Varadkar glad that Catholic Church is ‘less dominant’
As Pope Francis steps on to Irish soil this weekend, he will find a country in religious crisis. Tim Stanley reveals what’s at stake
THE prime minister of Ireland has said ahead of a papal visit this weekend that he is glad the Catholic Church has become less dominant in the public life of his country.
Taoiseach Leo Varadkar also said he hoped Pope Francis would address the victims of abuse in church institutions.
“I think in the past the Catholic Church had too much of a dominant place in our society,” Mr Varadkar told the BBC. “I think it still has a place in our society but not one that determines public policy or determines our laws.”
The Pope is due to arrive in Ireland this morning for a two-day visit. He is scheduled to conduct a papal mass at Phoenix Park in Dublin tomorrow.
Mr Varadkar, Ireland’s first openly gay taoiseach, said his predecessors would have consulted the Pope about secular matters such as health policy, but this was no longer appropriate.
He said the visit was an opportunity for the Pope “to say something to the women and particularly children who were victims” of church institutions, and show them things would change.
Today Pope Francis flies into Ireland, a country that seems to be tearing off Catholicism like a straitjacket. Mass attendance has plummeted. The public voted to legalise gay marriage and abortion. Ireland’s openly gay taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, says that in the past, “the Catholic Church had too much of a dominant place” in Irish society and must no longer determine its laws.
At the opening of the World Meeting of Families in Dublin, Archbishop Eamon Martin admitted that in the wake of the child abuse scandal, “there are those who feel they can no longer trust our message”. This is a trust that Francis’s papacy was supposed to restore – yet there is no sign of it having done so. What’s at stake in this Irish tour isn’t just the Church’s diminished authority, but the Pope’s own fragile reputation as an agent of change.
Ireland is a country that ought to be particularly receptive to Francis: a nation in doubt, a people looking for a new approach to faith. In 2013, the newly elected Pope signalled his willingness to meet the world halfway by walking out on to the balcony of St Peter’s in a humble white cassock, choosing the name Francis to evoke the famously poor 13th-century friar. But his birth name told its own story.
Jorge Mario Bergoglio, an Argentinian, was the first pope from outside Europe since the 8th century, the first Jesuit and, without a shadow of a doubt, the first to have moonlit as a bouncer. His election pointed to a Church in transition, away from Europe and out into the wider, developing world, where priorities had shifted.
It’s a mistake to call Francis a liberal: a reformer, maybe, because reform has always happened in Catholicism, a Church that has evolved its character slowly over 2,000 years. But it’s never rewritten its fundamental principles, and Francis hasn’t sought to do that either. Rather, he has tried to make the Church more relevant to the experiences of ordinary men and women, an approach to evangelisation rather trendily dubbed “meeting people where they are”.
That means being an ambassador for the world’s poor – Francis has led the fight against climate change and rescued refugees – but also to open up a dialogue with those who find themselves outside the Church, such as Protestants, atheists or sexual minorities. Again, he’s no revolutionary. On divorce, for instance, his goal appears not to be to rewrite the Church’s teachings, but to give fresh encouragement to those who have divorced and remarried, which the Church says is a sin, to be reconciled to the faith.
Navigating such a theological journey would be hard enough: doing it in the glare of the 24/7 media has rendered nuance impossible. Shortly after his election, Francis told reporters on a flight back from Brazil: “If a person is gay and seeks God and has good will, who am I to judge?” He was actually talking about gay Catholics confessing their sins and receiving forgiveness, but no matter.
“Who am I to judge” was interpreted as overturning dogma and cast him as an ally of secular liberals; gay magazine The Advocate named Francis their man of the year. Here’s the essential problem:
Francis’s first few years as Pope raised hopes that he was something he’s not and couldn’t be, even if he wanted to. Disappointment was inevitable; the Church has not changed. Francis’s allies in the Vatican have blamed Catholic reactionaries for stifling the Pope’s best intentions – but there’s one critical area in which it’s absolutely impossible to pass the buck.
This month, an American grand jury released a report on the history of child abuse in six of Pennsylvania’s eight Catholic dioceses. It found allegations related to more than 1,000 victims and 300 clerical perpetrators.
It’s easy to conclude that for decades the Church has been showing mercy towards the wrong people: the laity are lectured on sex, while priests get away with murder. In fact, it’s ordinary, innocent clerics who have hitherto borne the brunt of public anger. This week, a priest was assaulted while praying in his church in Indiana, the attacker crying: “This is for all the little kids.”
The bishops, meanwhile, are accused of retreating behind anti-abuse “policies” that have proved insufficient, of covering things up or even, in the most hideous cases, taking part. Cardinal Theodore Mccarrick, one of America’s most powerful clerics, has been allegedly implicated in the abuse of seminarians and adolescent boys. The Pope has ordered him to live a life of prayer and penance before facing his church trial – an unusual, presumptive move, which means the Vatican probably thinks he’s guilty.
Here we get to the heart of the paradox that is Francis. At his best, his humanity cuts through. On a tour of the Philippines in 2015, he was confronted by a child who had been sold into prostitution; she demanded to know why God allowed this to happen to her. Francis embraced her. He discarded his speech and said that her experience was proof that women are not adequately represented in society – or, by implication, in the Church.
But the truth is that a man who the media imagined would have some straightforward answer to the child abuse problem simply does not and, when dealing with the most painful crisis in the Catholic faith for a century, has sometimes been difficult and distant. Francis initially dismissed claims that a Chilean bishop had witnessed and ignored abuse, and when the victims’ anger eventually reached him he had to offer an apology. “I was part of the problem,” he admitted. His letter regarding the Pennsylvania abuse cases has also been criticised for its call for “prayer and fasting” – a very theologically Catholic response, but one out of touch with the desire for visible justice.
If the Catholic Church doesn’t clean itself up, say an increasing number of politicians, we will do it for you. In Ireland, Francis finds himself at a sort of Catholic ground zero. Here the faith had clung on to power and prestige for decades, right up to the Nineties when a series of scandals looked set to overwhelm it: girls abused in houses for the poor, bishops having children out of wedlock.
In a few short years, the secular authorities have gone from courting the Church to separating themselves from its doctrines. Many lay Catholics are tired of being preached to. How can the Church presume to hold a conference on the family in Ireland, they ask, when false priests have abused families? And how can it seriously address the crisis when it refuses to end clerical celibacy or ordain women priests?
The answer is the Church is not like a political party that can just rewrite policy to win votes. It is a religious body that wants to save souls, and Francis, as Pope, is the guardian of its traditions. Radical revision and change is simply not an option.
Ireland is, then, an almighty test for Francis: 66 per cent of the country voted to lift its ban on abortion. Here is a nation crying out for a cleric with his charisma and vision, and yet it’s also fast breaking with what the Catholic Church believes is possible or any Pope can deliver. One thing Francis has to do is address the issue of abuse, to prove he can connect with Catholics in a country that feels it has been historically wounded by moral hypocrisy in the Church.
Many would argue that the last thing the Church should be concerned about is image or the feelings of those who stand in direct opposition to its teachings. Yet this is the world we now live in. By talking so freely to the people and the press, by baring his soul in public so often, this rocky sea is one the Pope himself has chosen to sail.
The Church is not like a political party that can just rewrite policy to win votes