IRELAND/UNITED STATES
National Catholic Reporter
by James Flanigan | Feb. 13, 2013
WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?: THE CRISIS IN IRISH CATHOLICISM
By Brendan Hoban
Published by Banley House, 9.95 euros
The statistics on the Irish and American churches are bleak. In both countries, only one-third of Catholics attend Mass regularly. Two of the most loyal churches in the Catholic world are dispirited; their good priests don’t know where to turn for the shame of it.
However, the book Where Do We Go From Here?, published in Ireland, where public reports of clergy sexual abuse of children cover more than five decades, offers guidance to the American church and particularly Los Angeles, where Cardinal Roger Mahony was forced to release records of clerical abuse and cover-ups that have unleashed a fresh explosion of denunciation, rebuke, sadness and apology (see story).
Author Brendan Hoban is a priest in rural Ballina, County Mayo, Ireland, who has written half a dozen books on church and the priesthood, as well as on history. His prescription is simplicity itself, that the church finally live by the tenets of the Second Vatican Council (1962-65). “Under the inspirational guidance of Pope John XXIII, they ushered in a way for the church of being at home in a constantly changing world,” Hoban writes.
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