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Article: The new Ireland: it's not Catholic, for one thing.(RELIGION & SOCIETY)
- Article from:
- National Review
- Article date:
- May 9, 2005
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2005 National Review, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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THE death of the Pope presented the taoiseach (prime minister) of Ireland with a dilemma: Should he declare an official day of mourning or not? After all, Ireland is a country whose Catholicism, like that of Poland, has for centuries been intimately connected with its national identity and struggle for independence: and even the Jesuit-educated atheist of Cuba, Fidel Castro, decreed three official days of mourning for the Pope in his besieged tropical Communist redoubt.
But Ireland has a new secular religion, which one might call Multiculturalist Mammonism. The Mammonist wing of the new faith, represented by the head of an association of small businessmen, said ...