REPUBLIC OF IRELAND
Irish News
August 31, 2017
Dr Diarmuid Martin, Archbishop of Dublin
[Reform of the Irish Church is needed, but there is a stubborn reluctance to tackle issues such as education, says Dr Diarmuid Martin.]
THE Vatican Council was without doubt one of the most significant cultural events of the 20th century for Irish culture taken as a whole, especially through its documents on the Church in the modern world and on religious freedom, and thus on the concept of pluralism.
Was Irish Catholicism ready for radical change? Not only was the Church culture of the time inadequate to face the challenge of change, but that culture was in itself something that made real and realistic change more difficult.
That the once-conformist Ireland changed so rapidly and with few tears was read as an indication of a desire for change, but perhaps it was also an indication that the earlier conformism was covering a shallow faith and a faith built on a faulty structure which people no longer really endorsed.
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