Faith in religion 'has plummeted' in past ten years

Monday April 11th 2005

JUST 52pc of Irish people have said they have "a good deal of confidence" in churches, despite the outpouring of public grief for the late Pope.

An international survey found that faith in organised religion plummeted in Ireland during the past decade. While 72pc of people had a lot of confidence in the churches in 1990, that figure had dropped to just over half by 2000.

The level of public confidence in churches here was also below an international average of 64pc in 2000, according to the World Values Survey.

In contrast, 75pc of people in the USA said they had confidence in churches.

The findings echo much of an ESRI (Economic and Social Research Institute in Ireland) study of values in Ireland, north and south, published last month.

Focusing on the European Values Survey carried out during 1999-2000, it found that there has been a downward trend in terms of confidence in churches here since the 1970s.

Additional sea changes in Irish society in relation to traditionally conservative views on issues such as homosexuality and abortion were also recorded by the World Values Survey, using research compiled by London's School of Economics.

Irish people also became a lot more willing to accept divorce and the use of marijuana over the last decade.

While 52pc said in 1990 that homosexuality is never justifiable, by 2000 that figure had dropped to 37pc.

Opposition to abortion lessened slightly. While 53pc of Irish people believed in 1990 that it is never right, that figure had decreased to 51pc by 2000.

There was another reduction in the percentage of people who felt that divorce is never justifiable. Just over 30pc supported this view in 1990; ten years later it had dropped to 26pc.

Six percent said in 1990 they would not want a person of a different race as a neighbour; that proportion had risen to 12pc by 2000.

Ben Quinn

? Irish Independent