This isn't about religion at all. What it is about, is a number of younger musicians, most of whom are Irish or have Irish ancestry, wanting to wrest control of the most powerful Irish traditional music organization in the world, and cleanse it of it's Irishness. They don't like the conservative Catholic membership, they don't like the ties this organization has to Irish republicanism and nationalism, and they don't like the fact that so many officers in Dublin are committed to keeping the organization rooted in Gaeltacht culture, which is, predictably, conservative and Catholic.

What they want is to steal the resources of Comhaltas, take control of the organization, and make it over in their image, rather than the image of it's founders.

They want to control it, to make it into an Irish traditional music only organization, without the Irish culture and language. They are only using religion as a smoke screen, because it is a convenient ruse to use to avoid people seeing what they are really doing, and take note of the fact that this is an obvious American attempt to engage in the cultural theft, to get what they want: the music without the Irish cultural baggage.

The mass plays such a small part of Comhaltas' activities, it is an absolute no-brainer to see what they are doing. I suspected this might have been the case all along, and the more we hear from the Doubting Thomases and others who want to cleanse Comhaltas of it's Irish Catholic conservative republican and nationalist roots, the more it becomes obvious that is just what they are doing--trying to steal this powerful and well endowed organization away from it's rightful owners--the conservative Catholic membership.