Jubilee co-ordinator finds bishop leadership lacking

The priest appointed by Ireland's bishops to co-ordinate Catholic activities for the year 2000 has spoken of a lack of leadership from the Hierarchy on the matter.

Addressing the National Conference of Priests of Ireland, the national co-ordinator of the church's Jubilee 2000 celebrations, Father Martin Tierney, said that when he accepted the post last October he assumed there would be leadership from the bishops, "but this hasn't happened".

And where the bishops were concerned, it seemed efficiency and control of costs were more important than vision.

But he was coming to the view that what he thought of as weak leadership was an opportunity for the people of God.

"For too long we have looked for leadership in places where it is not to be found," he said, suggesting that the bishops perhaps intended movement on the matter should be from the ground up.

He quoted a Daily Telegraph article which said there was a possibility millennium events would become an outpost of Disneyland if they ignored 2,000 years of Christianity.

This was something which lack of debate on the matter within the church increased rather than eased as a possibility, he said.

There was a need, he said, to seek out people, "not just the usual suspects", and not just from among believers but from unbelievers, to originate and organise events. It was also important that whatever was done was done ecumenically.

Father Tierney's committee is exploring several medieval walks/ pilgrimages for Jubilee 2000, and the possibility of a pilot pilgrimage this year to see if one could be constructed which would be meaningful for all "believers, lapsed, unbelievers."

A preliminary but comprehensive plan for events, combining saints' days from the Christian calendar with earlier Celtic festivals, and proposing general absolution, a campaign to abolish Third World debt, local pilgrimages, the creation of sacred spaces in the home, schools and parish prayer programmes, ecological projects, and plans for a national assembly in 2002 was presented to the priests' conference by Father Frank Fahey of Ballintubber Abbey, Co Mayo.

It had been submitted to the bishops' spring conference in Maynooth last March. To date they have not responded.