Dublin’s archbishop is worried that some Catholics are retreating from dialogue with the present into the false security of imaginary better times.
In a speech, Archbishop Dairmuid Martin said while the Church in Ireland would never be what it was 20 or even 10 years ago, things were improving.
“But the moment I say that the Church has turned the corner the temptation is to think that things can now go back to where they were before.”
Indeed there were signs within the Church “that some – even young people – are seeking refuge from the challenges of life by adapting ways of the past and are retreating from dialogue with the present into the false security of imaginary better times”, he said.
In a tribute to priests he said “there is very little doubt that among the most respected categories of people in Irish society today ‘our local priest’ must be in the top five and for good reason”.
“I am afraid that ‘the bishops’ as a group may be farther down on the popularity gauge.”
While there were many indications that “residual cultural Catholicism” was still strong in Irish culture, he said, it would be foolish “to ignore the fact that that Irish cultural Catholicism has a clear generational sell-by-date printed on it”.
What the Church needed was “a strong laity which is not inward looking or caught up simply in Church structures and activities”.
Archbishop Martin also said he regrets saying the Irish church needed a reality check in the wake of the same-sex marriage referendum in May.
This is because the phrase as reported has been widely misunderstood.
“The first thing that the Church must do is to carry out continuous – what I have called – ‘reality checks’”, he said.
“A reality check is nothing more than discerning the facts in all their complexity and then facing the facts and evaluating how to address the facts in a culture that is ever changing,” he said.
Sources