Irish Catholics want inclusive, compassionate church

Ireland’s Catholics have had enough. They want change and they want it now. Were it left to them, women would be ordained, priests could marry and LGBTI+ people – as well as divorced, remarried, cohabiting couples and single mothers – would be embraced with an enthusiasm that would make the prodigal son blush.

These many thousands of practising Irish Catholics are by no means rose-tinted teenagers. Most are over 60. In Cork’s Cloyne diocese, 66 per cent were more than 61. In Kerry diocese it was similar, with people in their 40s and 50s “largely absent” from the consultation process there. Catholics in Dublin even concluded “the church is a cold place for young people”.

Meanwhile, in the background were those minority traditional Irish Catholics, sullen as the older brother in that parable of the prodigal son. He, like them, had never left home and all was fine until these spendthrifts decided they might return, having squandered their birthright in the fleshpots of Egypt or current equivalent.

Where is the justice in that, they might ask. Or, as a Cloyne participant put it: “Personally, I think synodality [the consultation process] is very dangerous and probably a mistake. It seems to be moving in the direction of the Protestant churches in which majority rule.” To paraphrase the late singer Meatloaf, while these traditional Irish Catholics would do anything for their church, they won’t have that!

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Their divine majority, however, could not feel more different. Like Peter Finch’s character in the 1976 film Network, they are mad as hell and are “NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE”. Their impatience is directed mainly at the clerical church. At “abuse by priests and religious” which “has caused huge levels of hurt and scandal in an institution in which people had placed their trust,” as they put it in Down and Connor diocese. It includes Belfast and most of Antrim.

As well as feeling grim dissatisfaction at the treatment of women, of LGBTI+ people, the divorced, remarried, the cohabiting and single mothers by the church, most Irish Catholics are also fed up of “boring” sermons. And readings at Masses about “dismembered bulls” or how “the Lord shall smithe this, that and the other”, as one participant put it to The Irish Times.

Consultation process

The consultation process began last October when, in response to Pope Francis, bishops in all of Ireland’s 26 Catholic diocese set up “a synodal pathway” to consult the faithful as part of a worldwide process in preparation for an October 2023 Synod in Rome. “Discernment” is the word.

In Ireland, it has involved thousands of practising Catholics, ranging from 13,000 people in the Dublin archdiocese to about 5,000 in Limerick diocese to about 300 in one of the smallest dioceses on the island, Achonry, in the west.

Each diocese prepared a report following these consultations and published it on its own website earlier this month. On Saturday, there is a national assembly in Athlone where 160 delegates from across the island gather to discuss all 26 reports, as well as some independent submissions. They will prepare a synthesis from these which will be sent to Rome in August for consideration at the October 2023 Synod.

However, there has been some nervousness about this synodal process in Ireland. As a Galway participant said, it was “40 years too late. Let this not be repeated in another 40 years.” In Dublin there was anxiety no change might happen, “in particular, there is a consciousness that change may face resistance to renewal from within the church and from clericalism”.

What is remarkable about the reports from all 26 Irish dioceses is the consistency of views on women and LGBTI+ people, as well as in criticisms of liturgy and boring homilies. A survey of the reports by the liberal We Are Church Ireland group found 96 per cent of people consulted favoured ordination of women, whether as deacons or priests or both.

Where LGBTI+ people were concerned, 85 per cent expressed concern at church exclusion, attitudes and language, while almost 70 per cent wanted greater lay involvement in church decision-making.

Women deacons

These findings will come as no surprise to Catholics in Killala diocese (mainly in Co Mayo). “They’re all mad there,” a priest from another diocese said to this reporter recently. Rather, they appear to be in advance of the curve. In Killala, they had their own diocesan synod/consultation process in 2018 where it was found that 69 per cent agreed women should be priests with 80 per cent believing they should be deacons.

A total of 85 per cent believed priests should be allowed marry, with 86 per cent agreeing church teaching should be changed to include all people regardless of sexual orientation, marital or family status.

And, as that Killala report concluded, “the volume of responses in favour of the above issues was surprising given the profile of the attendees who could mainly be said to be of a traditional mould”.

Typical of such majority Irish Catholic views would be those of daily Massgoer Ted Murphy (74) from Ballincollig in Cork. He told The Irish Times “the male church continues to insult women by repetitive scriptural readings about virginity and exalting virgins, and that is as far as it tolerates women. I had a grandmother, a mother, a wife and still have a daughter. Their place in the Catholic Church is still `out of view’, entirely irrelevant, and confined to voluntary cleaning, flower arranging and other back-room activities.”

A reader at Mass himself, so much of what is put before him is about “holocausts, slaughter of various tribes, murder, horrific indifference to women both in content and language, forced marriage”. It was “destructive drivel”, he said.

Unclear readings

A reading last Sunday, for instance, “seemed consumed with dismembering bulls”, he said. From the First Book of Kings, it quoted the prophet Elijah, advising: “Let two bulls be given us; let them choose one for themselves, dismember it and lay it on the wood, but not set fire to it...” Murphy envied his parents who were “spared all of that when it was recited in Latin at the speed of light”.

One of the more remarkable passages in any of the 26 diocesan reports was also from Cork. It spoke of “the difficulty of engaging with those who are marginalised or disengaged. Efforts to meet groups from the Traveller community, LGBTI+, parents of young children and established clubs/groups for young people and young adults were largely unsuccessful.”

This is seemingly unique to that diocese. Elsewhere, where such resistance might have been expected, it did not happen. Elphin, which includes most of Co Roscommon, would be an example. Bishop of Elphin Kevin Doran called for a No vote in the 2015 same-sex referendum. Roscommon was the only county in Ireland to vote No, by 49 per cent to 51 per cent (a difference of 1,029 votes).

There is no doubt that Bishop Doran was a factor in that, yet “Big Bad Kevin”, as more polite LGBTI+ people would describe him, had no difficulty in consulting members of that community in the Elphin synodal pathway process. It was not without awkwardness but he ensured their voice was heard.

At their request, the LGBTI+ people there prepared their own report which was added as an appendix to the Elphin report. Nor was Bishop Doran spared in that LGBTI+ report. While “acknowledging and commending” him for setting up the group, it called on him “to apologise for the nature of his contribution to the marriage referendum”.

However, and even if agitated Irish Catholics demand great change in the church, some things remain the same. The Cloyne participant will be assured to know that, when it comes to media access to this national assembly in Athlone on Saturday, the Irish Catholic Church still has no intention of going “in the direction of the Protestant churches”.

As usual, the media was invited to attend the annual Church of Ireland General Synod last month, the annual Methodist Church conference earlier this month and the Presbyterian General Assembly later this month.

In the best Irish Catholic Church tradition, however, all discussion in Athlone will be behind closed doors, “to facilitate a dialogue which can be as open as possible”.

So who fears to speak at Irish Catholic Church gatherings if the press is present?