CAN FRANCIS REALISE THE DREAM OF O’CONNELL, THE GREAT LIBERATOR?
With the right words and actions, the Pope could help make Ireland proud of its Catholic roots once again
The hierarchy is far from getting its act together
LAST Saturday, Dr Mark Dooley wrote in the Mail about the fascinating way Pope Francis has defined his Papacy with a simple message of mercy, compassion and love. In today’s follow-up essay, our writer talks about the impact of this weekend’s Papal visit and the potential legacy for a damaged Church faced with open secular hostility.
TODAY, Pope Francis will travel through the centre of Dublin to the jubilation of the faithful. His route will take him along O’Connell Street and past the great monument to Daniel O’Connell. That our central boulevard is named after this champion of Catholic emancipation, that his statue stands proudly above the rest, gives rich testimony to the powerful place of Catholicism in Irish identity.
To O’Connell — a man described by William Gladstone as ‘the greatest popular leader the world has ever seen’ — it would have been inconceivable that Christ’s vicar on Earth would parade down a street dedicated to his memory.
He fought successfully to have Catholics take their place in parliament, but to have a Pope visit Ireland was the stuff of fantasy. However, nearly 200 years after the passing of the Emancipation Act in 1829, the Pope is not only here but is being greeted as a superstar.
And yet, the Ireland envisioned by O’Connell has come and gone. Indeed, hardly any young person walking down O’Connell Street could tell you anything about the legacy of the so-called Liberator. The truth is that Irish Catholicism is no longer intrinsic to Irish identity.
Pope Francis is visiting a country whose struggle for independence was intimately bound up with the Roman Catholic religion.
The leaders of the 1916 Rising were, apart from socialist James Connolly, devoutly Catholic people. And, when the Irish Free State was finally established in 1922, the Catholic Church assumed centre stage.
To be Irish in this new State was to be Catholic, and this was a major part of what distinguished us from Britain.
We were a free people and we expressed that liberty through our commitment to a Church which embedded itself in every sphere of Irish society.
It was the dominant force in our fledgling nation, a force so powerful it was granted a ‘special position’ in the Constitution of 1937.
When Pope John Paul II made the first Papal visit to Ireland in 1979, the Catholic Church was still very much integral to our sense of identity.
It is simply not true, as some commentators maintain, that the Catholic edifice was already crumbling.
Anyone who experienced his visit, will testify to the profound surge of emotion that John Paul engendered in an Irish public still devoutly wedded to their faith.
In 1979, I was serving as an altar boy in a Dublin parish where there were six full-time priests.
Each weekday morning, masses began before dawn to accommodate those going to work. All were packed to capacity.
Most of us were schooled by nuns, brothers or priests. They ran the hospitals and were pervasive throughout all social and academic institutions in the State.
The seminaries were teeming with young men shaped by a culture which was fundamentally Catholic.
Pope Francis is in a vastly different country, one where the Catholic Church has not only lost its dominance, but has become, for many, an object of scorn and suspi- cion. In a dramatic shift, we no longer define ourselves in terms of our Catholicism, but rather in defiance of it.
The old identity which was forged through our struggle for freedom, has given way to one characterised by a cosmopolitan outlook where the old religion is either privatised or ignored.
What went wrong for the Church? Quite simply, the diabolical crimes of those clergy who shattered the lives of so many innocent children. As I asked in my book Why Be a Catholic? (2011) how could those men, who purported to stand in the person of Christ, abuse those so beloved of the saviour? How could they administer the sacraments by day while destroying ‘these little ones’ by night?
It was an abuse of trust, of privilege and of their sacred vows. It was an abuse of power, of the people they served and of the ‘special position’ they occupied in Irish society.
That is why, when, nearly a decade ago, I first revealed the sorry state of Irish seminaries in this newspaper, I called for a major crackdown by the Irish hierarchy.
That virtually nothing has been done since — despite an apostolic visitation ordered by Pope Benedict XVI — proves that the hierarchy is far from getting its act together.
Pope Francis comes here in the middle of a global maelstrom caused by the crisis of clerical child abuse.
It is a tragedy that such an unholy culture could have become so entrenched among those charged with so sacred a mission.
It is nothing less than a betrayal of Christ, His Church and all the people of God.
And yet, despite it all, the country is alive with Francis-fever. As I wrote here last week, the Pope is universally popular because he prioritises mercy, compassion and love. He speaks to the hearts of millions when he reaches out to the widows, the orphans and the strangers.
Notwithstanding the dark shadow that hangs above the Catholic world, Francis is a beacon of light for those who suffer and who mourn. And even though his Papacy may yet be engulfed by the abuse crisis, few doubt his sincerity to come to grips with it.
That is why his visit is such a boon to the Irish Church.
Still, Francis cannot turn back the clock. There is no returning to the Catholic Ireland of my youth. The Pope may, as I said last week, teach the Irish people how to love again, but what, if anything, can his visit do to reinvigorate the once mighty Church in Ireland?
