IRELAND
Irish Examiner
Tuesday, February 19, 2013
By Fergus Finlay
I WAS with a group of young people the other day when the news broke on a telly in the background. The Pope had resigned.
Astonishing, remarkable news. So I shushed the conversation, naturally, and turned to focus on the television. And the young people looked at me as if I had two heads.
It was clear that, in expressing an interest in the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI, I had confirmed myself as a complete dinosaur (not the first time, of course). It was just as clear that the passing of a pope held absolutely no interest whatsoever for the young people I was with. And, over the following couple of days, the vast majority of people I met could care less.
Without asking all sorts of impertinent questions, I couldn’t establish whether the people I was talking to were Catholic, or what kind of Catholic they were. But surely the odds are that the majority of people for whom the resignation of the pope is a matter of supreme indifference are themselves members of his flock, at least nominally. And yet their eyes glaze over if you talk about it.
If it is the case — and it seems to be — that so significant a historic event as the resignation of a pope means so little to so many people raised in the Catholic faith, then surely the Church in Ireland, and presumably elsewhere, faces fundamental problems.
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.