Has Archbishop Diarmuid Martin gone bonkers?
Speaking at the Mater Dei Spring Lecture Series on ‘Reform in the Church in Ireland’ the Archbishop of Dublin seems unwarrantably optimistic about the prospects facing the Irish Church. Perhaps he’s in denial?
In 1962 Clonliffe College was not an exciting place but in the years that followed it became an exciting pace. There was great interest and ferment in theology. The Vatican Council broke down walls of an over institutionalised Church and the new air generated new vitality. Today there are those who feel that the Irish Church has failed the vitality and hope that the Vatican Council had engendered; there are others who would say that opening the windows of the Church so widely and indiscriminately without noticing the contamination of the outside air, let in viruses that we would have been better off without. I imagine that future historians with the light of hindsight will probably say that there are elements of truth on either side.
There have always at the same time been reasons of hope and reasons of concern in the Irish Church. To imagine otherwise would be do be totally a-historical. As always at times of change, the hope of one side can quickly become the anxiety of the other. In times of change each side sticks to its side and we Irish when we get stuck into a position are not always that good on the subtlety thing. In time of change – like today – we always need the light of historians who remind us of the ups and downs of Irish Catholicism over the centuries and who recall that the winds of reform and renewal often come not from those debating on the different sides but from unexpected quarters and take unexpected paths.
[...] These are difficult times in the Church; day after day there are those within the Church and outside it who prophecy the end of the Church as a significant factor in Irish society. There are others who feel that the Catholic Church in Ireland is on a suicide path created by its own internal culture. We must realistically recognise the critical situation of the Church, but we should never give in to pessimism and negativism.
[...] There have always at the same time been reasons of hope and reasons of concern in the Irish Church. It will always be so. We have to prove wrong the doomsayers both inside and outside the Church, both conservatives and traditionalists. Gaudet Mater Ecclesia: gloom about the Church and its future – from whatever side – can very often be a sign of a faith that is weak.
[...] The Church of tomorrow will not be created tomorrow or next week or next year but I believe that slowly the Church in Ireland is turning the corner. I say “is turning the corner, not ”has turned the corner”. History teaches us that hope and challenge will always be present together in the Irish Church. We have to get the balance right. The crisis today is however much greater than in the past and we have only one chance to get it right. Burying our head in the sand or making a mistake of discernment, especially any return to triumphalism or self-satisfaction, could turn renewal back irreversibly.
That said I am with Pope John: the Catholic Church in Ireland “must disagree with those prophets of gloom, who are always forecasting disaster”.
Posted on February 25, 2012, in Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink. 15 Comments.
Let’s face it the Archbishop is of his generation basically orthodox but liberal with a Western liberal democratic mindset. He presides over a diocese (from which he was missing for many years) with huge numbers of non-practicising Catholics, with dwindling and ageing clergy (most of whom allegedly dislike him) and still hurting from the Clergy and Industrial school abuse cases. He has spent most of his priesthood outside Ireland as a diplomat and the path of the diplomat is always dialogue and compromise. The danger for diplomats is that they may fail to see the true depth of the problem, may try to paper over the cracks and try to dialogue with evil and so fail to confront it. I note that he said “We have to prove wrong the doomsayers both inside and outside the Church, both conservatives and traditionalists.” Much of the negativity I come across in my ministry and life as a friar is from liberals; whether complaining about the hierarchy or the new Missal, the failure to ordain women or shift on contraception they are the ones I hear whining. No mention of them. Perhaps too close to home – he knows too many of them.
Thank you both Shane and Br Tom for articulating so well what I can not!
Wonderful catechesis for students as they enter Lent!!! Wonderful teaching on the Real Presence as we go forward to the Eucharistic Congress.!!! zzzzzzzzzz- Rene
Interesting remarks in that address too about outsiders not understanding the Irish Church (whatever that is) and the renewal not being led by outsiders. Was that a reference to the new resident on the Navan Road? Eh, yes! Outrageous. The Archbishop has spent, and continues to spend, so much time abroad that he is little more than an outsider himself. Excellent comment by Br Forde.
I’m curious too, about that remark about “well intentioned outsiders” who don’t really understand the particular characteristics of the Irish church. I’d say he refers to the apostolic visitation team.
