The thrill seems to come in finding new warheads: a 2019 article in the nation’s newspaper of record, the Irish Times, deployed Maura Higgins, a young woman from County Longford who had shot to fame as a contestant on the British television series Love Island-in part thanks to a frankness about her sex life that stood out even in a show predicated on exhibitionism-and whose stock with the English tabloids continues to run high. Nevertheless, some in the opinion-forming classes and on social media continue (to borrow a phrase from Niall Gooch) to run bombing missions over the rubble of Catholic Ireland. This is the true measure of how things stand. As I write, almost uniquely in Europe under COVID, Ireland has made offering or attending Mass a criminal offense. Don’t be fooled by the shaky residual attachment to things like First Holy Communion. Ireland nowadays seems filled with people who are content to ignore, forget, or step around what’s left of Catholicism, including the actual church buildings themselves. The Irish, the Church and the End of a Special Relationship
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