Gay Marriage Win in Catholic Ireland

Source:  Daily Mail

Dublin (AFP) - The once-dominant Catholic Church in Ireland was trying to come to terms Sunday with an overwhelming vote in favour of gay marriage, saying it needed a "new language" with which to speak to people.

As jubilant "Yes" supporters nursed their hangovers and sore bums after partying late into the night following Saturday's referendum result, the faithful attended mass to hear their priests reflect on the new social landscape in Ireland.

"The Church has to find a new language which will be understood and heard by people," Archbishop Diarmuid Martin of Dublin, one of the Church's most senior figures, told reporters after mass at the city's St Mary's Pro Cathedral.

The majority of Irish people still identify themselves as Catholic but the Church's influence has waned in recent years amid growing secularisation and after a wave of clerical child sex abuse scandals.

[...]

Niall O'Connor wrote in the Sunday Independent: "The once unshakeable influence of the Catholic Church over Middle Ireland has been confronted."
(Yahoo News-AFP)

Questions for Discussion

Did the Catholic Church get what it deserved?  Horrible scandals such as the Church hierarchy shielding pedophile homosexual priests, and the discovery of a mass baby grave on church property are very serious realities that shocked Ireland and eroded the once-trusted institution's authority.

Do the hardcore activists want equal rights, or is their real agenda the toppling of all religious institutions and ultimately the destruction of traditional morality?

What would the "New Language" of Archbishop Martin sound like?  Is this a matter of hierarcy, teaching, tone, man-made rules?

What needs to change?

Based upon the Holy Bible and the early church fathers, what can be changed?  What cannot?

These questions apply to other traditional Christian denominations as well.