THE Pope will be officially told the Irish Catholic Church is "on the
edge" of national collapse and has only five to 10 years to make a
radical recovery by giving laymen and women a greater say in
decision-making.
This warning will be submitted in the coming months in a confidential report to Pope Benedict XVI
by an international investigator examining the state of the Irish
church in the wake of the Murphy and Ryan reports into clerical child
abuse.
Cardinal Sean O'Malley, the archbishop of Boston,
gave this commitment at a private meeting with members of the recently
formed Catholic Priests' Association, Redemptorist priest Fr Tony
Flannery revealed at the weekend.
Addressing the annual meeting of The People of God, a lay reform group, Fr Flannery, who met Cardinal O'Malley, revealed that the US prelate engaged in "serious discussion" with the association.
Fr
Flannery said Cardinal O'Malley told the association that the Irish
church had a decade, at most, to avoid falling over the edge and
"becoming like other European countries" where religion is marginal to
society.
Previously sceptical about the Apostolic Visitation to Ireland ordered by Pope Benedict, Fr Flannery said that in the light of Cardinal O'Malley's undertaking, "there may be some gleam of hope".
Support
But
he also revealed that at a separate meeting with the papal investigator
into the Archdiocese of Tuam, Canadian Archbishop Terrence Prendergast
told the association that conservative lay groups in the west had
expressed support for the Irish bishops despite their record of
cover-ups of paedophile clerics.
Fr Flannery said that while the
Association of Catholic Priests was ready to campaign for radical
change, it was apprehensive that it would be viewed as "a new
clericalism".
The association's preference was for lay groups,
such as Pobal, to come forward and give voice to the aspirations of the
majority of Catholics for change, Fr Flannery added.