IRELAND
The Irish News
Patrick Murphy
03 December, 2016
BAD news for some Protestant graffiti artists: they may soon have to replace the traditional “No Pope here” with “Pope here – but not for very long”.
Yes, the Pope is coming to Ireland. Northern nationalists are celebrating their prediction that he will come north, which suggests that they do not see the north as part of Ireland. (It’s a bit like the way they used to complain about the British army occasionally crossing the border. It implied that the army had a right to be in the north.)
So, apart from re-writing some slogans, what will a papal visit mean for Ireland, north and south? The answer is that its legacy will probably be more political than religious. …
While the Pope’s visit is part of a worthy programme of renewing family pastoral care, his visit has a significant political dimension. Five years ago, Enda Kenny and the Dáil accused the Vatican of obstructing investigations into sexual abuse by priests, following publication of a damning report on Cloyne diocese. Ireland and the Vatican later withdrew their respective ambassadors.
Having welcomed Kenny to the Vatican this week, the Pope is visiting Ireland to mend diplomatic fences. But while diplomacy will address the Vatican’s concerns, it will do little to tackle the two main challenges facing the Irish Church.
The first is that many of the faithful and former faithful no longer have the same trust or belief in the organisation following its handling of the child sex abuse scandal. Secondly, in a period of all-island austerity and associated deprivation, the Church has rendered itself increasingly irrelevant, by offering neither explanation nor solution to the growing imbalance of wealth.
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