In the last couple of weeks the Catholic community in Ireland has
seen the ordination of two new bishops, namely Ray Browne in Kerry and
Denis Nulty in Kildare and Leighlin.The renewal of the Irish hierarchy is now well and truly underway as members of the ‘old guard’ retire and our new(ish) nuncio, Archbishop Charles Brown sends his lists of recommendations to Rome.
The ‘old guard’ presided over the Church in Ireland as the scandals broke all around them.
Some of them were not responsible for the scandals which often took place before they ever became bishops.
Most of the scandals happened in the 1970s and 1980s and the disastrous handling of those scandals began (I stress ‘began’) to improve greatly starting in 1996 when the first set of child protection guidelines was introduced by the bishops.
Hierarchy
Nonetheless, anyone who was a bishop in the 1990s down to the present day is indelibly associated with the scandals and indeed a sort of collective guilt now hovers over the hierarchy that affects even the new generation.
Notwithstanding this, however, the fact that there is a new generation of bishops taking over the leadership of the Irish Catholic community will help.
The first task of the new bishops is to do what Archbishop Diarmuid Martin has done in Dublin, namely to communicate firmly within their own dioceses that their attitude towards clerical sex abuse is decisively different from the attitude that prevailed in the past.
That will allow them to build up for themselves some store of moral authority which can then be used in other areas.
They can also learn from the example of Pope Francis who, in doing simple things like not living in the papal apartments, has overnight created a new image for the papacy.
Extroverted
There is a challenge here for new bishops, however. Francis has an extroverted personality and is a natural with crowds.
Not everyone is like that no matter how hard they might try.
In fact, if they try too hard to be what they’re not, it will simply strike a false note and therefore will backfire.
It would be good if some alternative to living in bishops’ houses could be found and in so doing emulate Pope Francis to some extent. Those houses are not by any stretch as luxurious as many people seem to think and double up as diocesan offices in any case.
But they send out completely the wrong signal to the public. Some thought needs to be put into this.
Taking a longer term view, the number one task facing the new bishops will be rebuilding their own individual dioceses.
Every diocese in the country is faced with a vocations crisis and a catechetical crisis, apart from declining Mass attendance.
They will need to look to examples of dioceses in other parts of the Western world that have had success in building up vocations.
Those dioceses often have full-time vocations directors who are extremely dedicated to their task.
Secondly, those dioceses develop a culture and a mentality of actively looking for vocations, of seeking out opportunities to ask young men to consider joining the priesthood.
This means parish priests not being shy about encouraging vocations and speaking about the priesthood from the pulpit and in schools. Successful dioceses also ensure that they have a good seminary to send candidates to.
From a catechetical point of view, dioceses need to ensure that the material used in schools is up to scratch. This may need putting noses out of joint because the catechetical establishment tends to be enormously defensive about Alive-O, the programme used in primary schools.
Beyond that, however, young Catholics (and older Catholics for that matter) need to acquire the sort of mentality needed when believers find themselves no longer in the majority, but in a dwindling minority.
Minority
When you are in the minority, your beliefs will no longer be reinforced through social convention by the surrounding culture and may be actively undermined by it.
Therefore, young Catholics need to be told that as they grow up that they will find that most of their friends do not go to Mass anymore, if they ever did, and may actively mock their decision to go to Mass and to practise the Faith.
They need to be taught how to deal with the fact that the surrounding culture will not support their beliefs.
To this end, they need to hear the Bible stories that deal with people living through times of infidelity.
In fact, to a large extent, the Old Testament is a story of fidelity and infidelity. We need to become more familiar with this side of the Old Testament.
I firmly believe that if young Catholics no longer expect their faith to be supported by the surrounding culture and know they will be in a minority and are trained to stand against the crowd if need be, they will be much more likely to hold on to their faith.
The new bishops will also have to be strongly evangelistic in their mentality.
To what extent are dioceses actively trying to encourage people to return to Mass?
To what extent are individual parishes doing this?
Or are they content merely to serve the dwindling numbers they have at the moment?
That might be pastoral in a certain minimalistic sense, but it is not evangelistic.
Moral relativism
The new bishops will also have to learn how to challenge the hyper-individualism and moral relativism of the surrounding culture even if this attracts strong criticism from that culture.
Arguably, the single biggest problem of the age is infidelity in numerous forms.
Individualism means that people often find it very hard to stick with anything for long, whether that be their religious faith or even their marriages.
Abortion is also a direct result of us putting our freedom before life itself.
The nuncio is going to need to continue to be on the look-out for priests who have shown an ability to intelligently and bravely challenge the prevailing culture.
It’s curious that to date he seems to have passed over several of them.
(I won’t name them for fear of giving them the kiss of death).
The most important of the new generation is, of course, Archbishop Eamon Martin, who will succeed Cardinal Seán Brady as Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All-Ireland. He has already shown that he is willing to lead from the front on the abortion issue.
So has Bishop Brendan Leahy in Limerick among the new crop.
They will need plenty of allies in the hierarchy to be as effective as they can be.
Hopefully some of the recently appointed bishops will prove to be up to the mark in this respect and hopefully the nuncio will recommend for the hierarchy some of those priests who have already shown that they have the courage and ability to publicly defend those parts of the faith that are under strongest criticism.
Given the challenges for the Faith that exist, we are going to need the best leaders we can get.