Shorter Douthat: "Sex and Drugs Brought Down the Irish Economy"

What in the living hell does this have to do with the Irish economic crisis?

To the utopians of secularism, the Irish experience should be a reminder that the waning of a powerful religious tradition can breed decadence as well as liberation. (“Ireland found riches a good substitute for its traditional culture,” Christopher Caldwell noted, but now “we may be about to discover what happens when a traditionally poor country returns to poverty without its culture.”) 

To his credit, Douthat actually kind of says that the fundamentalist free-market ideology that has ruled Ireland over the past two decades may have not been entirely good, something his fellow conservatives cannot admit. But if anyone can figure out what birth control and divorce have to do with this, let me know.