Secularisation can be understood as the “historical decline in the importance of the supernatural and the sacred” (Malesevic, 2013, 453). Secularisation has been defined (by Berger, as cited in Hornsby-Smith and Whelan, 1994, p.8) as “the process by which sectors of society and culture are removed from the domination of religious institutions and symbols.” The “disenchantment” of society (Weber) is seen. Science and rationality replaces religion’s sphere of influence over many individual and social issues. “Phenomena which were previously explained in terms of miracles and the supernatural are now open to scientific explanations and the dominant view comes to be one in which all occurrences can be explained by this rational framework.”(Thompson, 1986, p.26). However, according to the 2011 census, the vast majority of people (84.7%) still define themselves as Roman Catholic. This is a decrease from the statistics for the 2002 census where 90% of the population defined themselves as Roman Catholic, (Inglis, 2007, p.1), yet it is not significant enough to explain trends such as the large decrease in regular mass attendance (from). It can be understood that secularisation appears to mark a shift from there being a large percentage of Orthodox Catholics who believe strongly in the Catholic Church’s teachings and adhere strictly to their guidelines, to a larger percentage of Catholics who view Catholicism as part of their being (in the same way that they would view being Irish or