THE following is a series of extracts from Archbishop Diarmuid Martin's address to the Knights of Columbanus on 'The Future of the Catholic Church in Ireland'. - "As a person of faith, I know that the future of the church in Ireland is not in my hands, but that its future will be guided by the Lord, who is with His church at all times."
- "On a purely personal level, as Diarmuid Martin, I have never since becoming Archbishop of Dublin felt so disheartened and discouraged about the level of willingness to really begin what is going to be a painful path of renewal and of what is involved in that renewal."
- "Why am I discouraged? The most obvious reason is the drip-by-drip never-ending revelation about child sexual abuse and the disastrous way it was handled. There are still strong forces which would prefer that the truth did not emerge.
"The truth will make us free, even when that truth is uncomfortable.
"There are signs of subconscious denial on the part of many about the extent of the abuse which occurred within the Church of Jesus Christ in Ireland and how it was covered up. There are other signs of rejection of a sense of responsibility for what had happened.
"There are worrying signs that, despite solid regulations and norms, these are not being followed with the rigour required."
- "The second and deeper root of my discouragement is that I do not believe that people have a true sense of the crisis of faith that exists in Ireland. We have invested in structures of religious education which, despite enormous goodwill, are not producing the results that they set out to do."
- "There are those who claim that the media strategy of the church in the Archdiocese of Dublin following the publication of the Murphy Report was 'catastrophic'. My answer is that what the Murphy Report narrated was catastrophic and that the only honest reaction of the church was to publicly admit that the manner in which that catastrophe was addressed was spectacularly wrong: spectacularly wrong, full stop, not spectacularly wrong, 'but'.
"You cannot sound-bite your way out of a catastrophe."
SIC: II