His recent addresses at Knock shrine and in Milwaukee left Archbishop Brady wide open for criticism. Failure to acknowledge in any real sense the Catholic Church's part in helping to create the increasingly irreligious society of which he complains was a glaring omission, and one that media commentators were quick to pounce upon. Clerical sex abuse and the church's reaction to it did more to destroy trust and undermine religion than most of the external factors he mentioned, writes David Adams.
Some sections of the media had fun with the archbishop's notion that Ireland is in thrall to astrology, tarot cards and palm-reading. And with some justification. Even if it exists, a rising interest in fortune-telling would hardly be on anyone else's list of the most serious problems confronting modern Irish society.
However, the media too readily allowed the obvious weaknesses in some of his arguments, and the fact that he is an easy target, to distract from Archbishop Brady's central theme. That is a great pity. Because his main contention, that there is a growing malaise at the heart of Irish society, is a perfectly valid one.
The evidence of it is all around us, even in the seemingly mundane. Throughout Ireland, the prevailing culture was once one of mutual help and support among neighbours. Now, increasingly, it is becoming one of self-interested semi-strangers who just happen to reside close to one another.
Community, in the original sense, is threatened with extinction. It is falling foul of individualism, where people are preoccupied only with that which is directly related to self and feel little or no obligation to the wider grouping.
And it is from a lack of acceptance of personal responsibility to society that many of our problems relating to violence, anti-social behaviour and a general breakdown in community stem. Neither is it difficult to see how this situation came about.
In recent decades we have moved rapidly from remote, largely unquestioned and sometimes unaccountable mildly-dictatorial authority to a situation where the rights of the individual now predominate. More than just governments and their agencies have been affected. Churches, in particular, even aside from the issue of abuse, have seen the power and influence they once took for granted wane, as they were measured, and often found wanting, against the rights of the individual.
In general, this has been a good thing. However, if a society is to continue to cohere properly, then individuals must accept that with added rights there comes extra responsibility, especially for how they behave and how they treat others.
The downside of our rights-based culture is all too evident. While eager to grab more and more power over their own lives, people have refused to accept that personal responsibility for helping to make society work must run in tandem. They have instead become self-absorbed to the detriment of community and sometimes even of the smaller, even more critically vital, unit of the family.
I agree with the archbishop that an erosion of basic Christian values has also been a major contributing factor to many of the problems within society today. (Though, unlike him, I would not confine myself to any specific branch of Christianity, or even to the view that it is necessary to believe in an afterlife to appreciate the worth of the Christian message). It is an undeniable fact that our value system (or at least as it was until quite recently) in respect of morality, justice, a sense of fair play and concern for the welfare of others owes virtually everything to Christianity.
As esteem for organised religion has declined, so too, it seems, has appreciation of the basic message of Christianity, which just happens to be the bedrock of our moral code.
On its own, an obsessive concern with personal wealth, image, position and self-gratification, such as the archbishop described, is merely unattractive. Unfortunately, that sort of thing never comes on its own. It is always accompanied by an equal lack of concern for anybody or anything not related to self. That this is now a noticeable trait in Ireland has serious implications for society.
Speaking recently in west Belfast, (Senator) Eoghan Harris raised a few eyebrows when he talked of how he would like to see an Irish republic founded on Christian principles. But there is absolutely no contradiction in what he said. Republicanism, in this respect, is not about the destruction of religion and its values but simply the separation of church (any church) and state. Harris is right to tie Christian values to republicanism; it is only upon such basic decencies that a worthwhile society can be built.
We must be careful of secularism and not allow it to career free to the point where we have replaced a theocratic society with a hedonistic one. Archbishop Brady is right to be concerned about where society is going; we all should be.