Ireland's Economic and Religious Collapse

Brian Kaller examines the "historically poor country that won the lottery and didn’t spend it wisely before disaster struck" — Wreck of the Irish — and Michael Kelly reports that "the Irish Church ha[s] a decade, at most, to avoid falling over the edge and becoming like other European countries where religion is marginal to society" — Visitator to report that Irish church is near collapse, priest says.

Don't tell me these two stories are unrelated. While the relationship may not necessarily be causal, as in divine chastisement, there is certainly a correlation between the two collapses, with the same moral failings behind them.