The Russo
Family Lecture CATHOLIC IRELAND: PAST
PRESENT AND FUTURE Speaking Notes of Most Rev. Diarmuid Martin
Archbishop
of Dublin
at
Fordham
Centre of Religion and Culture, New York, 24th April 2013
“Ireland has changed
and Ireland is changing. The other
evening I was at a lecture in the Italian Embassy in Dublin about Ireland in
renaissance times. I was struck by two
quotes chosen by the lecturer. The first
was from Pope Pius II, Piccolomini, written in 1458 looking at the situation of
Europe at the time. He concluded his
three sentences on Ireland writing: “since nothing worth remembering took place
there during the period we write about, we hurry on to matters Spanish”. I can tell you, much worth remembering and
much that we would prefer not to remember has taken place in the Ireland of
recent times.
The second quote was from Petrarch who, in the latter part
of the 12th century, noted about Ireland: “in one year you will hardly hear it
thunder once. No thunderbolts cause
terror here, no lightening ever strikes”.
That quote should make anyone who still had lingering doubts recognise
that climate change is a reality!
I entered the
seminary in Dublin in October 1962 just one week before the opening of Vatican
II. The winter of 1962/63 was one of the
bleakest winters for 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 routine, a discipline and a way of life which seemed to
have been like that for decades. Even
to someone who was not a revolutionary, it all seemed so out of touch with the
world from which I had just come, and in which my friends were thriving. But you were not supposed to think that
way. Things were to be done as they had
always been done. The Catholic Church
was unchanging, but that was about to change.
For years now people looked to Ireland as a vibrant and
sustainable model for strong economic growth.
Countries were told to follow the Irish example. Today the economic situation of Ireland is
full of uncertainties, precisely at a moment when confidence and trust are
urgently needed. On the other hand, for
decades Ireland was looked on as one of the world’s most deeply and stably
Catholic countries and today Ireland finds itself along with other parts of
Europe being classified as “post-Catholic”.
I would issue here my first warning. Everyone has his or her own definition of
“post-Catholic”. You can only fully
define post-Catholic in terms of the Catholicism that has been displaced. Irish Catholicism has its own unique history
and culture. Renewal in the Irish Church
will not come simply from imported plans and programmes. Renewal must be home-grown. You must understand where Irish Catholicism
is coming from.
Ireland does of course share the same currents of
secularization with other counties of the Western world and thus shares many of
the same challenges. There are specific challenges within Europe; there are
specific challenges which are common to the English-speaking world. There is however a danger that people think
that because Ireland is an English-speaking country it can be put into the same
category as the United States and Great Britain.
Ireland is different.
Neither the United States nor Great Britain was ever a predominantly,
much less a dominantly, Catholic country.
The demographics and the cultural presence of Catholicism in society
were different and still remain different.
Indeed one would have to say that today Northern-Irish Catholicism is
different to that in the Republic of Ireland.
There are some who feel that all the answers to the problems of the
Church in Ireland might be solved by learning from Northern Ireland where years
of conflict forged a tighter Catholic identity. There may be some truth in that but it could
also be misleading as Northern Ireland itself is changing.
Curiously if anything there is a growing difference between
the social realities in Ireland North and South because of the evolving
differences in social policy and the emergence of a possible unforeseen
consequence of the peace process: a new Northern Ireland identity. You can no longer simplistically equate
Catholicism and nationalism in Northern Ireland. A very large number of Northern Irish
Catholics would favour staying in the United Kingdom.
What happened? Why
did so much happen so quickly? How can the overall economic climate of a
country change almost overnight? Who was
asleep or were we all asleep? The deeper
question is: what were the underlying values that underpinned the
better-times-Ireland? How did we
underestimate the fact that the success of an economic model ought to have been
evaluated in terms of long-term social sustainability of jobs, mortgages and
borrowing, of life style, education and health care as well as sustainable
opportunities for young people? What was
going on in the way “Catholic Ireland” was thinking?
Ireland is today picking up the pieces economically and
paying the price socially. The social
effects are dramatic. I was talking to
teachers at recent confirmations and they tell me of the, often, unseen
hardships that some of their young pupils are facing. In modern Ireland many children come to
school without having had breakfast; in some schools the level of
under-nourishment is such that children’s learning ability is being hindered.
There is growing anxiety that the austerity measures
introduced to respond to the economic crisis are now coming to a social
breaking point. At a time of rapid
change, ownership of social change is vital if change is to be accepted and
fully embraced. Who however wants to own policies of austerity? There is a certain flight from political
ownership. In Ireland it is easy to put
the blame on the previous government. It
is too easy simply to say that it is being imposed from the outside or by
necessity and that we would really prefer to do it somehow differently. You will not generate ownership if the
measures imposed are applied arbitrarily across the board and do not appear to
differentiate according to real situations, especially the situation of those
already vulnerable. We see that in
Ireland in some policies regarding education or healthcare or the care of the
elderly.
