No turning back
Aug 29th, 2010 | By Ian Poulton | Category: IrelandLooking homewards from English shores, Ireland still seems a very different place, still outside of European liberal secularism, still not fully engaged with an Enlightenment worldview, still unprepared to contemplate a separation of church and state, still unprepared to accept a desacralisation of society.
The churches will fight tooth and nail to hold the ground they have, not because Jesus asks them to do so, but because they value their power and influence, because bishops expect to be people of standing and not merely members of a religious group. There…