The Irish Catholic Church had paid a "huge price" for the failure of its priests and bishops to trust the spirit and impetus of the Second Vatican Council, a conference at the weekend was told.
"We were too careful, too afraid, too amenable to the wisdom of a narrow clerical world . . . and, let's face it, too many of us were too ambitious at a personal level to upset the clerical consensus," said Fr Brendan Hoban, administrator at St Muredach's Cathedral, Ballina.
"There was failure of imagination on a grand scale," he said.
He was speaking at a conference in Claremorris, Co Mayo, on Saturday to honour Fr Enda McDonagh, former professor of moral theology at St Patrick's College, Maynooth. Contributors included former taoiseach Garret FitzGerald, former professor of theology at TCD Dr Seán Freyne, Sr Stanislaus Kennedy, poet Fr Pat O'Brien and visual artist Anne Harkin-Peterson.
The conference was organised by the Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology, to which Fr McDonagh has presented his library of 50,000 books.
"If instead of a paralysing prudence we had opted for creativity and imagination, if instead of shuffling people like Enda McDonagh to the sidelines of church life, if we had trusted in his ability to articulate faith possibilities in a changing world, if we had acknowledged his . . . facility for engaging with those outside the narrow focus of confessional Catholicism, if we had made him Archbishop of Tuam instead of waiting for St Patrick's [Church of Ireland] Cathedral to make him a prebendary of Clondalkin, we might have taken the high tide that the council offered the church," Fr Hoban said.
"In the desert of the last 40 years there were exceptional voices, like that of Enda McDonagh, prophets in their own land who were prepared to name the truth, individuals who had the personal freedom not to be dissuaded from speaking the truth even when ecclesiastical goodies were held before them," he said.
"When people of the stature and humanity of Enda McDonagh were prepared to stand outside in the cold it made facing the truth about ourselves and our church a bit easier to do. For that, and for much more, so many are so grateful for the prophetic voice of Enda McDonagh," Fr Hoban concluded to a standing ovation from the estimated 300 people present.
The Bishop of Clonfert, Dr John Kirby, speaking from the floor, said he had always backed the "prophetic voice" in the church. "I lack that charism myself," he said. "For that reason, I appreciate what Brendan has said."
Describing bishops as an "endangered species in these times", he said they experienced life in much the same way as the clergy, and he hoped that they could take to heart some of what Fr Hoban had said.