Religion In Ireland ~ Aveen

Hey Everyone!

Another week has come and gone, and this week I'm here to talk to you all about religion. First of all though, I'd like to say a huge HELLO to Grace from Dainty Sprinkles who has joined the GOALLAP collab! If you didn't know, Grace and I are friends in real life so it's great that we both work on the same collaboration blog!

So, religion. In Ireland and presumably everywhere in the world, religion is a tetchy subject to discuss. Around 90% of people in Ireland are Catholic. This statistic includes me, I was baptised, made my Communion and my Confirmation when I was younger, not really realising what they were. (Communion and Confirmation is a huge time to get cards and gifts from family and friends)

However, like me, not many people attend mass often, mass attendance rates are below 30%, and there's quite a few reasons for this. Obviously the recession here in Ireland may discourage people from attending, time constraints and also the decades of clerical abuse in Ireland. I personally am not comfortable discussing the clerical abuse, but if your curious about what happened in Ireland in the Church, some schools and the Magdalene laundries, feel free to Google them, they'll give you more insight that I could.

However, my religion is slightly complex too. Due to being a teenager and having ''whacky'' ideas, I'm not quite sure what religion I am. On records and documents, I'm Catholic. However I rarely go to Mass. But it doesn't mean I don't believe in something ''up there''. I feel there is something, but I'm not quite sure what that something is. I personally like to believe that my Granny and Grandad are up there helping me and all my family through life. Some things in my life, which could have so easily have gone wrong, didn't. I've also had many near death experiences (Three this year on a pedestrian crossing ironically) but it's almost as if something/someone intervened and guided me to safety.

Call me crazy, but I like to believe that I have a Guardian Angel (My Granny in particular) who I look to for guidance and helps me when I'm in need. Another question I get is, do I pray? The answer? Yes, not often, but I do pray. Whenever I'm in Mass obviously, whenever a family member has a serious operation, myself and my Mam (if I'm around) go to the Church, light some candles and pray. Wooooo.

So that's about it for this week, religion was an interesting topic to discuss, especially in relation to Ireland and also myself. Hope you enjoyed reading my random musings, if you want to talk about anything or ask me any questions, feel free to do so in the comments!

Stay Strong, Happy and Fearless,

Aveen 

xx