What is the future for Christianity in the West?
What will the Roman Catholic Church specifically – for so long the dominant manifestation of that faith – do in the coming decades as pattern and practice change so much?
What does the answers mean for those who remain members of that church, and how will they interact with those people who have an increasingly reserved relationship with it?
I discussed these questions with Monica Morley, an important voice and leader in the life of the church in this region, best known for her role as co-presenter of on Midwest Radio.
She is also the Director of the Family Centre at Knock Shrine, a role which arises from her “passion for pastoral ministry”.
Following her studies in psychology, her work at Knock has evolved from general family ministry into a focus on bereavement care. Her programmes and training and individual care in this area will be well-known and much appreciated among many readers.
On , Monica skilfully steers a programme that does not just explore theological or liturgical questions: it examines how a person lives a faith-inspired life today, how they might satisfy “the hungers of the heart that we all have for a greater meaning in life”.
With all that experience, she is well placed both to reflect on the changes that have happened, and look down the track over the next 30 years.
“Changed hugely," she tells me, “almost unrecognisable.”
While that is – to use a term suitable to our theme – no revelation, the examples she uses from her broadcasting experience to illustrate the changes are very insightful. One is amusing, the other profound.
She tells me first that when began broadcasting in 1989, the presenters were herself, Fr Brendan Hoban and Fr Colm Kilcoyne. Comments from listeners at the time focused on why she would refer to them as ‘Brendan’ or ‘Colm’ rather than as ‘Father’. She hasn’t heard that raised as an issue in 20 years.
The second observation is that when the programme started, the questions that would come would be along the lines of: "Ask Fr Brendan what I should do about X, Y, or Z", whereas today the questions are more: "This is my experience... how can the Church include me?" That precisely explains the change both in how people view their church, and figures of authority more widely.
The scandals and their impact on the Church have, of course, diminished its authority and led to a decline in the numbers participating. Monica’s view is that a good deal of this would have happened in any case – “Ireland was changing anyway: moving from a society that was very dominated by religion; the global world was coming into our world” – but the scandals accelerated the pace dramatically.
Every church sees pretty much an elderly congregation now, made even smaller following Covid.
As Monica recounts, this all means that church (she calls the community of believers ‘church’ rather than ‘the church’ to distinguish the people from the physical buildings) is running out of resources: priests; volunteers; and money. This is placing pressure on local churches: in respect of both the liturgical, the services of public worship; as well as the pastoral, the work of providing care, support or spiritual guidance. That creates a Mount Sinai of challenges.
Large numbers of churches with no one to fill them (and pay for their upkeep); numbers of priests diminishing and congregations dwindling; the absence of resources and volunteers to deliver the pastoral services that are still in great demand.
And yet, Monica is hopeful.
The traditional manifestations of church involvement may have diminished, but all those challenges create space in her mind to imagine more innovative liturgical services, to renew the focus on pastoral care, and to travel towards a church where the wider community of the entire baptised are given the opportunity to show leadership in their own local areas.
The church does not “need to fear the world”, she argues, but rather go out into the marketplace of life and meet people there, exploring with them how they experience spirituality and engaging with them on their terms – something which has a deep resonance with the early Christian church in Ireland.
As she puts it, “The church is not meant to be confined to a building, it is meant to be lived as community”, which means “you are trying to bring God out of the tabernacle into the streets.”
We start this discussion with the role of women, where Monica is quite clear that there are going to be major and significant changes that are long overdue.
She argues this on the basis that having women in anything other than a leading and equal position with men is now so out of sync with wider society that it is no longer remotely sustainable or theologically credible. She is clear that for many women the roles offered at present within the church have often been experienced as tokenistic.
She is also quite clear that the roles of women must not be just limited to pastoral duties but also to liturgical and wider church governance duties. As she put it “many women are natural leaders, and they need to be given leadership positions at all levels within the Church". The emphasis that Pope Francis has put on governance, at parish, diocese and global church level, is creating the space for women to play key leadership roles here, she believes.
Where it leads in terms of ordination remains to be seen, but Monica feels it will be post-Francis before that comes to fruition. So how quickly will the wider process of a greater role for women develop?
Monica feels that the world is moving at such a rapid pace that things are going to change “very quickly”. In five years’ time, she reminds me, there will be very few priests in the West of Ireland – and women will be needed to respond to the gaps.
Monica feels there are women willing to perform liturgical roles, but there is a lot of preparatory work needed to help them feel confident and competent in these ministries. Much of the debate on all this is coming about in the context of the Synodal process and she is clear about the risks to the church if women are let down again on these issues.
The Synodal process, established by Pope Francis, is the road map to the future of the church. Monica cuts through the awkward word to tell me that the synodal process means “a focus on church as a place where all of the baptised are equal’’, a big change from the days where the ordained had a special status.
What does that mean in practice?
Parishes will now be run – actually run – by a parish council which is drawn from all the baptised people in that community. It will be there that questions about the life of the parish – how it conducts its liturgical services and considers pastoral and operational questions – will be resolved.
