My wife and I visited Dublin in March 2016 during the centenary celebrations. We attended a pro-choice event which also discussed schools. Per your comment about the church getting paid to run government schools, one man told the crowd he was Jewish and had to lie about his kids getting baptized in order for them to get admitted to the taxpayer funded church in his home area!

Eamon deValera (a one time wannabe priest) was responsible for the 1937 Constitution which over-rode many of the civil rights that had been in place from the previous constitution. The 1937 document made women second class citizens in their own nation.

Between the sex scandals of the church and the death of women because hospitals would not terminate pregnancies, as well as evolving social views, the church ceased to be an effective branch of government.

People can be religous and not want to live in a theocracy.

Priests in power abused it. There is a TV show in the USA called "1923" and one main storyline is the church run schools that abused native American children in order to get the "indian" out of them and make them "white." This happened all across the western USA and Canada

The first Murphy from my lineage survived the Famine and came to the USA in 1864. By the time I was a young child as fifth generatin, we were going to the local catholic church but eventually left it.