This book engages with the spectacular disenchantment with Catholicism in Ireland over the relatively short period of four decades. It begins with the visit of Pope John Paul II in 1979 and in particular his address to young people in Galway, where the crowd had been entertained beforehand by two of Ireland's most celebrated clerics, Bishop Eamon Casey and Fr Michael Cleary, both of whom were engaged at the time in romantic affairs that resulted in the birth of children. It will be argued that the Pope's visit was prompted by concern at the significant fall in vocations to priesthood and the religious life and the increasing secularism of Irish society.
The book then explores the various referenda that took place during the 1980s on divorce and abortion which, although they resulted in victories for the Church, demonstrated that their hold on the Irish public was weakening. The clerical abuse scandals of the 1990s were the tipping point for an Irish public which was generally resentful of the intrusive and repressive form of Catholicism that had been the norm in Ireland since the formation of the State in the 1920s.
Boasting an impressive array of contributors from various backgrounds and expertise, the essays in the book attempt to delineate the exact reasons for the progressive dismantling of the cultural legacy of Catholicism and the consequences this has had on Irish society. Among the contributors are Patricia Casey, Joe Cleary, Michael Cronin, Louise Fuller, Patsy McGarry, Vincent Twomey and Eamonn Wall.

Introduction - Eamon Maher and Eugene O'Brien
Part I: Tracing change and setting the context
1. 'The times they are a changin'': Tracing the transformation of Irish Catholicism through the eyes of a journalist - Patsy McGarry
2. Revisiting the faith of our fathers ... and reimagining its relevance in the context of twenty-first-century Ireland - Louise Fuller
3. Dethroning Irish Catholicism: Church, State and modernity in contemporary Ireland - David Carroll Cochran
4. Refracted visions: Street photography, humanism and the loss of innocence - Justin Carville
5. Contemporary Irish Catholicism: A time of hope! - Vincent Twomey
Part II: Going against the tide
6. The poetry of accumulation: Irish-American fables of resistance - Eamonn Wall
7. Prophetic voices or complicit functionaries? Irish priests and the unravelling of a culture - Eamon Maher
8. Tony Flannery: A witness in an age of witnesses - Catherine Maignant
9. 'Belief shifts': Ireland's referendum and the journey from Gemeinschaft to Gesellschaft - Eugene O'Brien
Part III: Challenges in the here and now
10. Faith, hope and clarity? A new church for the unhoused - Michael Cronin
11. The people in the pews: Silent and betrayed - Patricia Casey
12. Irreconcilable differences? The fraught relationship between women and the Catholic Church in Ireland - Sharon Tighe-Mooney
13. The Catholic twilight - Joe Cleary
Index

Eamon Maher is Director of the National Centre for Franco-Irish Studies in IT Tallaght
Eugene O'Brien is Head of the Department of English Language and Literature at Mary Immaculate College and Director of the Institute for Irish Studies