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	Looking to Rome for Guidance By Garry O'Sullivan Irish Catholic February 4, 2010 http://www.irishcatholic.ie/site/content/looking-rome-guidance IRELAND -- If the Church in Ireland is to have a worthwhile future, each diocese will have to come up to speed with its own affairs and adopt best practice nationally and internationally. Bishops were not appointed to a bishops' conference, but they were appointed to a diocese and how they carry out this function is crucial to the spiritual well-being of laity and clergy. Not only is it of concern how they have handled clerical child sexual abuse, but also how they run their diocese, care for their laity and priests and if they are capable of doing what is an increasingly difficult and demanding job. Unlike the rest of us, there is no real oversight of how a bishop runs his diocese, and certainly no accountability to the people of that diocese. Therefore, it is important that the Vatican ensure that every bishop can answer comprehensively to three areas of competence. The first is leadership. Are you, as a bishop, preaching the Gospel, preaching about the faith and morals as a positive option, reaching out to those who struggle with faith everyday in their lives? How are you doing this? The second is management. Have you good structures in place in your diocese? Do you have regular meetings with your priests and laity? With whom do you consult and do you consult widely or just with your own group of friends? Do you have proper policies in place? Do you have someone involved in management, who could advise you from time to time on how to run things efficiently? The third is communications. Does everybody who needs to know something know it when they need to know it? Do you promote an open communications policy in your diocese? Have you had priests and laity trained to communicate the Good News in their parishes and dioceses? Another, very human question, the Pope should ask is why do you as a group of men at your bishops' conference meetings walk around Maynooth on your tea break looking so unhappy? Are you not bearers of good news and what kind of impression are you giving? Why are you unhappy, what's wrong? A reader recently accused me of being too hard on the bishops but I don't think I am. I've no doubt that most are good, decent men doing their best. Yet, if some of their best is not good enough, surely someone should say so, or are many Catholics so caught up in the pray, pay and obey mentality that they prefer a system that says once you 'get Mass' you're alright and turn a blind eye to the intellectual mediocrity that passes for organised religion in Ireland? Isn't it strange how rarely we hear Jesus mentioned in conversation? If you mention Jesus you're a bit odd, and if that is not symptomatic of religion as a cultural phenomenon and not as spirituality, I don't know what is. So, it's not just the bishops, our whole Church has deep, deep problems but we have to start with the leadership and try and get that right first. The Murphy Report was, and is, about the failure of leadership. While there is disagreement among priests about the style of Archbishop Martin's leadership, I don't think there are too many who would disagree with his comments that renewal is needed. Jesus didn't look for those who were closest to God among those in the Temple, quite the opposite. Likewise, true Christianity today can often be found among those who don't go to Mass, who don't read this paper, and who by the daily witness of their lives, live the Gospel. Reform Now, they are among the reasons why we need a reformed Church, to get them into our Churches to show us how to be better Christians. As Richard Rohr writes in Hope against Darkness: "Jesus is shockingly not upset with sinners, a shock so total that most Christians to this day refuse to see it. He is only upset with people who do not think they are sinners: These denying, fearful and illusory ones are the blockage...For Jesus there are no postures, group memberships, behaviours, prayer rituals, dietary rules, asceticism or social awareness that of themselves transform us or make us enlightened, saved or superior. There are no contaminating elements or people to expel or exclude. These will be exposed as inadequate when goodness is exposed all the more. If that is not the moral message that shouts from Calvary, I cannot imagine what the message is." There is a great freedom in a message that tells people that they should not be ashamed of their humanity, their failings and many have come to this realisation themselves and have cut themselves off from Catholicism because they don't see it as representing these truly Christian values. Now, that is something to be sad and annoyed about. If people don't see Christ in Catholicism in Ireland, then we are really in trouble.
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