Atheist Ireland Forum

Please email me at shar.conroy@gmail.com if interested or even contemplating interest!

I wonder what this could be?

What do you mean?

I mean that your question makes no sense or to put it another way, it doesn't make the sense thing.

I guess you won't be doing the interview thing so

Apologies if you have difficulty understanding my request, I will assume it to be a miscommunication on my part.
What needs explaining?

You need to explain what a church/state seperation thing is.

Separation of church and state is a political and legal doctrine that government and religious institutions are to be kept separate and independent from each other. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Separation_of_church_and_state

Church/state is not something a person can go through. Perhaps you are thinking about people who have defected from the Catholic Church?

Apologies, what I mean is has anyone gone through this process?

http://countmeout.ie/

Sarcasm much appreciated !!

This is called an "act of defection" and has nothing to do with Church State Separation really, except that that may be the motivation of some who engage in it.

At the risk of sounding insulting, is it not somehow strange you do not even know the terminology for a documentary you are intending to make? You risk, with the mere misuse of words and terms, making everyone who listens to it know from the outset that the director/producer of the show had not got the first notion who or what they were talking about.

You want to make a documentary on it yet it is immediately apparent you have not even taken the time to read the text from Catholic Doctrine that makes the defection available and possible.

There are LONG threads on this subject on this forum, boards.ie and politics.ie full of people who have and have not engaged in the process and their opinions and experiences of same.

There is also a comprehensive and detailed FAQ at countmeout.ie itself.

I heartily recommend getting yourself up to speed on that information and those threads before looking for people to interview. Unless by people to interview what you are actually referring to is "People who will talk and in fact do all my research and work for me so I do not have to".

Thank you for your response and for clarifying (although quite condescendingly) this terminology for me.

I perhaps should have explained my intentions more clearly.

Just to clear things up, this will not be the subject matter of the documentary.

It will be produced on the topic of the changing influence and significance of the Catholic Church in Irish social life.

The documentary will be a two part series for RTE Radio One.To explain the structure briefly;I will begin by discussing the changes in the Church's influence in Ireland over the last 3 and a half decades (with Pope John Paul II's 1979 visit to Ireland as a reference point).

The second part of my documentary will focus on more recent developments with reference in particular to new research which suggests that Mass attendence has seen quite a boost in recent times.

This was my original pitch, which I feel requires a little change of structure in light of recent developments, which I'm sure do not need to be highlighted right now.

I first encountered the "act of defection" when doing web research yesterday so you will have to forgive my ignorance as it was frankly the first time I had heard of it. I thought it might be an interesting addition to my production, and on the spur of the moment, decided to approach this forum for information. I'm sure,like myself, the majority of people would not be familiar with this process,which is why I would like to speak to someone about it in laymans terms.

And as for the "People who will talk and in fact do all my research and work for me so I do not have to" comment, let me stress that this will not be the case.

I understand that there would be a certain level of scepticism associated with me and my abilities, having mentioned that this is a student project, but please let me assure you all that I am more than capable of conducting skilled interviews and of producing an accurate and quality documentary on this subject matter.

I assumed this forum would be a good place to come to find people who would be educated and opinionated on these issues, and still hope to find someone who may wish to speak to me on the subject.

Well then the most useful of advice I could give you is to contact directly the founders of countmeout.ie themselves. There is three of them to my knowledge.

They have done media appearances on both Irish Radio and Television and have spoken at several meetings including the AGM of Atheist Ireland. So from a media perspective as well as a knowledge perspective they are experienced and skilled speakers.

They have described themselves as "An atheist, an agnostic and a lapsed Catholic" in the past so they would appear to be just the cross section of people you want, and who better to do your research on than the people who founded the site?

You will find one such talk by one of the founders here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L2HBfNtZefs

I repeat also the recommendation to find the threads, all of which have become very long, on not only this site, but boards.ie and politics.ie on this very subject and are populated by people both in the process and post- process of defection. The one from this site is here:

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=2524&start=0

but I will leave you to find them on the other sites yourself.

Yeah thanks for that, I have made contact with countmeout already via the email link on their website, but perhaps the links you have provided will give me a higher chance of contacting them.