This won’t last long. Over the last 200 years nearly every ‘Catholic’ country in the world has cut its ties to the Vatican at one time or another—France, Spain, Mexico even Italy! Usually they were forced to reverse their decision as their national interst began to suffer. Like it or not the Catholic Church is the largest and most global religion in the world. This severence usually occured at he time of the ascendency of a bitterly ant-Christain cabal, dominating politics by fraud and stealth and in partcular dominating media and academia. This is currently the case in Ireland, when the main national newspaper, the Irish Times is run by, and its main feature writer are extreme Left-wing loons. The National Broadcasting Service, RTE (think NPR only worse) has been dominated by the Marxist wing of Sinn Fein foe decades. The princial mission of all these forces (as in the US is the destruction of the Family and the destruction of Christianity and the substitution of their own totlitarian project. One major tactic they use is to front ‘moderates’ to disguise their agenda. Thus on national television, well know Irish Broadcaters like Gay Byrne have been the unknowing ‘useful idiots’, while in politics that role was taken by the 1980s Prime Minister Garret Fitzgerald. These are sad days for the Church in Ireland, but things have been worse in the past.
Thanks for the perspective.