Luckily we have Knock apparitions, Galway optomologists, tree stumps, bishops' mental reservations and Herr Pope's latin letters to fill the void. In this case, Karl Marx was wrong – the first time it was farce, now repeating as tragedy.

There is, however, non-clerical art and non-clerical philosophy, as there has been for centuries. This is the secular tradition.

And incidentally, what are these great social structures that religion has built? So what if the Sistine Chapel has a beuatiful ceiling – this says nothing about the truth claims of the church. Citibank has a beautiful head office too, and nobody takes that as a sign that Citibank speaks the truth about anything. The problem is that the church's social structures are used to subjugate and intimidate the people, to the point where nobody dares step out of line. Then when the local priest has his way with the alter boys, nobody says a word, because the authoritarian regime has them where it wans them. It's not that different to the Mafia or to Stalin – just a brutal authoritarian regime, bent on its own survival and growth.

He writes: "Somehow, something of this Christ was communicated to us, but our sense of Him remained separate from our relationships with the Catholic Church. In the public expression of faith, we marched under a particular banner, signed up to a moral programme and retained a sentimental idea of a handsome and charismatic man who turned water into wine. But we appear not to have absorbed into our culture any real understanding of what Christ came to tell us. How could we have, if so many of those who told us about Him did not themselves appear to know that He is here every moment? We speak the name of this man-god Christ but no one who eavesdropped on our conversations from outside would gather that we were talking about the redeemer of human fragility and the incarnation of human destiny. What is missing is not intensity of faith, but awareness of human reality. Christ is not the icon of a popular piety based on a necessary moralism or a salutary tradition. He is a living man, who is here now, and whose presence defines everything. Either we know this or we don’t. It is not a matter of faith, but of knowledge. Our fundamental – ie religious – relationships are not with priests, bishops, or even the pope, but with a person who happens to be God. Either this is true or it’s not. If it is not, then it is time to discuss the funeral arrangements of the culture we have taken for granted. If we believe it to be true, we need to begin speaking in public about vital things in a way that will allow us to access the full extent of what we imagine we believe."
Meanwhile, John McGahern's beautiful essay The Church and its Spire (Saturday's Irish Times) mentioned a letter Proust sent to a friend at the height of the anti clerical pogroms in France at the turn of the last century.

He writes: "Let the anti clericals at least draw a few more distinctions and at least visit the great social structures they want to demolish before they wield the axe. I don't like the Jesuit mind, but there is, nevertheless,a Jesuit philosopher, Jesuit art and a Jesuit pedagogy. Will there be an anti clerical art?

Will there be an anti clerical anything?

By their rules this would be a grave sin. No non Catholic even other Christians are allowed.

My kids go to Limerick School Project which is a non denominational school. The kids learn about and even celebrate each others religious festivals. They leave the school with a healthy questioning tolerant attitude. The choice of non-denominational secondary schools is limited. I've been to several school open days where among other things they have Chaplains or celebrate differnet events with a mass. I queried what happens to kids who don't subscribe to the Catholic belief and have been told that the school's are Catholic and that is the way it is. An Iranian friend of mine had told the school authorities that they were not Catholic and didn't want their daughter going to mass. The school agreed. However, when their was a mass she was told to go and even told to take Holy communion. How hippocritical is that?

Teach kids about all religions, cultures and beliefs and let them decide themselves.