BUFFETED by a succession of scandals, the latest of which involves the Diocese of Cloyne and Bishop Magee, and lacking decisive leadership and pastoral vision, the Irish Catholic Church now urgently needs a national synod.Bearing in mind the recent warning from the Archbishop of Dublin, Dr Diarmuid Martin, that people’s patience with the church is “not everlasting”, it is surely time for the bishops to, collectively, take their courage in their hands and initiate a national consultation.
Over the past 20 years many Catholics have indeed lost confidence in the church, as Archbishop Martin emphasised.
That’s now a given.
The question, therefore, becomes what to do about it.
The hand-wringing must stop.
As a prelude to a national assembly or national synod, the time has come to begin a national consultation on a diocese by diocese basis.
If that were to start now, the national synod could take place prior to the Eucharistic Congress to be held in Dublin in 2012.
The idea of a consultation leading to a national assembly or a synod is not new.
Last August the former Northern Ireland ombudsman Nuala O‘Loan said Ireland’s Catholic bishops needed to arrive at an agreement on an island-wide basis on the issues facing the future of the Catholic Church here.
Her proposal received the immediate backing of Bishop Willie Walsh of Killaloe, who said he would have “no difficulty with a national assembly if people thought it would be worthwhile”.
There is only one way to find out. But the project will be doomed to frustration if the Bishops feel they must first go cap-in-hand to Rome seeking official ‘permission’ for the entire process. It is surely time for a display of Celtic or Hibernian Catholicism.
Strangely enough, a blueprint that might well serve as a DIY guide for the Irish bishops is contained in a new novel from an acclaimed American writer on religious affairs.
Robert Blair Kaiser covered the Second Vatican Council (1962-65) for TIME magazine, and went on subsequently to cover religion for the New York Times and Newsweek.
Now, in a novel entitled Cardinal Mahony, Kaiser dramatises a valiant attempt by Cardinal Roger Mahony of Los Angeles to radically transform the American Catholic Church, so that it might serve as a redemptive model for the global church.
He determines to abandon the model of the church enshrined in the Code of Canon Law and to embrace the church of “the people of God” (one of the pivotal insights of Vatican II).
At one stage, the fictional Cardinal Mahony realises that his best chance of winning support for his radical plan is to get it backed by a National Synod representative of the entire American Church.
The cardinal is understandably hesitant, knowing that Rome will never sanction such an assembly.
When he outlines his fears to a retired bishop, the latter utters the following response: “The US bishops don’t need the Vatican’s permission to do what they need to do in America. All they need is balls. But few US bishops have them”.
Given the need for such a synod in Ireland, one could easily substitute “few Irish bishops” for “few US bishops” and not lose a wink of sleep.
It is exactly what the late Fr Joe Dunn had in mind back in 1994 when he wrote a book entitled No Lions in the Hierarchy, using, of course, strictly non-anatomical language.
Many disillusioned Catholics have already lost patience with the church here.
A national assembly could be the beginning of the way back, but it must have a genuine Irish agenda, not a Vatican-sanitised one.
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(Source: LN)