Let us face it, most of us Irish are too thick to effect change...

[fluffybiscuits]

Another day and another threat by Phil "Household Charge" Hogan threatening income tax hikes for people who have not paid the household charge with Bruton running to his defence (http://www.irishexaminer.com/breakin...ge-560687.html ) , its all rearranging the chairs on the Titanic = Business as per usual. While trying to effect change most of the population continue as per usual with their business most watching the Olympics, most babbling incessantly about the cost of living or ignoring the realities of life because they can pretty much afford to. Ireland has been overcome with apathy, very few people have the belly for a revolution of sorts, why is that? They spend all day on front of the google box, laugh at the notion of politics or just find the topic so boring or irrelevant.

An education from the church which focused on telling you why the baby zombie carpenter was conceived through some sort of immaculate ride and a wasted opportunity to teach our children critical thinking has left most of our children like extras from the Walking Dead. The other thing that we lack is an emotional intelligence, where is the empathy for someone that has lost their job, where is the passion for change? Are we all immune to the feelings of others and compassion?

The ODS movement came and went and started off with a bang . A leaderless movement they told us and then puff, off it went and crashed like a towering inferno with no one knowing what they were doing once they had got attention. Again a lack of outside the box thinking, critical thinking contributed to its downfall. "What should we do today" would say one person , "Oh lets set up camp outside the Bank of Ireland on O Connell St and get some media attention, Im attention starved and then we can all wash our hair and be back in Ballsbridge in time for dinner with mammy and daddy".

Good times roll, Irish people are more interested in having their head stuck down a bottle of some new fancy beer at the weekend in some over priced dim kip in Temple Bar or getting rat arsed on Dutch gold on a street corner by Talbot St to care.

Ireland,Im sorry but most of your people are too apathetic, too ill prepared and above all too ******* stupid to deal with the changes ahead...

[toxic avenger]

Again, the Catholic Church is the scapegoat. Why is the mindless deference and selfish materialism not the case in other culturally Catholic countries - Austria, for example, or Belgium, or most of Germany, or Poland?

Too easy.

I'm not just a Catholic, I'm on the fairly traditionalist end of Catholicism - love the Latin Mass, Vespers, Benediction, and accept all doctrine. And yet I spent a decade personally fighting Fianna Fáil and the charlatan Ahern, and have spent 15 years becoming progressively more disgusted at the docile greed, materialism, and vacuousness of a large proportion of the population of Ireland. I'm politically radical, economically Marxist, socially fairly liberal, but what some would describe as an conservative Catholic. If it's all down to the lack of critical reasoning that Catholicism engendered, how come I was virtually alone among the people I knew speaking out against the Single Currency in the 1990s?

The Catholic Church is too lazy a scapegopat for everything - it enables the country to pretend that everything from the credit bubble to Ronan Keating can be swept under that very convenient carpet. But it just won't do. If anything, the decline of the influence of Catholicism over the last 30 years led to the removal of the last moral brake there was on vulgarity, selfish individualism, and the unfettered worship of the market.

But don't expect any of that to be discussed in any mainstream media analysis. Let's go hunting witches instead...

[fluffybiscuits]

Again, the Catholic Church is the scapegoat. Why is the mindless deference and selfish materialism not the case in other culturally Catholic countries - Austria, for example, or Belgium, or most of Germany, or Poland?

Too easy.

I'm not just a Catholic, I'm on the fairly traditionalist end of Catholicism - love the Latin Mass, Vespers, Benediction, and accept all doctrine. And yet I spent a decade personally fighting Fianna Fáil and the charlatan Ahern, and have spent 15 years becoming progressively more disgusted at the docile greed, materialism, and vacuousness of a large proportion of the population of Ireland. I'm politically radical, economically Marxist, socially fairly liberal, but what some would describe as an conservative Catholic. If it's all down to the lack of critical reasoning that Catholicism engendered, how come I was virtually alone among the people I knew speaking out against the Single Currency in the 1990s?

The Catholic Church is too lazy a scapegopat for everything - it enables the country to pretend that everything from the credit bubble to Ronan Keating can be swept under that very convenient carpet. But it just won't do. If anything, the decline of the influence of Catholicism over the last 30 years led to the removal of the last moral brake there was on vulgarity, selfish individualism, and the unfettered worship of the market.

But don't expect any of that to be discussed in any mainstream media analysis. Let's go hunting witches instead...

