The news media around the world is abuzz over the results of Ireland’s recent marriage referendum. In the world’s first popular vote on gay marriage, voters said “yes” to marriage equality, by a resounding 62 percent to 38 percent.

Much of the coverage has been understandably upbeat — stories of emigrant Irish citizens (many of them economic exiles from the 2008 crash) racing back home to vote, of prominent public figures coming out as gay in the run-up to the referendum, of independent-minded clergy breaking ranks to support the Yes campaign. Not least surprising is that all this should happen in Catholic Ireland, a country that only legalized homosexuality in 1993, has yet to properly legalize abortion, and where, as late as 1979, it was impossible to buy contraception legally.

No major party in the Dáil, the Irish parliament, advocated a “no” vote; for many in Ireland, the referendum has been yet another sign that the power and institutional authority of the Catholic Church continues its downward spiral.