Catholic Church – whose voices are heard?

Sir, – I took no part in the recent synodal process. It is very disheartening, for those of us who love the Catholic Church, and want to hold on, as far as possible, to the beliefs and practices that we grew up with in that church, to have to deal first-hand with the sort of priests who are active in the Association of Catholic Priests (ACP). And with the like-minded lay Catholics. I hear enough from these people through their friends in the secular media. Why would I attend a diocesan meeting to hear more of the same?

They make the arrogant assumption that their own position is always at the prompting of the Holy Spirit, and that anyone else’s always constitutes rigidity and backward-looking clericalism. I am sure that I am not the only Catholic who feels betrayed when priests, whom we have tried to support with our prayers and our financial contributions, use their media connections to speak about us in these terms.

There was an article in the Tablet recently which reported that about 500 young Irish Catholics had contributed to the recent synodal process, saying that they “joyfully embrace church teaching” and were not in favour of change. Fr Brendan Hoban of the ACP was at pains to point out, in that same article, how unrepresentative these 500 young people were!

Despite people like me opting out, it still seems to have been the case that traditional voices also came through in the synodal process, and that the documents submitted to the Vatican reflected this. Perhaps your readers will take this into account when reading ongoing media coverage of this process. When the liberal wing of the church fails to achieve 100 per cent victory, there will be plenty of dark mutterings in the media about dark, conservative, misogynistic forces, in the Vatican and elsewhere. The truth may be much simpler: that many, many faithful Catholics simply did not want these changes in the first place. – Yours, etc,