In the introduction to From Prosperity to Austerity, Eamon Maher and Eugene O'Brien write, in the context of attempts to voice caution during the Irish boom, that the consensus between government, the media and business interests held 'that anyone who opposed the current ideology was against progress, was rooted in the past, or was incapable of seeing the benefits to all of our exceptional prosperity' (2014: 5). The Catholic Church was in no position to voice its concern about these developments at the time, in the wake of the child abuse and Magdalene laundry revelations. Moreover, the response in the public forum to the litany of Church-related offences has been to reject the institutional Church and, consequently, impede the creation of a space for the evaluation of the cultural legacy of Irish Catholicism. As a result, attempting to explore aspects of the Catholic Church without falling into outright condemnation of the entire institution and of its members is deemed insular, 'against progress' and 'rooted in the past'. It can be argued that the public rejection of Catholic Church teaching is an attempt at individual reassertion and autonomy in the wake of discovering that the institution in which we placed our faith and trust has been found undeserving of that faith and trust. Yet to ignore the legacy of the Catholic Church in Ireland is to deny the most enduring and forceful facet in the shaping of Irish society.