Irish journalist John Waters says that his country has become shockingly anti-Christian. Read his column and wrap your mind around the idea that this is Ireland. Ireland! A government report — one endorsed by the prime minister, Leo Varadkar — has called on crucifixes to be removed from Irish hospitals. Excerpt:

He was commenting on a new government report on the relationship between the state and hospitals run by religious orders. The report stated that hospitals should be conscious of the negative impact that Christian “décor” can have on a patient, but did not address whether the absence of Christian “décor” could have a negative impact—whether particular patients might desire Christian iconography within his or her view at times of great anxiety or sorrow.

The review concluded that the “life and well-being of patients” must take precedence over religious ethos. The phrase “life and well-being” might carry many meanings, but it is hard to envisage any risk to life and well-being arising from an artifact of a particular religious faith hanging on a wall—especially if that religious faith was the founding ethos of the hospital you happen to be in. To decide that a wall-mounted crucifix can be reduced to the phrase “religious ethos” and then marked for disposal is not merely illogical; it is bigoted by virtue of supporting bigotry over belief—a bigot being someone who is “intolerant towards other people’s beliefs and practices.”

More:

The levels of stupidity now invite nothing but despair. I have tried to alert potentially sympathetic individuals in other countries to the crisis besetting Ireland, to let them know that we are in deep trouble. But almost nobody gets it, least of all in America. Most think I am over-egging things and that, passing turbulence aside, Ireland is still the same loveable country of their fantasies or nostalgic yearnings.

Read the whole thing.  John — who’s a friend, and a most sensible and humane man — says that Ireland has become “the Most Anti-Christian Nation on Planet Earth.” You could point to North Korea and Saudi Arabia as more advanced in their loathing for Christianity, but I take his point.

I visited Ireland in January for the first time ever. Lovely people there; I had a wonderful time. But if John seems to be shouting in his First Things column, it’s because we sentimental Americans (all Americans love Ireland) are deaf as stumps. In my three days in Ireland, I kept having to pick my jaw up off the ground when people would tell me about this or that anti-Catholic thing that was happening in the country. It is not surprising, given the clerical sex abuse scandal, that Irish people have somewhat gone off the Church. But it really is hard for Americans to grasp the depth and breadth of the rejection of Christianity by the Irish. Even though I was not entirely innocent of the situation in Ireland, I still felt like a sentimental American Christian who arrives in Oxford to discover that the England of the Inklings is as far gone as the England of Henry VIII.

(Greetings, by the way, from icy upstate New York. I’ve been traveling all day, and am going to be at a conference at the Russian Orthodox monastery in Jordanville. It is going to be nine degrees tonight. It’s basically Siberia, I think.)