IRELAND
The Southern Star
By Editor
Saturday April 21st, 2012
THE findings of a survey, entitled Contemporary Catholic Perspectives, which was commissioned by the Association of Catholic Priests, could be deemed facile, given that the recent report of the Apostolic Visitation group from the Holy See declared that people who profess to be members of the Roman Catholic Church must be prepared to fully abide by its teachings and rules, which are quite clear and unambiguous
Much has been made in the survey – carried out among 1,000 Catholics throughout the island of Ireland over a two-week period in February – of people’s preferences for various changes in the institution that could make it more relevant in the modern world and also more palatable to them. In restaurant parlance, the majority of those surveyed would ideally like to be à la carte catholics, just picking the bits they like and adding some tempting side orders, but the reality is that this option is off and they can only avail of the set menu.
The dictat from the Vatican could be interpreted on the one hand as the church being out of touch with its members, who – albeit perhaps naïvely – expect the institution to react to the concerns of members and fulfill their wishes. However, as history has shown down through the centuries, the church regards itself as the single-minded guardian of its core beliefs and sticks rigidly to its rules, yielding little or nothing to those who question them.
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