IRELAND
Irish Independent
Monday June 18 2012
THE Pope’s address was not the highlight of the Eucharistic Congress — and he was right to keep it that way. The congress was always going to be understated. This allowed a realistic check on the state of the church in Ireland.
An old priest told me that the Eucharistic Congress in the RDS last week was the best sense of being an Irish Catholic he has had since his ordination.
That says a lot about the starvation Irish Catholics have suffered at the hands of an institutional church.
The workshops surprised the organisers, such was the swell of participants for the main talks, and many went away disappointed despite paying for the privilege of being there.
This confusion is not really the fault of the organisers — and much credit to Fr Kevin Doran, who organised the congress — but it is the fault of a church that lost its way sacramentally, liturgically and while preaching justice denied to the most vulnerable — children.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.