Much has been made in the survey – carried out among 1,000 Catholics throughout the island of Ireland over a two-week period in February – of people’s preferences for various changes in the institution that could make it more relevant in the modern world and also more palatable to them. In restaurant parlance, the majority of those surveyed would ideally like to be à la carte catholics, just picking the bits they like and adding some tempting side orders, but the reality is that this option is off and they can only avail of the set menu.
The dictat from the Vatican could be interpreted on the one hand as the church being out of touch with its members, who – albeit perhaps naïvely – expect the institution to react to the concerns of members and fulfill their wishes. However, as history has shown down through the centuries, the church regards itself as the single-minded guardian of its core beliefs and sticks rigidly to its rules, yielding little or nothing to those who question them.
The main concerns expressed by the sample the priests’ survey took were in relation to matters sexual, with 75 per cent of Irish catholics stating that the church’s teachings on sexuality have ‘no relevance’ for them or for their families. Most, we assume, feel that, if the celibacy rule for priests and religious was abolished, it would remove the pent-up frustrations that led to the perpetration of clerical child sexual abuse in the past, with some 87% of those surveyed being in favour of allowing priests to marry.
Significantly also, 77% were in favour of the ordination of women priests, especially as the fairer sex accounts for half or slightly more of catholics. This is the most striking perceived flaw in the church laid bare by the survey – its blatant inequality where women are concerned.
The year before last, Clonakilty lady Jennifer Sleeman led a protest against this discrimination against women, which got a lot of media attention at the time, but ultimately changed nothing, as the church authorities were not for turning. It is unlikely that the latest survey of Irish catholics will have any success either in having the laws changed.
While some 84% of Irish people declared themselves to be catholics in the 2011 Census, the priests’ survey subsequently found that only 35% of them attend mass weekly in Ireland. Significantly however, this is still one of the highest rates of mass attendance in Europe.
For taking the trouble to try to get a snapshot of catholic people’s attitudes in the Ireland of today by commissioning this survey, some of the leading figures in the Association of Catholic Priests were rebuked by the church authorities, with one of the founders, Redemptorist Fr Tony Flannery, being banned from writing about the contentious issues it raised. Censorship has reared its ugly head again.
The Roman Catholic Church is not a democratic organisation like a political party where policies can be changed by a majority of members who feel it is necessary to reflect modern realities in order to maintain or boost popularity. The church itself is not interested in popularity contests and is probably even puzzled about why so many of its professed members want it to change its rules so radically.
One signs up to the Roman Catholic Church’s terms and conditions and that’s it as far as the church is concerned. The Church of Ireland allows its clergy to marry and also ordains women, begging the question: is this where disgruntled catholics should be looking?