The church is responsible for today's moral mess

"Irish society in 1953 was morally adrift because it had no focus other than enforced blind obedience to a particular religious moral code. It is as painfully adrift ethically today because, having abandoned its blind obedience to that narrow, hypocritical and cruelly cold code, it has not been equipped with the mental and philosophical agility to formulate any other.
And that is entirely the fault of the education system controlled and operated by the Church. Surely if Ireland has turned out a crass, money-grubbing, vulgar, possession-worshipping population without finer philosophical values, it is the fault of the education system as provided by the Church? Nobody else was teaching a moral code."

Emer O'Kelly, Independent.ie, November 11 2007

A good piece on how the Irish Church's monopoly of morality meant that secular morality, that wasn't based upon subservience only, suffered. Morality get more feet to stand on in a secular country that allows different philosophies to exist. In a secular country, morality doesn't stand and fall with the silly belief in a ghost.