Both spoke of renewal. Both faced the same unspoken question: does the Irish Church have the courage to change?
The Kilkenny Synodal Assembly, gathered around the theme Baptised and Sent, was suffused with talk of equality, mission, and healing.
“Baptism is one of the strongest, overarching priorities that emerged from our synodal discussions,” said Janet Forbes, a member of the National Synodal Team. “Each one of us, through our Baptism, has an equal dignity.”
It was a moving statement of shared faith — but as ever, questions about equal authority lingered in the background. Who decides? Who leads? Who is heard?
Rev Dr Gary Carville who is also a member of the National Synodal Team identified the heart of the matter: “the primacy of baptism… is clear. Alongside this is the urgency of co-responsibility, or shared responsibility, throughout our Church.”
That word urgency — echoed throughout the day — captured the tension between aspiration and inertia.
Voices
Younger voices like Natalie Doherty’s brought energy: “These kinds of events really allow young people to have their voice heard.”
But the reality remains that such spaces are rare. Jane Mellet of Trocaire gave the day its most prophetic line: “We should embrace our prophetic voices and not be afraid to ask the hard questions.”
As ever, the call to embrace conflict surfaced only cautiously. Fr Gerry O’Hanlon SJ, a former member of the Synodal committee put it bluntly: “We need to face difficult issues and embrace conflict and difference on the way.”
Without that willingness, synodality risks becoming a word for politeness rather than participation.
The Assembly’s emphasis on healing — voiced by Fr Declan Hurley -Chair of the National Synodal Team and Aidan Gordon — was deeply felt.
“We cannot be renewed as the People of God… if those who have been hurt feel that our family has not heard their pain,” said Fr Hurley. Mr Gordon added, “Healing must be authentic and rooted in a commitment to justice.”
In the days following the event, reactions among participants ranged from hopeful to hesitant — offering a candid snapshot of the Church’s internal mood.
One attendee described the process as “a big ship to navigate with so much on the agenda and the stress between methodology or impact. It is going to be difficult and one wonders if they have taken on too much with the seven themes. People are trying to make it work but we’re not blind to the problems — and yet this is the Church we have.”
Another delegate admitted to feeling “underwhelmed,” noting that “There’s nothing new — people are either bored with synodality or don’t understand it. When you looked around the room, about two-thirds work for the Church. How is that representative of the people in the pews?”
Others struck a more reflective tone. “I wasn’t expecting much as there were no particular proposals to discuss,” said one.
“How to prioritise the priorities is the question. ‘Baptised and Sent’ reflects the parish tensions in the 2022–2023 listening. It’s a big ask and for credibility they have to work on those themes. Older people are saddened at the disappearance of youth and hankering after the ‘good old days’, but half of the laity are not represented in the Church — so there’s a credibility issue. That said, we’ve never been here before. This is terra incognita. Other organisations with experience in these kinds of processes know where they’re going, but we don’t. It’s exploratory, and not everyone has the power to deliver.”
Recognition
Still, there was recognition of progress. “One of the major problems was that the momentum of 2022–23 was lost. This meeting was necessary to get momentum going again. The real test is to get the working groups up and running. To be fair to the organisers, they did what was needed to keep it moving.”
Another voice summed up the feeling of ambivalence that hung in the air afterwards: “These are historic times, but I fear we are sleepwalking through them.”
Together, these post-event reflections painted a picture of hope tempered by realism — of a Church still searching for confidence in its own reform.
If Kilkenny was about the Church’s structure and spirit, the Catholic Education conference at Marino Institute focused on how that spirit is lived in classrooms.
Marino President Theresa O’Doherty set the tone when she said it is important to know who you are — and what it means to be a Catholic school.
The principal of a school in Dublin, described banning phones and pupils rediscovering board games at lunch hour. “Forgotten symbols, rituals, and pilgrimage,” he said, “can still capture the imagination of kids.”
Other speakers warned that Catholic education must be more than phone pouches — it must be a space that resists digital flattening.
Quoting Pope Leo XIV, one speaker reminded the audience that “spirituality cannot be divorced from social justice.”
Catholic education, they argued, can be a sacred space — one that nurtures interiority in a generation shaped by screens.
Delegates lamented the loss of chaplains in schools due to lack of funding and warned that government policy promotes “well-being” without wholeness. Catholic schools, they said, have been practising holistic education for centuries.
Speakers also challenged cultural caution. One noted that the modern tendency to take offence at disagreement stifles honest dialogue: “Student teachers are scared to speak up, and mainstream views are silenced because someone claims offence.”
Others urged that parents must reclaim their role as faith educators: “Schools need to push back on parents to be included in the faith life of their kids.”
Provocative
A delegate from the UK added a provocative edge: “Catholics need to regain their saltiness. We’re at our best when we’re a bit subversive.” There is, he said, “a deep well of spirituality that many are thirsting for.”
Across both gatherings, leadership emerged as the central anxiety.
The Grace Report, published in 2024, revealed that the next generation of Catholic school leaders are unlikely to have faith.
Reflecting on this on school principal warned “We are near the point of losing the ‘why’ in Irish Catholic schools. It is incumbent on all of us to do something now.”
In Kilkenny, Fr O’Hanlon’s call to “embrace conflict and difference” echoed the same concern: renewal without courage is illusion.
Both assemblies also revealed a Church uneasy about identity. In education, speakers warned that Catholic schools risk losing their charism under state overreach. “Next up is Catholic identity,” one said. “It will be chipped away at in a stealth fashion.”
In synodal life, the danger is the same — a quiet erosion of purpose beneath the language of consensus and an over-spiritualisation of the process and language of reform.
And yet, both events crackled at times with promise.
From the thought of pupils actually playing board games in phone free schools to the earnest prayers and adoration in Kilkenny, something unmistakable is stirring: the conviction that the Church’s future will depend on formation, not preservation, on action with courage.
These two gatherings — one ecclesial, one educational — point toward a crossroads moment for the Catholic Church in Ireland.
Both spoke of faith and hope, and both confronted the fragility of conviction in a Church facing cultural marginalisation, leadership fatigue, and generational drift.
If the Church in Ireland is to find renewal, it will not come through process or policy alone. It will come when prayer leads to courage, when education rekindles formation, and when synodality means facing the hard questions — not avoiding them.
Perhaps the truest line of all was Fr O’Hanlon’s: “We need to face difficult issues and embrace conflict and difference on the way.”
That is the work ahead — for bishops and teachers, trustees and parents, pastors and pupils.
Only then will renewal cease to be a slogan and become a lived reality — a Church that knows who it is, and dares to be it.