as a legal rather than a pastoral response. Bishop
Comiskey who usually revelled in the media spotlight, refused to give interviews.
Instead, lawyers and public relations experts were employed by the Church to respond
to the scandal (Ryan 1999). In the midst of these allegations, Comiskey took leave
and underwent treatment for alcoholism in America. After a long drawn out legal
process, Fortune committed suicide before his trial. He was facing sixty-six charges of
sexual assault against nine boys. The issue of CCSA in the Ferns diocese continued
and climaxed with the release of The Ferns Report in 2005 which contained the
findings of a major inquiry by the state into CCSA and its mishandling by authorities
in the diocese. By this time, the media had revealed a wealth of CCSA cases where
the victims’ complaints had been inappropriately mishandled by church authorities. It
was revealed that traditionally the most common response by the church was to
reinstate the accused priest in another parish, where he invariably continued to abuse
children.
This local story focusing on an individual abuser in a small Irish community,
escalated in the media to represent a culture of abuse. CCSA appeared to be

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disseminating from the Catholic Church in Ireland during the 1990s. The case of Fr
Seán Fortune reveals macro-level shifts in the relationship between the Church and
the media. Media reports during this period illustrate how the values and beliefs,
carefully cultivated by the Church and inculcated over generations in the bodies and
souls of Irish Catholics were now being undermined and contaminated.
As shown in the following image, tabloid newspapers commonly referred to clerical
child sex abusers as ‘pervert priests’ judging them as ‘guilty sinners’ in a Church
increasingly depicted as ‘evil’ (Vousden 2005).
The Irish Sun, 26th
October 2005:01
It is argued this “revelation” highlighted on an institutional level by the media has
provoked a reflexive process in Catholic individuals which was linked to a decline in
solidarity and support for the Church and a decline in Catholic belief and practices.
Trends in Irish Religiosity
While it is not possible to make direct causal links between cases of CCSA and the
way they were reported in the media and secularisation, it is possible to document
some dramatic changes in the nature of Irish Catholic religiosity and the decline in
trust and support for the Church. Using EVS data, analysis of these trends in personal
and institutional religiosity was conducted to examine the religiosity of Irish people
over time.8
This was done with the aim of comparing levels of religiosity in Ireland at
three points in time from three waves of data collection; in 1981 when media reports
of CCSA were less frequent, in 1990 when cases of CCSA were beginning to be
exposed to the public, and in 1999 when Ireland was experiencing a barrage of these
cases in the media. Irish religiosity over time was compared with Italy, Malta and

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Spain in order to test whether trends for Ireland were similar or different to that of
other Catholic European countries.9
Trends in Personal Religiosity
An index was constructed in order to measure the latent concept SPIRITUALITY using
five variables indicating personal religious beliefs associated with Catholicism. These
variables concern answers to the following “yes/no” questions, Do you believe in
God?; Do you believe in life after death?; Do you believe in heaven?; Do you believe
in hell?; Do you believe in sin? The scores on these five variables were added up to
create a SPIRITUALITY index ranging from 0 to 5. A score of 5 meaning the respondent
reports to believe in all five spiritual concepts, and a score of 0 meaning the
respondent believes in none of the five concepts. This index is considered to indicate
the personal religiosity of individuals.
Data: EVS 1981 – 1999

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Visual inspection of the mean scores in Graph 1 shows that spirituality in Ireland has
remained relatively stable over time. The mean score for SPIRITUALITY in Ireland was
4.23 in 1981, 4.12 in 1990 and 4.09 in 1999; during this time Irish people, on average,
believed in approximately four of the five concepts of SPIRITUALITY used in the index
constructed for this study. The total mean scores for Italy and Spain indicate that the
average respondent believed in about three of the five concepts of SPIRITUALITY. The
total mean score for Malta reveals the highest levels of SPIRITUALITY reporting on
average to believe in all of the five beliefs. It was found that differences across
countries were statistically significant whereas differences across time were not.10
Trends in Institutional Religiosity
The second dimension examined was the institutional religiosity of individuals. This
was done using two separate variables CHURCH ATTENDANCE and TRUST IN THE
CHURCH.11
These variables indicate the institutional religious practice and attitudes of
respondents in this study. To be able to compare across countries and over time,
regardless of changes in spirituality, analysis was conducted using the SPIRITUALITY
index as a covariate. Like the SPIRITUALITY index, CHURCH ATTENDANCE varies
between 0 and 5. 5 meaning respondents attend church more than once a week and 0
meaning respondents never attend church.12

