Irish Secularization and Religious Identities: Evidence of an Emerging New Catholic Habitus

Abstract

The author identifies major changes since the 1960s that have transformed the role of religion in Irish society. An analysis of Irish data from the 2006 survey “Church and Religion in an Enlarged Europe” reveal that these have culminated in a shift in the religious and spiritual identities of young Irish Catholics aged 18—29. This shift is linked to a decline in the power of the Catholic Church in Ireland within education, social welfare, public policy and the media, and its subsequent demise as the sole arbiter of private morality. Rather than having turned to new spiritual expressions, young Irish Catholics embody a new Catholic habitus. Although they still have a strong cultural attachment to Catholicism they exercise a great deal of autonomy in their religious practices, beliefs and attitudes, and their ways of being religious and spiritual appear less institutionalized than older cohorts.