Only two days ago I attended a national Congress of the
Society of Saint Vincent de Paul where it was noted that people who one year
ago were contributors to the society are one year later turning to the Society
for help. Patience is wearing thin;
it is hard for some to hope.
What happened the Church?
When I was asked to return to Dublin, Pope John Paul asked me why
secularisation had taken place so rapidly in Ireland. It was one of the rare occasions when I told
a Pope he was wrong! The roots of change
in Ireland were there but were not seen.
It is not that Ireland is today in a momentary out-of-the ordinary
period in its history, somehow temporarily adrift from what is really the
default position. There is no default position anymore and there has not been
such a position for some time. In many
ways the Church in Ireland had been trapped in an illusory self image. The demographic majority which the Church
enjoyed hid many structural weaknesses and the Church became insensitive to
such weakness. In the immediate post
Vatican II period there was a moment of enthusiastic renewal in the Irish
Church and the positive acceptance of change probably indicated that there was
already a deep dissatisfaction and a desire for change in the Irish Church and
the Church leadership was out of touch with the religious sentiment of the
people.
The Catholic Church in Ireland had for far too long felt
that it was safely ensconced in a “Catholic country”. The Church had become conformist and
controlling not just with its faithful, but in society in general. I was at a seminar last week about the
Church’s self-understanding as a “perfect society”. All I can say is that anyone who might have
thought that “Catholic Ireland” was anything like a perfect society must now be
very disillusioned.
Faith in Jesus Christ must open us out beyond human
horizons. Christian faith requires
changing our way of thinking, of trusting in God’s love rather than in the
tangible securities of day to day life.
When faith leads to conformism it has betrayed the very nature of
faith. Conformism falsely feels that it
has attained certainty. Faith is always
a leap into the unknown and a challenge to go beyond our own limits and beyond
our own narrow certainties and the distorted understanding that comes from
them.
In the comments he made at the congregation of the Cardinals
just before the Conclave, Pope Francis spoke about the need for the Church to
break out, to break out into what he called the outskirts – the frontiers - of
human existence. And he added when the
Church does not break out of herself to evangelise she becomes auto-referential
and so shuts herself in. “The evils
which as time passes afflict ecclesial institutions are rooted in
self-reference, a sort of theological narcissism”. One of the keys to
understanding the mismanagement of the recent child abuse scandals in the Roman
Catholic Church in Ireland must be precisely the measure in which the Church in
Ireland had become auto-referential.
The effects of the child abuse scandals have had a demoralising
effect on the entire Church in Ireland and continue to have. In one sense the scandals could not have come
at a worse time, in that confidence in the Church was well on the wane and when
the scandals broke their effects were devastating. Today, Ireland has strong child protection
measures in place and the Irish Church is a much safer place for children than
in the past. I would like to pay tribute to National Board for Safeguarding
Children in the Catholic Church and in particular, Ian Elliot, for their
extraordinary contribution in helping make the Church a safer place for
children, as can be seen with the publication today of the latest NSBCCC
reports.
One still however has to ask where the roots of this scandal
and its mismanagement were to be found within the Church. Was the issue simply the action of a few
deviant priests who did not represent the Church, or was there something
deeper?
Certainly the overwhelming majority of priests in Ireland
led and lead an exemplary moral life, they carry out their ministry with great
dedication and enjoy great support and affection from their people and
contribute and support the new ethos of child safeguarding.
What are extraordinarily high are the numbers of children
that were abused, and we are talking thousands, and in the case of the
Archdiocese of Dublin, the number of priests who were serial paedophiles. There is no way you can simply explain away
the huge number of those who were abused and the fact that this took place
undetected and unrecognised within the Church of Jesus Christ. Today we are in a safer place, but it took
decades to attain this.
One of the great challenges the Irish Catholic Church still
has to face is that of strong remnants of inherited clericalism. The days of the dominant or at times
domineering role of clergy within what people call the “institutional Church”
have changed, but part of the culture still remains and from time to time
reappears in new forms. We often
overlook the fact that the very term “institutional Church” only has meaning in
a context of clericalism.
Clericalism will only be eliminated by fostering a deeper
sense of the meaning of the Church and that understanding of the nature of the
Church will come not from media strategies or simply by structural reforms, but
by genuine renewal in what faith in Jesus Christ is about. If we focus only on structures and power
there is a risk that clericalism might be replaced by neo-clericalism.