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Data: EVS 1981 – 1999
Examination of the mean scores shows a decline in church attendance in Ireland. In
1981, the mean score for CHURCH ATTENDANCE in Ireland was 3.44. This indicates
that on average, Irish people attended church somewhere between monthly and
weekly. In 1990, this frequency remained stable with a mean score of 3.44. However,
in 1999 CHURCH ATTENDANCE dropped to 2.91. This indicates that the average Irish
person attended church less than once a month. This analysis shows that regardless of
spirituality, levels of CHURCH ATTENDANCE remained relatively stable between 1981
and 1990, and there was a decline in CHURCH ATTENDANCE between 1990 and 1999.
Italy showed similar results as respondents attended church on average slightly less
than once a month. Spanish respondents also attended church once a month in 1981
and 1990. However, this decreased to an attendance of more than once a year in 1999.
As with spirituality, CHURCH ATTENDANCE in Malta was the highest with respondents
attending church almost weekly in 1981, gradually declining to somewhere between
monthly and weekly by 1999. The differences across time and across countries are
statistically significant.13

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Finally, the variable TRUST IN THE CHURCH was examined as an additional
indicator of institutional religiosity. Compared with the other variables used in this
study, the number of answer categories for was less for this variable. TRUST IN THE
CHURCH was coded such that 0 meant respondents reported to have no trust in the
Church, and 3 meant respondents reported to have a great deal of trust in the
Church.14
Data: EVS 1981 – 1999
The mean score for TRUST IN THE CHURCH in Ireland was 2.28 in 1981, this decreased
to 2.11 in 1990 and again decreased to 1.80 in 1999.15
This indicates that in 1981,
Irish people had more than ‘quite a lot’ of trust in their Church. In 1990, this
decreased somewhat. However by 1999, their trust ranged between ‘quite a lot’, to
‘not very much’. Analysis shows that regardless of one’s SPIRITUALITY, Irish peoples
TRUST IN THE CHURCH declined significantly declined during the 1990s. This is the
first time in this study that we see a dimension of Irish religiosity levels dropping
below that of Italy and Spain. In short, by 1999 Ireland had the lowest levels of TRUST
IN THE CHURCH than any of the other Catholic European countries examined.16

October 2008
18
An opinion poll in 2008, found that six in ten of the respondents agreed that
their trust in the priesthood had been damaged by allegations of child sex abuse (Red
C 2008). However, it is not possible to make a direct correlation between the decline
in institutional support for the Catholic Church and the dramatic increase in the
negative stories that emerged about the Church in the 1990s. It may well be that that
Catholic Ireland was already in the process of becoming more secular, that Catholics
had begun to distant themselves from institutional religion and engage in what Davie
has described as ‘believing without belonging’(Davie 1994; Voas and Crockett 2005;
Glendinning and Bruce 2006; Inglis 2007). However, it may well be that the
willingness of the media to break the sacred ring of steel which had protected the
Catholic Church for so long and not just to report but engage in investigative
journalism about CCSA was an important catalyst in the demise of church practice
and loyalty to the institution. The question is if there had been no media coverage
would more Catholics still belong and participate in the institutional church. In other
words, has CCSA and it’s coverage in the media accelerated the process of
secularisation in Ireland? It would seem that continual negative publicity in the media
helped to challenge the traditional Catholic habitus and the view of priests being
paragons of virtue and the Church as the moral guardian of Irish society. It was
through the reporting of CCSA that the media, for the first time in its history in
Ireland, broke through the embargo on criticism and negative reporting which the
Catholic Church had created and developed and, in so doing, helped to replace the
Church as the conscience of Irish society.
Conclusion
The question at the heart of this paper is simple. What role did the media play in the
decline in the power and influence of the Catholic Church in Ireland? We have argued
that over the past fifty years, the Catholic Church lost its ability to limit and control
the media. It was no longer a major institutional player in the media field. The result
was that the messages contained in newspapers, magazines, radio, television, film and
more recently the Internet, were often at variance with the ethos, lifestyle and
practices promoted by the Church. More significantly, until the 1990s the Catholic
Church had managed to prevent either the media or the state from entering the
religious field and interfering in the affairs of the Church. There was a real but rarely

