The Irish Church must adapt and reform if it is survive the clerical sex abuse scandal and other challenges that lie ahead, said the Catholic Archbishop of Dublin. Diarmuid Martin, 74, the most influential Catholic prelate in Ireland, said in an interview with The Irish Times on April 22 that there’s still “a lot of Read more
Posts Tagged ‘Irish Church’
The Church’s loss of influence in Ireland
Tuesday, June 9th, 2015
You wouldn’t expect this from the 71-year-old gay leader of the successful campaign to legalise same-sex marriage in Ireland. But scholar, senator, and civil rights activist David Norris not only calls Pope Francis a “terrific beacon of hope around the world,” he also bemoans the Catholic Church’s dwindling influence in his homeland. I’d call that Read more
Pope Francis ruffling a few conservative young feathers
Friday, August 8th, 2014
Pope Francis’s courage is causing disquiet among those with “a very conformist and closed Catholicism”, the Archbishop of Dublin has warned. At a Catholic leadership conference in Melbourne last month, Archbishop Diarmuid Martin spoke of a young curate who recently told his parish priest he was not happy with some things the Pope had said. Read more
Church shouldn’t try to be spiritual super store
Friday, May 30th, 2014
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 Read more
Silenced priests: A question of conscience
Tuesday, March 25th, 2014
Let us talk about Catholic priests. Consider especially those who are now in their 60s, after a life of service to their church. They were seminarians in the heady days of Vatican II when everything seemed possible. They managed to survive the aftermath of was Humanae Vitae and continued to preach and counsel, to lead the sacred Read more
Renewing the Irish church from within
Tuesday, May 21st, 2013
I entered the seminary in Dublin in October 1962, just one week before the opening of the Second Vatican Council. The winter of 1962-63 was one of the bleakest in decades, and our seminary was a very cold place in more ways than one. My memory of the seminary is of a building and a Read more
Re-balancing authority in the abusive Church
Tuesday, May 22nd, 2012
Organisers had initially expected 200 to turn up at the Association of Catholic Priests (ACP) meeting in Dublin this month. In fact over 1000 showed up. The size of the crowd in part was a response to the recent silencing of Irish priests. One of those silenced, Fr Tony Flannery, was part of the leadership Read more