Its understandable if you have faith,it was never an issue but the institution of the church as distinct from Catholicism itself has a lot to answer for. No one is going to disagree with your points on it being responsible for giving us the tools to go through life when the state wouldnt however the church did take this as an opportunity as carte blanche to teach us all sorts of nonsense that invariably can be one of the factor attributed to our downfall today. Instilling people with facts and figures and no skills to deal with emotional or critical thought. Its not the sole factor however I would pain to point out. To me however to blame the decline of the church as the last brake against the breakdown of morality and sin is a complete cop out, the very institution itself fell foul to human nature and its love of money (the Vatican bank comes to mind). There is a lot of good work done out there by organisations that would have little or no connection to the church but the RCC itself is one of these very people whom they sought to stop and they emulated the people they wanted to improve morally.

[Holly]

I do not believe it has anything to do with being thick. The current crop of adults went through an authoritarian system and learned from an early age that bullying and and indoctrination absolves us from thinking for ourselves and doing what we are told.
Without question, this type of authoritarianism suited the Catholic Church as well as the nationalist politicians who ran the Irish Free State and the Republic.
We have been put in our place and the remedy lies in education as distinct from indoctrination. It will get better in another generation.

[Slim Buddha]

I do not think it is anything to do with being "thick" as you put it, fluffy. Nor do I think the blame for the state of the country. Nor can the blame for this be placed at the door of the Catholic Church, although the Irish Catholic Church certainly have not helped.

I think it is more to do with a sneaking regard for the cute hoor. Ask yourself a question "Why would anybody have joined Fianna Fail in the last 30 years?"
The answer can only be for access to power and the public purse. People within FF have designed businesses around the sole fact that they have access to the public funds.

We have a very high tolerance for corruption and that mindset has to change if Ireland is ever to climb out of the economic septic tank into which the FF-PD "government" landed it.

An indication of that tolerance is the fact that I Am the only person on this site who wants to see the party of traitors, FF, proscribed. As far as I am concerned the only good FFer is a dead one.

[MPB]

I would,nt underestimate us.

50% of the population have refused point blank to pay a household charge.

We might be slow, but we are far from thick

[Captain Con O'Sullivan]

Again, the Catholic Church is the scapegoat. Why is the mindless deference and selfish materialism not the case in other culturally Catholic countries - Austria, for example, or Belgium, or most of Germany, or Poland?

Too easy.

I'm not just a Catholic, I'm on the fairly traditionalist end of Catholicism - love the Latin Mass, Vespers, Benediction, and accept all doctrine. And yet I spent a decade personally fighting Fianna Fáil and the charlatan Ahern, and have spent 15 years becoming progressively more disgusted at the docile greed, materialism, and vacuousness of a large proportion of the population of Ireland. I'm politically radical, economically Marxist, socially fairly liberal, but what some would describe as an conservative Catholic. If it's all down to the lack of critical reasoning that Catholicism engendered, how come I was virtually alone among the people I knew speaking out against the Single Currency in the 1990s?

The Catholic Church is too lazy a scapegopat for everything - it enables the country to pretend that everything from the credit bubble to Ronan Keating can be swept under that very convenient carpet. But it just won't do. If anything, the decline of the influence of Catholicism over the last 30 years led to the removal of the last moral brake there was on vulgarity, selfish individualism, and the unfettered worship of the market.

But don't expect any of that to be discussed in any mainstream media analysis. Let's go hunting witches instead...

That vulgarity, selfish individualism and unfettered worship of the market can just as easily be found in the vatican where the last absolute dictator in Europe runs a corporation extracting money under false pretences in the main from the poor because the poor are their target market- low access to education being helpful in that regard.

It is a continuous wail from official catholicism abouit materialism that doesn't stack up when measured against ChurchCorp and its limousined directors. There is nothing tackier, more materialistic, or more worshipping of offshore tax havens and other corporate responsibility evasions than that organisation.

This is as fallacious an attempt to equate all evils in the world anywhere other than in being obedient to a sick organsaition as tthe attempt to pretend that if it didn't exist the world would fall apart.

You obviously haven't heard about the trade in bones, 'relics', flogging of 'indulgences', tax evasion, strongarming around wills and land theft associated with that cult.

[Griska]

Captain, I suspect your thread title comes from genuine exasperation, but is mixed with a little divilment in order to provoke a reaction.

[bernadette]

The Irish are not thick but they have been brainwashed by one dictatorship then another for hundreds of years. We are a generous people, not only prepared to give but also to accept the foibles of others.

Forgiveness used to depend on the RCC forgiving the culprit first, now we make that decision. The vast majority of us have also decided that whilst we are Catholic we are not necessarily RCC and the two are not the same. The Brits had a section of the Anglican church that was High Church or Anglo Actholic. I think that may be the way we turn in future. An Irish Catholic Church is long overdue.

[fluffybiscuits]

Captain, I suspect your thread title comes from genuine exasperation, but is mixed with a little divilment in order to provoke a reaction.

Im the guilty one, reading back on this I was in a frustrated mood at the time. I wanted change but I wanted people to be passionate and hoped to stir something inside them (that sounds ominous I know....)