IRELAND
Irish Independent
Mary Kenny
PUBLISHED
04/08/2016
It’s the ordinary Catholic in the pew you’d feel for, hearing about the alleged carry-on at Maynooth, learning, perhaps for the first time, that there is a “gay dating app” which trainee priests were allegedly in the habit of availing; and that the usually liberal Archbishop of Dublin seems to consider St Patrick’s College – once the powerhouse of Catholic Ireland – such a worry that students have to be despatched to Rome to acquire their pastoral and theological training.
The ordinary Catholics – the mild and thoughtful women and men that I sometimes sit beside at St Theresa’s Church in Clarendon Street on a Saturday evening when I’m in Dublin – will surely feel confused, dismayed, and disappointed that the situation seems such a mess and a muddle. When the Archbishop of Dublin makes a point, and his brother bishops blatantly refuse to back him – well, where is the leadership in a crisis? Where is the management? Where is the steady shepherd who guides his flock?
Many of those older churchgoers will remember a time when the Catholic Church – when Maynooth itself – seemed as solid and commanding as any of the great institutions of Christendom, when its power was so awesome that politicians would regularly kneel to kiss a bishop’s ring.
The old church was too powerful, and it had to change. Many changes were positive, too – the innovations of Vatican II, in the 1960s, were warmly welcomed in Ireland – but should change mean confusion? Should it mean a rudderless institution with a “quarrelsome” – Dr Martin’s word – atmosphere?
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