"...government has also warned the church it can no longer even consider the seal of the confessional to be sacrosanct, promising to impose a five-year jail sentence for anyone found guilty of not passing information on child sexual abuse to state authorities."

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Thank you for this GREAT news!!!

Aside from Ireland's anger at the Vatican over the issue of sexual abuse, I gathered from the article that there is rebellion against the Catholic church in general due to its historically undue influence over matters of state. This reminds me of what occurred here in Canada in the province of Quebec. Much like in Ireland, the Catholic church dominated public life in Quebec for many decades until people had finally enough and threw it off. Now your hard pressed to find any remaining vestiges of the church in public life. In fact, Quebec has become so secular that they are going the European route and not allowing ANY religious associations in public life, crosses and Muslim headscarfs being the most notable targets.

Well, that seems a bit extreme. I'm not lover of fundamentalism regardless of the source. That said I certainly understand how a society can evolve to find itself in a place such as you describe.

The Irish Prime Minister's scathing criticism of the church clearly caused consternation in Rome and in a fit of pique with this deeply catholic country's administration, the vatican withdrew the Papal Nuncio.

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2011/0725/breaking19.html

This suggests that the schism between the Irish State and Rome can be repeated anywhere that a country's administration wishes to recognise and speak the truth about clerical abuse in their country.