The Christian presence in society is not achieved by the
imposition of a manifesto or simply by high profile social criticism. It is more about the witness which people
give to Christian principles, mediated within the particular responsibilities
they carry.
For generations now the Irish Catholic Church relied on Irish
society in general to be the principal instrument for the passing on of the
faith. Day by day that becomes less and less the case. The religious culture of
Ireland has changed. Many people say to
me that they reject the Church but still consider themselves believers in Jesus
Christ. The difficulty is that in such a
situation, without a personal and rigorous intellectual encounter with the
scriptures and Christian tradition, a person can drift into something which is
their own, rather than a challenging encounter with their faith. The realities of faith if viewed, consciously
or unconsciously, through secularised lenses, can easily end up with a
distortion of faith or an inability to understand the logic of belief.
I am not saying that reform of structures is not necessary
within the Church. Anything but! What I am saying is that such reform without
ongoing radical renewal in the faith will end up with the wrong structures and
indeed might end up just answering yesterday’s unanswered questions tomorrow. Clericalism will to some extent vanish when
a new culture of co-responsibility and collaboration develops.
There is a further and more vital need: that of charting a
new path to allow the Church once again to impact on society and mediate the
Christian message into the broad culture of the Ireland of tomorrow. Reform is not just an inner-Church
reality. A Church trapped in inner
Church squabbles will never be attractive to others.
The Church will relinquish many of the institutional roles
it has held in Ireland. But it does not
mean that the Church should retreat into sacristies or into the private values
systems. If anything its presence must become even more vigorous within
society. I am not advocating here imposing one’s belief on others nor of establishing
a sort of Catholic mafia to manipulate society. I am not thinking just of the
area of sexual morality. I am talking
about the place of faith and of believers in the social, economic and political
and cultural world. I am talking about
the type of person I have so often encountered in international life. These were people who are recognised by their
colleagues as people whose religious faith brought an added dimension to the
quality of their professional life and to their broad humanitarian concern.
The Catholic Church requires lay man and women whose faith
enables them to dare to hope and who will challenge us to expand the parameters
of our hope beyond the narrow confines that each of us individually and as
communities consciously or unconsciously fix for ourselves. The Church has to
re-find its ability to form leaders in an Ireland which is facing new
challenges culturally economically, politically and religiously.
Where do we find these new leaders who will be in the
forefront of the presence of the Christian message in the society of
tomorrow? How will they be educated and
prepared for their task? Where are the
points of contact between the Church and the new culture of Irish society?
We have men and women who take this task on in the media
world. Much of our Catholic punditry is
as ideological as much of the punditry of the other side. Catholic punditry of this kind will only
appear to the other side as narrow defensiveness, while the analogous secular
punditry will be perceived as entrenched anti-Catholicism. Why is it that the type of mature dialogue
between believers and atheists and non-believers that we find in other European
societies – in the academic world, in the media and indeed in Churches - does
not happen in Ireland?
Let me take brief look at the changed demographics of
Catholic Ireland. Church attendance is very low in some areas, especially in
socially deprived areas. In Dublin, Mass
attendance is generally highest in middle class parishes, where parishioners
are middle class economically and liberal middle-of-the-road on matters of
Church teaching. They are parishes
however where there is a sense of community and activity. There is a growing interest in adult faith
formation, but as yet generally on an irregular basis. Irish Catholics are
generous to the Church even in hard times.
The Dublin Eucharistic Congress was financed above all by the voluntary
contribution of ordinary Catholics. The
presence of young people in the life of these parishes is however minimal. The
strong backbone of good Catholics in Ireland is an aging group.
Where there are signs of youth participation in the Irish
Church it is among more conservative young Catholics. Is this where the future of the Irish Church
lies? I am not sure. Many of these movements of young, more traditional Catholics are very limited
in numbers and make little inroads into the lives of their peers. When it comes to New Evangelisation the Irish
Church has to ask radical questions as to where it should be directing its
resources.
On the question of vocations, numbers are low and the
seminarians are divided between two establishments, one in Ireland and one in
Rome, neither of which can really achieve its aims on the basis of such small
numbers. There are religious
congregation which have not had an ordination for fifteen years and more. There are dioceses which have currently no
seminarians. No one from West of the
River Shannon entered the seminary this year.
It is not the case of a secularised urban Ireland and a healthy rural
Ireland. The same cultural processes are
at work across the country.
With regard to the Archdiocese of Dublin we have been able
to carry out detailed research on the basis of the most recent census figures
of 2011, matching them to parish boundaries and to the boundaries of the entire
diocese. There are a number of
interesting facts. The population of the
diocese has gone up significantly, but the numbers of those who registered as
Catholics has remained at about 1,200,000.
