Cultural Catholics - Ireland is full of them

Ricky D has been speaking in Dublin about a recent poll that revealed that most Irish Catholics (62%) do not actually believe in transubstantiation - a central tenet of Roman Catholicism in which bread and wine literally become the body and blood of Jesus during Mass.

I've actually asked several Catholics this question before and received the same answer - they believe that the bread and wine simply represents the body and blood of Jesus, not that it literally becomes it.

Ricky D suggests that these Catholics should leave the church seeing as they don't agree with it's teachings. I would conclude that the majority of Catholics that answered honestly simply didn't know what transubstantiation even was. Most Catholics that I know are what you might call 'cultural Catholics'. They don't go to Mass (except maybe at Christmas), they don't pray, they don't read the bible, and they quite simply don't have much understanding of what Catholicism entails. But despite all of this, when asked, they claim to be Catholic, and when they have kids, they baptise them into the Catholic church - often simply because it is easier for them to then be accepted into a school (most schools in Ireland are still run by the Catholic church).