Jesuit theologian Fr Gerry O'Hanlon SJ has said Catholics frequently
view the Church as ''a source of embarrassment and shame'' and ''our
current model of church is nonsense''.
Speaking at the launch of his new book A New Vision for the Catholic
Church: A View from Ireland in Dublin on Monday night, Fr O'Hanlon said:
''Tradition is important but should never become tyranny.''
He
described the current Church as an ''excessively male monarchical
model'' and said that ''we ought to be looking for an alternative''.
From the Church's beginning, he said, it has experienced ''moments of
change that the spirit has led us to''. He says that we are now in such
a moment, but that ''it's difficult to sustain a sense of crisis
indefinitely''.
The danger, he says is that -- without significant
change -- Catholics in Ireland might become a ''culturally irrelevant
minority'', however, he said, ''I don't think it has to be that way''.
His book charts significant aspects of the history of the Catholic
Church and outlines seven steps he believes should be taken to renew it.
Key suggestions include the urgent setting up of a national assembly in
order to address the crisis in the Irish Catholic Church as well as a
''Third Vatican Council''.
In the book, Fr O'Hanlon says that ''far from being a 'light for the
nations' we often, today, experience the Catholic Church as a source of
embarrassment and shame'' and that ''our current model of church is
nonsense''.
Fr O'Hanlon says that the Church is full of ''good people, including
good bishops'' but that it is ''an institution that is not comfortable
with conversations between its own members'' and that people ''should
not confuse faith and loyalty with an unquestioning adherence to the
status quo''.
However, he believes a strong Church is needed with ''the
'institutional legs' to survive the tough challenges thrown up by the
message of Jesus to our world''.