Church shouldn’t try to be spiritual super store

The Catholic Church in Ireland can no longer be a spiritual super store dispensing every possible service, a newly installed bishop says.

The Irish Church must stop trying to be a “spiritual Tesco”, said Bishop Donal McKeown, who was installed as Bishop of Derry in April.

Instead it should re-focus on re-organising itself in order to serve a population who are unaware of the Gospel, Bishop McKeown said.

He told The Tablet the Church can no longer try to offer “all possible services” in order to keep its “market share”.

The approach of some dioceses in Austria is a better way, the bishop said.

In these dioceses, priests do not offer Masses for individuals who have died whenever people request them.

Instead, they offer such Masses weekly or monthly.

“What we are looking at is not simply how do we reorganise the structures of Church and the delivery mechanisms,” Bishop McKeown said.

“But how do we actually envision a new ecclesiology for a different environment, where the majority of the population in Ireland haven’t really heard the Gospel story,” he continued.

He criticised members of the Association of Catholic Priests in Ireland for what he called their negativity and depressing views about the various challenges facing the Church, such as the decline in priest numbers.

Rather, he said, the trend was evidence of the end of a particular model of Church and ought to be seen as an opportunity.

“I am keen to find new ways forward rather than say it is terrible and all this is going to go wrong.”

Referring to Pope Francis’s Evangelii Gaudium, he said it was important for the local church to discern its way forward.

He said people in Ireland see the Church as a series of things you do or a series of isolated teachings, but in many cases there was no deep personal commitment to faith.

“We are looking at not just how we deliver the services, but how we are Church in a different way,” the bishop explained.

He said his priority for Derry was to have a “diocese talking to itself about its mission”.

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