IRELAND
Irish Independent
By Archbishop Diarmuid Martin
Saturday April 07 2012
CHRISTIANS around the world are celebrating Easter. It is the most important feast in the Christian religious calendar. However, for many around the world, even baptised Christians, Easter means very little. Easter is a break. It is about children and chocolate. Many will celebrate in church; others might barely spare a fleeting thought about what Easter means.
The religious culture of Ireland is changing. We can read the change in different ways. Some will see in the recent census figures that Catholicism is still the largest religious tradition to which Irish people adhere, and will take that as a sign that the faith is as strong as ever. Others will see the same figures as hiding a faith that is weak and symbolic, rather than one which has the robustness to survive and be creative in a changing contemporary culture. …
There are many who tell me to stop talking about sexual abuse in the church. There is no way we can bury and hide a painful past; it remains with us and will remain with us. But that does not mean that we shy away from announcing the teaching and the person of Jesus Christ. We should have no fear in bringing his message on to our streets, into our media, to our younger generations.
Jesus is still there. What the church has to fear is the fearfulness of its own members.
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