October 2008
19
acknowledged ring which surrounded the Church, which made the religious field
sacred, and which prevented profane intrusions from outside institutions and
organisations. The decline in the symbolic domination of the Church meant that
although it was no longer able to control media content, it was able to prevent
negative reporting and investigations into its affairs. We have argued that once the
sacred ring preventing any intrusion was broken and the media began to report on sex
scandals, that there was a major shift in the balance of power between the two
institutions. Investigative reports and documentaries became combined with detailed
coverage of court cases involving clerical child sex abuse. The reports and
documentaries about the Ferns diocese pressured the state into undertaking a detailed
investigation of its own. What was crucial in the media reports, particularly the
coverage of the Fr Seán Fortune case and the Ferns report, was how the Church was
depicted as evil. It had moved from being regarded and treated by the media as a
sacred, almost untouchable institution, to one which was profoundly profane. Within a
period of ten years, the media abandoned its policy of non-interference in Church
affairs and regularly depicted the Church as a public enemy.
In this paper, we have outlined some important links that are central to
understanding recent transformations in Irish culture. One of the main transformations
has been the decline in the dominance of the Catholic Church in Irish society. It has
lost its monopoly over morality. It is no longer able to limit and control what is done
by the state. It is no longer the dominant stakeholder in many social fields particularly
family, health, social welfare and education. The decline in its influence in these
social fields is linked at the micro level to a decline in institutional belonging and
participation; mass attendance and trust in the Church have declined. Future research
can reveal whether the trends outlined in this study continue. It is hoped that the work
presented here, which shows that examination of the relationship between the Church
and the media, can further our understanding of the secularisation process.