First, the excitement surrounding Francis’s visit, proves that Irish Catholicism is still very much alive. Today and tomorrow, pilgrims from every parish in Ireland will travel to kneel in prayer with the Holy Father. Young and old alike will bear witness to their faith in a spirit of joy.
Is this the last gasp of a Church in denial? Is it a gathering of people desperately clinging to a religion that is rapidly retreating from the Irish cultural landscape?
Or is it the true face of a Church deeply wounded and humbled, yet one that still offers refuge and consolation to the broken-hearted and abandoned?
Those who remain committed to the Irish Church are not those who hark back to the past.
They are ordinary people, sickened and devastated by the abuse crisis, but who still believe that Christ’s message of love, healing and forgiveness is one that we cannot afford to ignore.
They believe that this message was grotesquely betrayed by the
ministers of the Church, but that the Church itself should not be held responsible for the sins of its servants.
The ‘smoke of Satan’ has, indeed, suffocated the Church, devastating countless lives.
But, at its core, there is the still, small voice of one who cries in the wilderness. That is the voice to which many young Irish people are responding today.
There is a fervency in the faith of those young people brought up following the abuse revelations. That is because they have never known the cultural supremacy of Irish Catholicism.
What they respond to is the beauty, compassion and holiness that is to be found in the Gospel. The remnant of a once-powerful Church, including youth ministries across the country, is sustained by sacred scripture and the sacraments.
Its mission is not to proselytise but to heal and help those in need. It consists of a wide variety of people – evangelists in an age as hostile to them as Rome was to the early Church.
Francis cannot undo the past, but he can inspire the faithful to bear witness to the Gospel in how they live their everyday lives.
As he says: ‘Tenderness is not weakness: it’s strength.’
If, having received the sacraments, you cannot show love and tenderness to your neighbour, you have entirely missed the point.
And that has been the problem with much of the institutional Church in Ireland. For most of its history, the clerical order was dominated by people more concerned with power, prestige and privilege.
In so doing, they were deaf to that most vital element of their vocation: the call to holiness.
Indeed, that was the kernel of my message in Why Be a Catholic?
Only when the priesthood returns to its original vocation as something steeped in holiness, will it produce people who serve as ‘alter Christus’ — another Christ.
Today and tomorrow, Francis will lift the faithful with his words of mercy and his compassionate example.
But not until the Irish hierarchy finally comes to terms with its past, not until it assumes full responsibility for the sinful crimes of so many of its ministers, will it restore the trust and favour of the Irish people.
They can seek to blame the Vatican all they like, but, ultimately, the Irish bishops were responsible for keeping their own house in order.
That they failed abjectly, and that they continue to turn a blind eye to the dire state of priestly formation, suggests that the bishops are still disconnected from the gravity of the problem they face.
This goes well beyond the ideological wars currently raging across the Catholic world.
It is not about married priests, women priests or equality. It is about the Church rediscovering its primary vocation as a place of healing, holiness and sanctity. Young Irish Catholics get this, which is why they see beyond the political squabbles to the source of the faith Himself.
At Mass last weekend, for example, a young man stood up to speak. He is taking time from his studies to join NET Ireland — an organisation that trains ‘young adults to evangelise to over 20,000 youths in churches, schools and parishes across Ireland’ every year.
That young teenager is the future face of the Irish Church, and it is to people like him that Pope Francis is directly appealing.
For these are young men and women who, despite the hostility of the secular world, are showing their peers what true holiness means. It is neither piousness nor superficial devotion, but a way of life that reveals the beauty, dignity and tenderness of each human person.
At his best, Francis gives rich witness to how the life of holiness or saintliness ought to be lived. As far as I am concerned, all the popes of my lifetime have done so. But, if that witness has never been more crucial, it is because our country — our world — has rarely been in so much pain.
There is, of course, only so much that the Pope can say and do in just two days.
But, through his example and inspiration, he may well give the remnant of the old Church a new confidence.
He may well show the Irish bishops why the future of this Church is in the hands of those prepared to sacrifice everything, so that the true power of the sacraments can be revealed in tenderness, holiness and love.
Our forebears, for whom Daniel O’Connell was, indeed, ‘the greatest popular leader the world has ever seen’, did not desire a ‘Church triumphant’.
What they longed for was the solace of the sacraments, for it was this that put them directly in touch with the mercy of Christ.
Could it be, therefore, that, as he passes along O’Connell Street this afternoon, Pope Francis will finally be realising the true dream of the great Liberator?
Could it be that, by inspiring the Irish Church to answer its true calling as a place of mercy, joy and peace, this pilgrim Pope will emancipate us from a grim legacy that crucified the very people for whom Christ came to care?
If so, this Papal visit may yet prove to be even more historic than that of the Polish Pope in 1979.