The Changing Catholic Church in Ireland Gerry OShea
I spoke this
week to a friend in my hometown, Kenmare, in County Kerry, about a recently
ordained priest assigned to the local parish. Today, this is news, but he
recalled that when he was a young man you would meet a priest around every
corner in the town. Then, there were three priests assigned to the parish and many
more in ancillary churches nearby. Now, one priest has to take care of all the
presbytery duties.
This major
change in the role of the Catholic Church in Irish life highlights the wider
cultural movements that have taken place throughout the island in the last half-century.
The clergy statistics speak trenchantly to this revolution.
Fifty years
ago, there were more than 14,000 women religious in Ireland. Today that number
stands closer to 4,000, with an average age tipping 80. In 1960, the national
seminary in Maynooth was populated by nearly 500 seminarians; this year, that
figure dropped dramatically to around 20.
While 84% of
the people self-identified as part of the Catholic church 15 years ago, that number has
since dropped significantly to 69% - still more than two out of three people in
Ireland. In addition, Sunday mass attendance remains one of the highest in
Europe.
14% of respondents in this report ticked the
“no religion” box, up by one-third from the previous study. Interestingly,
there were big increases in the number of Orthodox Christians, Muslims, and
Hindus, reflecting the significant growth of diversity in the country.
Do these
decreasing numbers of Catholics, laity and clergy, escalating downward, mean
that the Irish Catholic church is moving towards Celtic oblivion?
Fr. Niall
Leahy, a Jesuit priest serving in St. Francis Xavier Church in Dublin does not
view the current trend as terminal. “Cultural Catholicism will die out,” he
says, but he sees a better replacement on the horizon.
He envisages
a new role for priests away from struggling singlehandedly to meet the
community's spiritual and pastoral needs. Instead, he talks about them as
catalysts empowering other Christians “to be ministers themselves.”
Fr. Leahy tells
about the Sunday evening mass in his church, which is planned by the parish
youth and involves them in all parts of the ceremony. He claims that the days
when streams of people participated passively in the various devotional
practices are gone and that now more young Catholics are proud to claim a sense
of agency in their parish community.
He goes on
to make a salient point about traditional participation in Mass and similar
devotions. He contends that “the church was over-sacramentalized.” The
importance of receiving the Eucharist and showing up at public devotions was
emphasized at the expense of other elements of the Christian life. Too often,
he claims the people’s inner life of faith was left entirely uncultivated.
The Catholic
church has to live down decades of dubious theology. It occupied a gloomy space
in Irish life, dominated by fear and punishment. Remember that awful prayer,
widely recited, identifying the supplicant as part of “the poor banished
children of Eve, moaning and weeping in this valley of tears.”
Contrary to
the positive image of the caring father in the New Testament, God was transformed
into a distant figure, dishing out punishment and presenting heaven as the end
of an obstacle course. The Irish version of Christianity reeked of Manichaeism
which divided people into good and evil with terrible consequences for the
multitudes in the “evil” population.
All the
ancient civilizations propounded creation myths, stories that attempted to
explain how the world started. The Judaeo-Christian story centered on Adam and
Eve in an idyllic garden located in Eden.
John Milton,
a strong Christian believer, explained in the opening lines of his masterpiece
poem, “Paradise Lost”: Of man’s first disobedience, and the fruit of that
forbidden tree, Whose mortal taste brought death into the world, and all our
woe with loss of Eden. God’s punishment in this story for the so-called
original sin explains the evil tendencies that led to the pain and suffering in
the world. Adam and Eve were to blame for
some unnamed sin that marked all humanity, making them, through some twisted
logic, more liable to commit evil acts.
Fr. Timothy
Corcoran, a Jesuit priest and philosopher, had a big influence on Irish
education for half a century after the foundation of the state in 1922. Drawing
on the pulpit understanding of original sin, he pointed to the universal attraction
of evil and advocated for administering stern punishment for any children
stepping out of line. This delirious thinking, endorsed by church and state,
led to the outrageous punishment endured by students in most Irish schools
until the 1980’s.
The biggest
area of concern for the Catholic church, not just in Ireland but throughout the
world, centers on sexuality and the roles women are ruled out from playing in
the top echelons of the organization. Customs and traditions that applied in
past eras are no longer acceptable in our time.
The
widespread use of contraceptives to avoid pregnancy is accepted in most
countries as a sensible precaution by young couples, married and unmarried. In
his disastrous 1968 encyclical, Humanae Vitae, Pope Paul V1 decided to
proscribe the use of any medication or device that would prevent pregnancy when
married couples engaged in lovemaking.
A clear
majority in the Pontifical Commission, appointed by the Vatican to advise him, urged
that the church take a more liberal position, but their counsel was
disregarded. Paul opted to maintain consistency with Pius X1, his predecessor, from early in the century.
This weak
and illogical church mandate, disregarded by the vast majority of Irish people,
must be revisited and changed in line with sensible modern thinking.
Pope Francis’
synod will resume in October. The purpose of this international gathering of
Catholics is to examine whether the beliefs and customs espoused by the Church
are fit for the work of evangelization in our time. We wish them success in
their deliberations.
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