A church must reflect the world in which it lives in order to thrive.
In the Ireland of the past, that wasn’t a problem for the Catholic church.
It shaped Irish society in its own image. These days that is not how things work.
The church has lost the power to enforce its edicts unchallenged, and can only survive with the consent of those in the pews — and there are fewer of them now than ever before.
The altar is looking equally sparse.
That’s why Fr Seán Sheehy found himself on the roster to serve mass at St Mary’s Church is Listowel, Co Kerry, last weekend.
The bones of what Fr Sheehy said in his controversial homily on “sin” have been picked over relentlessly at this stage. Going back over it would achieve little, except perhaps to point out that, regardless of what the church holds to be eternal truths, there are always better ways of expressing them.
Pope Francis himself put it best when advising his brothers in Christ: “What should pastors do? Be pastors, and not go condemning, condemning.” In order to save souls, you must first not lose them.
But a more conciliatory tone, while welcome, would only go so far. It is futile to tell the faithful that tenets which were once accepted unthinkingly cannot change when these have done so before many times. The church once taught that unbaptised infants went to limbo rather than heaven. That particularly hurtful piece of Catholic orthodoxy was only abandoned in the 1990s. It could be that Catholic teaching on homosexuality and abortion and sex outside marriage will also evolve.
That will take time, though, and time is one thing the Catholic hierarchy does not have on its side. There are things they must do right now to ensure a repeat of last weekend’s appalling display of intolerance is not repeated. The first mistake was being forced to call on an old man so angrily at odds with the world to serve mass in the first place.
Removing him from the roll of priests available to serve mass in response to public revulsion of his hateful rhetoric is too little too late. He should have been deemed surplus to requirements more than a decade ago after lining up in a courtroom to shake the hands of a convicted sex offender.
It remains the case that Fr Sheehy was only there last weekend as no one else was available. Just 2.5pc of working priests in Ireland are under the age of 40. More than a quarter are between 60 and 75. A further 15pc are over 75. The renewal of a dying church cannot be built on ageing foundations.
The church should accept there is simply no good argument to keep women out of the priesthood. It is nearly 50 years now since the Pontifical Biblical Commission concluded there was no scriptural basis to blocking women’s ordination, and more than 50 years since Vatican II declared “every type of discrimination … based on sex” should be “eradicated as contrary to God’s intent”.
Pope Francis has begun a dialogue around ordaining women as deacons, but the gears of change grind slowly in the church, and even that would be a long way from full priesthood. Beginning a consultation now is like ordering more blood tests when the patient is already receiving the last rites.
With just 64 seminarians currently studying for the priesthood nationwide, the church may be long dead before that process is completed.
An organisation which sacrificed its integrity over the handling of endemic child sex abuse in the ranks simply has no moral authority to keep the doors barred against women any longer.
It may well be beyond women’s power to save the Catholic church from itself either, but they are its last hope.