Nothing quite illustrates the acute crisis facing the Catholic Church in Ireland on this, the edge of a new century, as the stark fact that the number of its priests under the age of 29 is the same as the number of those who are over 80.
Of the 7,934 priests on the island at present, the number under 29 is just less than 400, or five per cent of the total. Of the others, 6,109, or 77 per cent, are over 40. Generally, the average age of priests, nuns (there are currently 11,135), and brothers (927) here is rising.
Meanwhile weekly Mass attendance is dropping. A 1998 Prime Time survey indicated a national average of 60 per cent, but this figure is as low as six per cent in some Dublin working-class parishes.
Surprisingly, for those who would see such places as dominated by an atheistic Dublin 4 ethos, anecdotal evidence indicates that it is in middle-class suburban parishes that the weekly Mass attendance figure is holding best. Less surprising is the fact that the figure is comparatively high in rural parishes. Everywhere, however, there is a noted absence of young people.
It has been argued by apologists that, even allowing for the dramatic fall-off in practice and vocations here in the 1990s, we are still just approaching European averages. It has been said that we are arriving at normality and that what prevailed throughout "the long 19th century of the Irish Catholic Church" (to 1970 approximately) was a phenomenon.
It may well be so but the pace of the falloff here is so sharp as to indicate something deeper. For many Irish Catholics the bottom has fallen out of their faith in the institutional Church, while for a sizeable majority of young Catholics here, that faith simply does not exist at all.
A distinction should be drawn between loss of faith in the institution and loss of faith in God. Repeated surveys indicate that faith in God persists with the great majority of Irish people of all ages.
The reasons for this loss of faith in the institution hardly need repetition here. But they appear rooted more in the Church's handling of its series of scandals than in the scandals themselves.
In other words, and as has also been exposed where other institutions in Irish life are concerned, the Church is perceived as having placed its own welfare before that of members, even before what it stood for. It has come to be seen as another institution run, cynically, by corporate men who saw their main role as protecting the institution.
They are perceived as having tried to get away with abusing or neglecting a higher responsibility. They have shown they cannot be trusted. That is the perception and in many instances it is unfair. In other instances it would appear less so.
Regardless, the Church is paying a high price for it. Nowhere is this more acutely felt than in the ranks of the clergy themselves. Their disillusion with the Church leadership seems every bit as great as that of the laity. As does their powerlessness.
Indeed, parlous as is the state of the Church in Ireland today, it would be far worse but for the genuine affection of the people and their abiding respect for individual priests and nuns in parishes all over the country.
The Irish Church is moribund and is likely to remain so for the foreseeable future. And, as was said so often of the economy here during the 1980s, it looks like things will get worse before they get better.
The Commission to Inquire into Childhood Abuse is likely to have a further debilitating effect on its standing with the Irish people, as survivors tell their tales of what took place in so many religious-run institutions here during the middle decades of the last century.
It will be little consolation to the Church as institution that the anger most likely resulting from these testimonies will not be directed at it alone but also at the State which presided with it over such cruelties.
On a practical level in the coming decade the Church will have to re-organise parishes, reduce Masses etc., and involve laity to a greater extent in parish and liturgical life, as priests die and are not replaced. The role of the Church in education, whether in management of primary schools or the running of secondary schools, will be greatly reduced. Similarly in health.
The selling off of Church property is likely to become more common and more controversial with parishioners demanding a greater say in the disposal of parish property and the proceeds accruing. This has begun to happen already. Similarly where religious orders are concerned.
Their numbers are dropping more rapidly than is the case with the secular priesthood and already the wealth accumulating through the disposal of their substantial properties is raising questions. Increasingly they will be expected to explain what is happening to this wealth.
It should not be a surprise if, in the years ahead, a more radicalised Church demands the liquidation of Church assets, including bishops' palaces, to compensate abuse victims and assist the poor. And a radicalised Church is likely to emerge towards the end of the current phase of decline.
Probably in the course of the next papacy, a more secular-friendly Church is likely to emerge. It will realise how much it has in common with the humanism which underpins the so-called "liberal ethos" now dominating the Western world and towards which the current Church has such deep antipathy.
It may come to see that this secular humanism is complementary to the Christian message, not an alternative to it, and fits neatly with Christ's second commandment: love your neighbour.
Such a rapprochement might slow the decline of Christianity in the West generally and may help Catholicism in particular towards greater democratisation and openness. It might also lead that Church to value the role of women more visibly and more highly.
However, the present malaise is likely to continue for the moment, affecting all levels of the Church. It was sad, for instance, that that most sincere and admirable group of men, the National Conference of Priests in Ireland, should have felt it necessary last October to hold half its annual conference behind closed doors. No doubt they felt more free to speak their minds knowing it would go no further, especially if what was said was critical of bishops or Rome.
The bishops hold their own meetings in Maynooth behind closed doors too, with second-party briefings for the media on selected themes afterwards. One informed source has suggested this control is necessary because whatever is reported in the media from such a meeting would be known in the Vatican within hours.
The European Synod of Bishops in Rome last October was also held behind closed doors, with participants advised to respect the confidentiality of proceedings and not to talk to the media. It led to some farcical scenes with journalists lying in wait in corridors for friendly bishops who might feed them some crumbs of information as to what was going on.
There were also briefings for journalists after sessions there, but again at second-hand and on selected themes. It is hardly adequate that the laity of the largest Christian denomination on the continent should be excluded in this way from what is being discussed at the highest level in their Church, no more than it is adequate that the largest Christian denomination on this island should be excluded from proceedings at its bishops' meetings in Maynooth.
This Catholic Church practice is in stark contrast to the vastly different methods employed by the Anglican and Protestant denominations whose synods/ assemblies/ conferences, whether national or international, are open to the media and to the world. The contrast simply feeds the perception that while the Catholic Church lauds democracy elsewhere, it has yet to accommodate it within.
It was hardly surprising therefore that Pope John Paul's exhortation last month to a group of German bishops that it was "advisable in principle" not (my emphasis) to avoid journalists, should have raised eyebrows.
To support his advice he quoted St Peter: "Always be prepared to make a defence to anyone who calls you to account for the hope that is in you."
Whatever the quality of one's own personal belief or unbelief, for those of us who value the contribution of the Church these past 2000 years to that great and noble enterprise, the civilisation of the human spirit or, as it was put by Teilhard de Chardin, "the hominisation of man", it is to be hoped that early in this new era the Catholic Church finally reads the signs of the times and becomes a more open, more democratic institution. At home and abroad.
Otherwise it is likely to continue on its current peripheral trajectory, out of all of our lives. And eventually out of history.
Patsy McGarry can be contacted at pmcgarry@irish-times.ie