October 2008
20
NOTES
The authors would like to thank Dr Gijs van Houten for his advice and comments on the quantitative
analyses in this paper.
1
An opinion poll appearing in The Irish Examiner in 2008 suggested these levels of religiosity may
have declined, but only slightly. More than eight in ten (84 per cent) of respondents believed in God;
78 per cent believed in heaven. Over six in ten (63 per cent) prayed at least once a week, 45 per cent
went to church or religious services at least once a week. There is however, a question mark over their
commitment to the institutional Church. Only half of the respondents said they would be willing to
donate €10 or more every week to the support of their local church (Red C).
2
Although the relationship between religion and the media has been the focus on some considerable
debate in Ireland, there has been little empirical social or historical research, (Bogle 1997). However,
Inglis (2007) argued that during most of the twentieth century, the Church symbolically dominated the
media through formal and informal censorship.
3
Finding based on European Values Study 1999 for Ireland (http://spitswww.uvt.nl/fsw/evs/index.htm)
4
In order for sexual and physical violence against children to be considered a social problem, and
therefore become subject to public attention, these acts had to be recognised as abusive and even
criminal. This is a relatively recent phenomenon in Western society (Pfohl 1977).
5
The Ferns diocese incorporates most of county Wexford, and some of counties Carlow and
Wicklow.
6
This was not the first occasion where a boycotting strategy was used as a form of protest in Ferns.
In the 1950s, a local parish priest orchestrated a boycott of Protestant business in reaction to the
decision by a local Protestant woman to home-school her daughters rather than send them to Catholic
school. This was deemed to be in breach of her duty as the wife of a Catholic. The story attracted
international attention and was dramatised in the film, A Love Divided, in 1999 (McGuigan 1999).
7
Although O’Gorman made his complaint as an adult, he was allegedly raped by Fortune in 1980
(aged 14) and abused for a further two and a half years. While it can be said the Fortune “case” was
drawn out over ten years (1995–2005), the alleged abuse of young boys by Fortune took place over
decades.
8
Data were weighted to control for age. Weights were assigned based on the proportion of
respondents in twenty age-groups (Ntiles) in each of the countries relative to the proportion of
respondents in those age groups in the entire sample. As SPIRITUALITY was used as a covariate,
analysis for CHURCH ATTENDANCE was carried out on only those respondents who answered CHURCH
ATTENDANCE and each of the five variables used in the SPIRITUALITY index. Similarly, analysis for
TRUST IN THE CHURCH was carried out on only those respondents who answered for both SPIRITUALITY
and TRUST IN THE CHURCH.
9
EVS data for Ireland and Italy were collected in the following years; 1981 (WAVE 1), 1990 (WAVE
2), and 1999 (WAVE 3). EVS data for Spain were collected in; 1981 (WAVE 1), 1990 (WAVE 2), 1999 -
2000 (WAVE 3). EVS data for Malta were collected in; 1983 (WAVE 1), 1991 (WAVE 2) and 1999 (WAVE
3). For ease of presentation, the mean year for each wave (1981, 1990 and 1999) is used in the main
text of this article.
10
A 2-Way ANOVA was conducted to determine the influence of COUNTRY and WAVE on
SPIRITUALITY. Results show that although WAVE does not have a significant main effect F(2,13586)
=1.542; COUNTRY does show a significant main effect F(3,13586) =568.549, p<.05; and findings show
there is a significant COUNTRY by WAVE interaction effect, F(6,13586) =27.852, p<.05. Post hoc
analyses using the Tukey HSD method with an alpha value of 0.5 found numerous significant mean
differences for Ireland between waves and between countries. Please note that a single independent
variable “countrywave” was used for ‘all’ post hoc testing.
11
The EVS variable Confidence in Churches is used as an indicator of TRUST IN THE CHURCH for
this study. As 98 per cent of the sample report to be Roman Catholic, it is assumed they refer to the
Roman Catholic Church in their response.
12
Mean scores for Church attendance were recoded as follows, 0= Never, 1= Once a year or less,
2= More than once a year, 3= Once a month, 4= Once a week, 5= More than once a week.
13
A 2-Way ANOVA was conducted to determine the influence of COUNTRY and WAVE on CHURCH
ATTENDANCE. Results show that WAVE has a significant main effect F(2,13585) = 45.146, p<.05; that
COUNTRY shows a significant main effect F(3,13585) = 257.092, p<.05; and that there is a significant
COUNTRY by WAVE interaction effect, F(6,13585) = 13.940, p<.05. SPIRITUALITY accounted for a
significant amount of the overall variance, F(1,13585) = 7523.552, p <.05. Post hoc analyses using the
Tukey HSD method with an alpha value of 0.5 found numerous significant mean differences for Ireland

October 2008
21
between waves and between countries. Analysis was also conducted without the use of the
SPIRITUALITY covariate. Results for a 2-way ANOVA showed that WAVE had a significant main effect
F(2,13586) =35.965, p<.05; that COUNTRY had a significant main effect F (3,13586) =776.384, p<.05;
and found a significant COUNTRY by WAVE interaction effect, F(6,13586)= 35.338, p<.05.
14
Mean scores for TRUST IN THE CHURCH were coded (in EVS) as follows, 0= None at all, 1= Not
very much, 2= Quite a lot, 3= A great deal.
15
This represents a drop in TRUST IN THE CHURCH of 0.17 between 1981 and 1990, and a drop of
nearly twice that, 0.31, between 1990 and 1999.
16
A 2-Way ANOVA was conducted to determine the influence of COUNTRY and WAVE on TRUST
IN THE CHURCH. Results show that WAVE has a significant main effect F(2,11815) =86.194, p<.05; that
COUNTRY shows a significant main effect F(3,11815) =55.220, p<.05; and that there is a significant
COUNTRY by WAVE interaction effect, F(6,11815) =19.464, p<.05. SPIRITUALITY accounted for a
significant amount of the overall variance, F(1,11815) =3036.212, p<.05. Post hoc analyses using the
Tukey HSD method with an alpha value of 0.5 found numerous significant mean differences for Ireland
between waves and between countries. Analysis was also conducted without the use of the
SPIRITUALITY covariate. Results for a 2-way ANOVA showed that WAVE had a significant main effect
F(2,11816) =86.711, p<.05; that COUNTRY had a significant main effect F (3,11816) =174.953, p<.05;
and found a significant COUNTRY by WAVE interaction effect, F(6,11816) =14.126, p<.05.

October 2008
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