Paul Durcan's rant about Diarmuid Martin was a shallow swipe at an abrupt, aloof - and gifted - prelate.TO BE LAMBASTED by a well-known poet in the pages of the Irish Times newspaper might be construed as the end of a rather prolonged media honeymoon.
Alternatively, it might be viewed as a somewhat of a compliment to be deemed worthy of such notice. Not that Paul Durcan has been sparing in his choice of objects of attention.
He has cast his mostly jaundiced but occasionally loving eye on everyone from ex-taoisigh to ex-girlfriends, on his mother and many, many others in between.
The current Archbishop of Dublin may count his blessings that he was merely compared to an annihilator of freedom of conscience, a member of the politburo, Mao Man, and a well-known brand of boots especially favoured by fashionable youths. He could have received the treatment meted out to Cardinal Connell by Paul Durcan in one of his radio pieces for Today with Pat Kenny.
"For 14 years you have filled my soul with fear, despondency and loneliness. Watching you looming on the altar of the Pro-Cathedral or in a sermon droning, I feel as if I am in an airbus at 36,000 feet in the vicinity of the North Pole. Your countenance and your vocabulary constitute snow-white desolation, vast empty tundra, eternally wailing emptiness."
Archbishop Martin survived longer than most clerical media darlings, perhaps because he had no interest in being one in the first place. When he comments on public affairs, he does so in an intelligible and reasonable way. More importantly, in an era when most episcopal personages would prefer to face starved and howling wolves than journalists, he is willing to engage with the media and has no particular fear of them.
Not that he is universally loved. His own priests nicknamed him Martin of Tours, a clerical pun on the fact that the Archbishop continues to accept international speaking engagements as if he were still a high-ranking Vatican diplomat rather than head of an obscure Irish archdiocese.
Unlike Cardinal Connell, Archbishop Martin appears to have no kitchen cabinet, no inner privileged circle. For a man who spent most of his life in international diplomacy, he can be extraordinarily abrupt and curt in his dealings with people. Most recently, he caused deep upset because of the way he handled new appointments for priests, and potentially far-reaching changes to parish structures.
Some priests were told one day that they were to be a parish priest. Days later they were informed that, instead, they were to be "pastoral leaders" of two or more parishes. Most priests don't even know what being a pastoral leader will involve, and their parishioners are even more in the dark.
Years ago, I remember being amazed to hear Bishop Willie Walsh, the much-loved bishop of Killaloe, reply to a question about what his priorities would be as bishop. He said that his first task would be to look after his "little band of brothers", his priests. As time goes by, I see the wisdom in it. Priests are vital to the health of the church. When they are demoralised and dispirited, it affects every other member.
Expectations of churches are rightly higher than the rest of society. A church cannot afford to have anything less than best practice in how it deals with people, particularly those who have dedicated their entire lives to it, or else the message that it preaches becomes hollow and impossible to hear.
Some weeks ago, in the Irish Catholic newspaper, Nuala O'Loan wrote a carefully crafted piece about the need for change management in the Catholic Church, and the need both to cherish the priests we have, and to use the expertise of lay people. She was not proposing any radical changes in church teachings or worship. She was merely pointing out that we still have high numbers of priests in comparison to other parts of the world, but that there are major challenges ahead in the administration of parishes and dioceses.
For weary sophisticates who left the church sometime circa 1974, it may come as a surprise that parishes and parish structures are still important hubs of social capital, not to mention faith, in much of Ireland today. We have witnessed the distress in towns and cities when religious orders have had to leave churches. Amalgamating parishes will cause even greater trauma. But it will have to happen.
So are priests and lay people delighted that Paul Durcan took an almighty swipe at the archbishop? No. The rant was too inaccurate and full of the laziest kind of stereotypes.
During his time at the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, far from being some kind of Vatican crusher of creativity, Diarmuid Martin and his team punched far, far above their weight as advocates for the poorest and most vulnerable of the world. Rather than being a "Great Globaliser", the archbishop is one of the most articulate critics of the negative impact of globalisation.
Secondly, most priests and lay people recognise that gestures like concelebration with members of different Christian traditions go down well with the media, but do absolutely nothing to hasten the slow, boring, tedious grind of trying to heal divisions. Nor can any organisation survive without a small but non-negotiable set of core beliefs.
Anglicans pride themselves on being a broad church, with room for vastly differing beliefs, but the Anglican Communion is on the verge of implosion as a result. (Like most Catholics, I say that not in any spirit of vindictiveness, but as one who hopes and prays that their internal differences can be resolved. The last thing the Christian Church needs is further division.) Nor do I believe that every critic of the Church is automatically wrong. Many people later venerated as saints were viewed with great suspicion during their lifetimes. Most of those saints, though, were characterised by humility, and by willingness to avoid grandstanding gestures.
Finally, most priests and lay people recognise that being Archbishop of Dublin is a lonely, demanding and thankless role. For example, when Diarmuid Martin criticised racism in Ireland, he received poisonous diatribes from allegedly staunch Catholics for his pains.
The archbishop is a man with flaws as well as gifts, but the flaws outlined by Paul Durcan reveal more about a petulant poet than they do about the prelate he attempts to satirise.
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