Maybe the Irish church is suffering from terminal uniqueness? The Irish church has become a bit of a ghetto, very much stuck in a rut of what it understands about itself. A broader (more Catholic) perspective might be a breath of fresh air.
He said the renewal must be led from within the Irish Church, and (in terms of the new evangelisation) must begin immediately. My thought is, if the Irish church were able for evangelisation, it would be renewed. Instead, key leaders are leading the riots. The head of MDI is in league with the ACP. Among other things, “down with the new translation of the liturgy!” “Ordination for everybody!” And, they want the church to re-look at Catholic sexual teaching. Would that the ACP would consider something new! Have they never heard of the Theology of the Body that has been renewing attitudes among Catholic young adults for 30 years now? When has that profoundly insightful teaching ever been discussed seriously in Catholic academia in Ireland?
With that kind of leadership, we have settled into a dozen dead ends.
So…..I hope the new nuncio can help us take on board the insights of the well-intentioned outsiders.
Perhaps the good Archbishop could show us an example of where Pope John has been seen to be correct and the prophets of doom wrong.In fact, in terms of Mass attendance, vocations to the different religious orders, both male and female and conversions to Catholicism could Archbishop Martin show an example of how Vatican 11 has been a success?
Mass, conversions, and, especially, vocations, these are of little interest to AB Martin. In that speech he envisages a lay-led Church. I suspect he’s quite happy to see the decline of the traditional indices of vibrant Catholicism, because for him the ideal Church of the future is not quite what you or I might have in mind. Very strange man.
Yesterday in Ashbourne, the parish church was standing room only as the bishop confirmed the morning batch. (There was an afternoon batch too; with smaller crowd scenes). 140 kids being confirmed were accompanied by parents, siblings, godparents, grandparents, AND, the usual suspects who “get 10 mass of a Saturday”. Our bishop should be forgiven if he assumed the parish is in good heart. AB Martin must also be forgiven for feeling chipper.
They say the Queen of England thinks the smell of fresh paint is perfectly normal; she gets it everywhere she visits. Bishops see large crowds filling every church they visit, “normally”!
It’s curious to observe the blind spot of the Martin generation and I am not sure anything can be done about it. Perhaps it is just a generational thing. In England, Archbishop Nichols of Westminster recently praised a ghastly BBC documentary on the diocesan seminary at Allen Hall but in truth the effusion was 60 minutes of misery. Young men (no doubt courageous, bright and not lacking in virtue) were presented in the most depressing light but seemingly created in the image of their formation teams if not the ordinary himself. They looked and sounded like old men – “old before their time” as the great recusant bard might have phrased it. It was dire stuff. What on earth has gone wrong?
I saw the TV programme from the Seminary in Allen Hall London last Thursday night. It was well done. It covered the essentials in priestly formation.. For me it was not 60 minutes misery!
It showed the variety of men who were studying there. They were, in my opinion, articulate and well read. We saw classes in many subjects.
I liked it and was very presently surprised by it.
There is no such thing as the Martin generation, in my opinion.
Father, with respect, even our local parish priest found the programme depressing and addressed it, first up, in his sermon last Sunday. I was shocked by the miserable atmosphere and even the homiletics lecturer was caught informing his charge, on film, that the “Good News was being proclaimed here”.
These fine young men have been ground down by a combination of modernism and Heythrop. British Catholics are spending in excess of 150k per head to finance this failed and dismal model.
Never fear, Our Time will come!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YYrAoCeifts
It is a matter of serious concern for the Church in Ireland that Archbishop Martin should denigrate the traditional belief in the superiority of the Catholic faith over all religions, dismissing it as “triumphalism” and accusing those who accept this idea as being guilty of “self satisfaction.” In so saying, he is reiterating a Protestant gibe against the Church.
It has nothing to do with feeling superior. The Catholic Church has always – at least up to Vatican II – claimed that it alone is right and that all other religions are false. Indeed that is precisely why so many conversions were made in centuries past by those who were looking for the certainty of objective truth.
In fact, as a successor of the Apostles, Archbishop Martin has just no other option but to proclaim the truth that the Catholic Church is the one Ark of Salvation for mankind and that salvation cannot be achieved by means of any other religion.
Is he trying to say that the Church shouldn’t mention that claim, or does he himself in fact deny that claim?
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