The latest Census figures show that the percentage of Irish people who are Catholic has now fallen to seventy-eight per cent-- down from eighty-four per cent in the last Census five years ago.
Those who claim no religion has gone up to ten per cent. Presumably Michael Nugent and his Atheist Ireland buddies will be breaking out the champagne.
I'm actually surprised the first figure is so high and the second figure is so low. I think that must include a huge swathe of purely cultural Catholics.
In terms of the Irish language, 73,803 people now say they speak it daily-- just three thousand fewer people than were in the stadium watching the last Superbowl. It's a reduction of more than three thousand.
Again, it's hard to believe that figure isn't greatly inflated. It certainly doesn't include me.
1.76 million people in Ireland claim they can speak Irish.
By any chance do they have many Jedi Knights in Ireland? The last Australian census was less than a year ago and I don't think the numbers are released yet, but in the previous census so many Australians put down their religion as 'Jedi Knight' that it would actually be within the top twenty religions. So I'm told. Since they are filming these days at the Skelligs perhaps Jedis are now in union with Rome?
ReplyDelete22% of Australians claimed to be ' no religion' in 2011, it was expected to be higher last year. Numerically only the Catholic Church somewhat higher than' no religions'. It must be said that there is quite an organized group campaigning for people to say ' no religion', no doubt to dissuade government funding of religious institutions. As you say, there can actually be a grey area, even here as some people will often be involved in the perimeter, through love of classical music,etc
PS I bought some Cadburys eggs for my youngest niece today and noticed that the word EASTER was downplayed a bit, it was present on one side of the box, but the front and back just called them 'chocolate eggs'
From what I could find in a hurry:58,000 Australians wrote JEDI KNIGHT or something similar in 2006, but the official statistics include this as RELIGION UNDEFINED
ReplyDelete"Jedis are now in communion with Rome" made me laugh out loud. I'm glad your government hasn't indulged this caper...
DeleteAs for how many Jedi Knights we have, I don't know. But I did see an Imperial Stormtrooper walking down O'Connell Street around the time The Force Awakens was released. I wasn't alarmed; they're famously bad shots.
It always saddens me to find Irish so little spoken in Ireland. I used to live in Wales and it always delighted me that Welsh was the regular language of about half of the country, geographically. But the Welsh were good Protestants who translated the word of God into their own language. Perhaps the fruit of Papism is language death, just as the fruit of Papism is idolatry of the worst, most vile sort, i.e mariolatry &c.
ReplyDeleteYes, possibly.
DeleteAnd by "possibly", I mean that you know quite well that Catholics don't worship Mary, so I'm not going to bother arguing this. The explanations for the decline of Irish is much simpler-- it was suppressed by the British.
Delete