DUBLIN - As long as Ireland has had pubs, Good Friday has been off-limits as a "dry" holy day — until now.
A Limerick judge ruled Thursday that the city's 110 pubs can open April 2 because the city is hosting a major Irish rugby match attracting tens of thousands of visitors. This will be the first time in the history of the Republic of Ireland that pubs anywhere in the country will open on Good Friday.
Such a judgment would have been unthinkable in the Ireland of old, where the Catholic Church enjoyed unquestioned authority from the public and deference from the government. Commentators were quick to suggest that Thursday's judgment represented a watershed in the shifting relations between church and state in this rapidly secularizing land.
Sad, but not unexpected.
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