About one quarter of the population of the Archdiocese registered as
something other than Catholic, well above the national average. It is very clear that of the three quarters
who ticked the “Catholic box” on the census form many would not be practicing
or even in any real contact with the Church.
This gives a very different demographic picture than the one at times
presented or presumed. There are already
parishes in Dublin where Catholics are in a minority and it is clear that the
cultural Catholicism which today still exists will not continue for ever.
Another significant fact is that the numbers of those under
6 years of age is higher than those over 70.
Ours is a young diocese. The
cohort of one year olds and two year olds is larger than that of six and seven
year olds. Demographers estimate that
the population of the island of Ireland will once again reach the 8,000,000 of
pre-famine Ireland and that 50% of that population will live on a narrow strip
of land along the East Coast of Ireland from Gorey to Dundalk most of which
will be within the territory of the Archdiocese of Dublin. Will that emerging demographic reality still
be “Catholic Ireland”?
How should the Church be looking at the faith formation of
this growing number of young people? Until
now the formation of young Catholics depended in great measure on the schools.
The specific preparation for the sacraments of First Communion and for
Confirmation took place within the schools and at times the link between
family, school and parish was problematic.
Almost all Irish education at elementary level has
traditionally been denominational, with Catholic schools making up well over
90% of all such schools These
schools are fully funded by the State
and were thus until very recently the only form of State school that
existed. With greater pluralism there is
growing demand for other forms of school patronage.
All the indications are however that a sizeable number of
parents wish to see high-quality denominational education remain an essential
pillar, alongside other models, of our national educational system to help
young people to grow and flourish within the religious tradition to which they
belong. Obviously such denominational
education should not become divisive or exclusivist, but neither should
religious education be reduced simply a colourless presentation of the history
or the sociology of religion.
The presence of the Catholic Church in the educational
landscape of the United States is quite extraordinary. At times in Ireland there is a latent fear
that Catholic schools and Catholic higher academic institutions are somehow a
little outdated in a pluralist and increasingly secularised world. There is an
ambiguity about how to define their Catholic specificity. I am uneasy when I hear of Catholic education
being defined somehow as a service of quality education with religious veneer
offered in general to society and within which anyone can feel fully at
home.
I fear that in the current debates about divesting patronage
of a substantial number of Catholic schools, the argument is being presented
that Catholic schools are so “open” that that there is really no need for
schools of different patronage: we
Catholics can really do it all and better, so there is no need to divest. The Catholic Church in Ireland has to focus
its energies more clearly on how it wishes to ensure a presence, in a more
pluralist educational system, of schools and institutions which are truly
Catholic.
The contribution of Catholic academic institutions to the
good of society is not something that extinguishes the ecclesial nature and
vocation of those institutions. Their
Catholic identity is an essential part of the package which has built their
excellence. Indeed one could rather say
that any downplaying of their Catholic vocation and identity could well result
in a downgrading of their academic excellence.
In the past if one was talking about renewal of the Church
in Ireland one would in the first place have looked towards the seminaries.
That is still the case and the crisis of vocations has to be addressed. But vocations spring from within the life of
believing families and communities. The
renewal of the Church in Ireland and the challenge of creating a new Christian
presence in Irish society tomorrow will come from a renewed generation of lay
men and women who fell confident to witness to the meaning that their Christian
faith brings to their lives.
One of the great surprises of the recent International
Eucharistic Congress in Dublin was the extraordinary interest that the various
seminars and catechesis aroused. In many
cases the talks had to be repeated two or three times in order to facilitate
all those who wanted to attend.
There is a strong desire within Irish Catholics for a deep
renewal in formation in faith and in prayer and this is not being responded to
sufficiently. We have a first class
National Directory for Catechesis Share the Good News which indicates what is
needed at every stage. But its
implementation is slow and it encounters resistance to change. Our school system and our teachers have made
an immense contribution to the transmission of the faith. But many teachers no longer practice and
there is a growing danger that, due to curriculum pressures, catechesis will be
limited to two events, first communion and confirmation and stop there. Young people have in many cases already
drifted away from religious practice already before they enter second level
education. The Church’s presence at
third level education is often limited to pastoral care with minimal faith
formation.
All this is taking place at a time in which there is a
growing secularization of culture and of politics. I could list many examples of the distance
between politics and the Church examples of unbalanced media coverage. But to do that would probably be interpreted
as saying that it is politicians and journalists and the media who are to blame
for the crisis that exists in the Irish Church.
The causes of the crisis lie within the Church itself. Much of the heritage of Catholic dominated
Ireland still entraps us from being free witnesses to the Christian message
within a secular society which is seeking meaning.
It is not a time to be lamenting; it is a time to be rising
to the challenge with courage and Christian enthusiasm.”
