Epiphany in dubliners

The idea of paralysis takes a physical form straight away as we learn of Father Flynn who is a paralytic Catholic priest and who, after dropping a chalice, a symbol of his faith, becomes spiritually invalid. From his description we can assume he never experienced an epiphanic revelation even in death his hands were "loosely retaining a chalice".
             Perhaps in an attempt to redeem himself, Father Flynn attempts to pass on his knowledge of the church and it functions. The boy however resists the priest's teachings.
             "The duties of the priest towards the Eucharist? seemed so grave to me that I wondered how anybody had ever found in himself the courage to undertake them".
             The boy is clearly in awe of the priest and the establishment he represents. When he sees him dead in the coffin however, his epiphanic moment begins, he is no longer able to recite his memorised prayers because an old woman's mutterings and the heavy odour of flowers distract him. This abolition of his former awe for the priest is further reinforced by Eliza who, tells of the priests madness as well as his spiritual and physical paralysis. The epiphany is complete when the story of the priest is told and the boy listens deliberately for any sound from the priest. He becomes totally aware at last of Father Flynn's death and the paralysis of his life.
             "I? listened; but there was no sound in the house: and I knew that the old priest was lying still in his coffin, solemn?an idle chalice to his breast.".
             The boy, by the end has gone from revering the priest and the church to rejection and almost revulsion. He has seen the priest for what he really is and Joyce is very symbolic in his representation of the priest, and through the priest the church. Through Father Flynn, Joyce could be implying that Catholicism is decaying in Ireland and there is a sinister element in the church implied through old Cotter "When children see things like that, you know, it has an effect?" .