Church’s survival does not depend on its entertainment value
■ Michael Kelly’s article on the state of the Catholic Church in Ireland (Irish Independent, October 13), arising from Paul Melia’s analysis of the Census
2016, is concise and, in some respects, hits the nail on the head. However, as its approach is basically secular, it doesn’t get to the kernel of the matter, especially regarding the Catholic Church.
This secular approach is exemplified in the last paragraph which reads, “...if you were a young family considering a return to church, would you be more likely to want to attend a vibrant, packed church with excellent music and relevant preaching or a small group of people huddling together for warmth in an over-sized building hoping against the odds for renewal to come from the sky?”
Let me begin by stating that it is quite amazing that 3.7 million people in Ireland, in 2016, stated that they were Catholics.
Reading certain newspapers, or watching TV in Ireland, the impression given is that only a small, timid, fringe group of Irish adhere to Catholicism and that the enlightened, noisy, great majority have no religious belief whatsoever – when in fact the opposite is the case; only 481,388 claimed no religious belief in the
2016 Census.
Anyone with even a cursory knowledge of Catholicism knows that, in the early centuries of its beginnings, its adherents were small scattered groups, huddling together in mortal fear of their lives.
It didn’t depend for its existence on happy-clappy, warm and packed vibrant churches.
Many early Christians back then, like their religious founder, were crucified or, literally, thrown to the lions for the entertainment of the anti-Christian mobs.
The core beliefs of Catholicism do not depend on their entertainment value; if that were not so, it would have vanished from the Earth a long time ago, and especially so in Ireland.
Micheal O’Cathail