IRELAND’S “BEST, most loyal” Catholics have been “highly critical” at
meetings with bishops, Archbishop of Cashel Dermot Clifford has said.
He continued that this was also found to be the case in surveys
conducted on behalf of the Catholic Church in Ireland.
“Many people are hurt and disappointed,” he said.
He
made the comments in a interview to mark the 40th anniversary of the
Bishops’ Council for Research Development, of which he is chairman.
Studies
by the council “will have a new importance now as many people are hurt
and disappointed and research will gather together the feelings of our
very best, most loyal people,” he said.
It was “worrying” that at
present people were so “highly critical when we go out and do meetings”
and “send out surveys, questionnaires, and so on”, he said.
The council has gathered “quite a lot of information” on the matter but it has “yet to be processed”.
He said it would “have a huge amount to tell the priests and bishops [about] what people are thinking on the ground”.
Generally,
such surveys were necessary as any organisation had to find out whether
its message was getting through or how successful its initiatives were,
Dr Clifford said.
“It gives a picture of where we are at a particular time, which is what all surveys do,” he said.
Politicians
and political parties were always doing surveys to see “what way the
political wind is blowing. We do much the same but we would hope that
our [findings] would last much longer; that people don’t change as
quickly in regard to religion as they do to politics.”
To mark its
40th anniversary the Council for Research Development has published
highlights of its social research projects on the www.catholicbishops.ie
site.
In a separate development, Bishop of Kerry Bill Murphy has
issued a strong apology for “the hurt and pain” that survivors of
clerical child sexual abuse have experienced.
SIC: IT/IE