Det katolska prismat : En kvalitativ studie om vardagsreligiositet, prästskandalen och den katolska kyrkan på den irländska landsbygden

Sammanfattning: The purpose of this essay is to examine how Irish people on a rural location practice their faith in everyday life. The intention is also to find out what strategies my interviewees use to negotiate the abuse scandal and what their thoughts on the Catholic Church are. The material mainly consists of interviews with seven people part of a rural parish in Ireland. My research also entails smaller observations and conversations in the homes of the participants. The results indicate that they all consider themselves religious, however not all Catholic. All of the participants integrate their religion in everyday life. It also showed that almost all of them used a certain strategy when negotiating the knowledge of the abuse scandal leaving just one participant saying it negatively affected his faith. My results show that all of them are asking for changes within the Catholic Church when it comes to celibacy, ordaining women and same sex marriages. The results of my study are analyzed with Meredith McGuire’s theory on lived religion and Peter Berger’s theory on socialization and secularization. Religious activity is occurring in my participants’ everyday life and church-based practices such as Mass or Confessions are not as important for them as for instance prayer and humility. It also shows that my participants are socialized into Catholicism but that the Church no longer can serve as a sole legitimating power and is being severely questioned. I would also argue that today’s modern society with different religions and expressions has led to my participants questioning of the Church. In the location I have studied the results show that individuals let religion into their everyday lives and create their own version of it. With these results I would argue that my participants allow religion to influence their everyday tasks and create their own religious practice. The results suggest that my participants are indeed part of a secularization process, the objective secularization which separates the Church and state. However, religion is still alive within the subjectivity of my participants.