At a time when Ireland is need of a Catholic intellectual revival, its presence at third level is shrinking. At the end of May, St Patrick’s, Carlow College, announced that it will cease to exist in two years, with its campus being handed over to a state-run, secular university. In return, Carlow College will receive funding from the Irish state for a two-year period, to allow students currently undertaking study to complete their courses. It marks the second Catholic college to be given to the state in just three years, after St Angela’s College on the west coast of Ireland was gifted to another secular university by its patrons, the Ursuline Sisters. That leaves just Mary Immaculate College in Limerick and St Mary’s University Belfast in the North as the two remaining publicly funded colleges on the island of Ireland. This is a real indictment of the lack of initiative and drive that has mired the Church’s approach to the intellectual formation of the laity, a problem which stretches back at least to the 19th century.