This means that decisions about what’s best for the local parish will be taken locally by a body of local people, and the days of the priest and bishop deciding everything will be over.
Indeed, in the coming years, Monica explains, there will in all likelihood be one diocese for the West, with one bishop and perhaps 20 priests in active ministry to service that whole area.
It is in that context that local and lay people will have to take on the leadership in their parish. Certain roles will still be reserved for priests, but local people will largely deliver the work of animating the life of the church – both pastorally and liturgically.
Best practice will be shared by lay leaders and experts – be that in bereavement or scripture – across parishes.
Parish life will change: there will be times when there won’t be Mass, or the full liturgy of the Eucharist: parish life, as she describes it, will instead involve “a variety of liturgical experiences”.
And, for places not used to this, Monica tells me that before long a woman will lead the prayers from the altar, or at the graveside, and when that happens, “people will wonder what all the wait and all the fuss was about”.
Lay members – women and men – will lead in all aspects of church life, on big days as well as on routine occasions.
This isn’t exactly new: we discussed how this method is already in action on the islands along our coast, where, in the absence of a resident priest, the local community takes responsibility for many of the services.
And it certainly has an historical echo in Penal times. The declining number of priests makes this a necessity, but Monica sees the positive value of it also.
She points out that recently at Breaffy House it was expected that 100 people would show up for parish council training for the Archdiocese of Tuam.
In fact, 200 showed up, so many that some had to be turned away and return another night.
As regards concerns that people won’t like these changes or won’t respond to the call of leadership, Monica is confident.
“People take to this very very easily,” she tells me, suggesting it is a response to the calling of their baptism rather than just something they enjoy doing or feel they should do.
Traditionalists have a place as well as anyone else, and tradition needs to be supported and given a place in the church.
“We need to stay grounded in our tradition," she says, but “we don’t need to stay imprisoned in it.”
This all leads me to ask how you can ensure there is a consistency of belief and practice across all these locally governed parishes? Monica is quick to say that this doesn’t mean the body of doctrine and belief is discarded, but rather that local issues will be resolved locally – and in the light of local pastoral and human considerations.
Above the parish council, there will be a need for the diocesan council to resolve disputes or differences which cannot be reconciled, but this will be shaped by the same synodal decision-making model, which is itself replicated all the way up to what the Pope is doing at central level.
And when I asked, humorously, who will people blame in such a structure when they can no longer blame the priest, Monica quipped, “probably the Bishop”.
While an amusing exchange, it also raises a serious point: as the church moves from a command-and-control model, where will authority lie, and will it be respected?
That, to Monica, is a challenge and an opportunity to show leadership, a matter to be acknowledged and respected but not to be feared.
Monica sees this Synodal process as the path towards the church talking about and attempting to engage with many social issues it has found difficult to discuss constructively.
For Monica, Francis is giving the lead here by allowing local bishops and dioceses to sort such things out locally, applying good pastoral practice to local realities.
And while doctrine may not change – at least in the medium term – Monica does say there is “no point in having doctrine if we don’t have people”, taking her lead from Francis when he said, “who am I to judge?”
She points to the example of the German Church as a way for local churches to make decisions in the light of their lived experience on the ground.
As she describes it, what is needed is to respond to such issues in a different way – by listening to the people affected and then responding to them pastorally, using the light of the Gospels as well as human experience as a guide in how best to respond.
The Pope is the key to all this change.
“He is constantly speaking to where people are at," she remarks.
He is saying to bishops and clergy and people: don’t be looking to me for all the answers. And so he is deliberately not making decisions, consciously breaking his own authority. He is changing the dynamic of decision-making, to put it back into the hands of the body of believers.
At 86, his future is on all minds, but, for Monica, after Francis, “the toothpaste is out of the tube”, and so there is no going back.
The successor does not need to be a replica “because Francis has made a huge difference that’s not going to be able to be changed very easily; or in fact at all”. She feels things will change organically because he has changed so much of the dynamic.
On the large number of churches around the West, Monica is practical and matter-of-fact.
Attendance is down, and income at the parish level is down – in some cases by as much as 50%.
Churches need people and money to survive.
It is hard to be specific in numerical terms, but before too long we won’t have close to the number of active churches we have now.
Monica sees the future as less about buildings and more about church members operating as ‘field preachers’.
In her outlook, you will find ‘church’ at a funeral, “where you have people coming together to lead prayers and comfort families at this key moment in their lives”.
That, for Monica, is what gives the West of Ireland an advantage in this new reality, for she believes our particular sense of community is built around the Gospel and beatitude values in the lived world.
But of course that also means, as she freely acknowledges, that when a priest is lost to a small parish, that is a big set-back and a painful reality: but one that is coming nonetheless.
There will be many challenges on that road, she tells me, not least of which is the sense of tiredness out there and the need to ensure that the structures must be created to facilitate change to a synodal church driven by the leadership of the whole baptised, but if that is provided, she says: “There is enough goodwill there; local interest there; enthusiasm there; to do all of that.”
Strong leadership will be required from local people in the West as their church continues to grapple with age-old questions in a very different world.
Monica Morley will continue to be a leading light on that journey.