Madam, - I have great sympathy for those Catholic clergy and religious who suffer by association with the few who have sullied the church's name through their abuse of innocent children. How difficult it must be for such men and women not to feel depressed about the institution to which they have given their lives. I am sure there are those who even question their own calling when they see the evil wrought by their colleagues.
However, my sympathy does not extend to endorsing the naïve, Pollyanna-style analysis of the church's situation presented to us by Fr Columban Heaney (Rite and Reason, December 5th).
Fr Heaney suggests that the church in Ireland today is weak because it has lost the power and influence it once wielded. He goes on to argue that the position of the church now is analogous to that obtaining at the time of the apostles - or, in the case of Ireland, of St Patrick.
In other words, the church is weak in the face of a strongly secular and sceptical society and this weakness will allow it to preach the Gospel anew as fearlessly as did the early Fathers. Indeed, Fr Heaney implies that the weakening of the church is divinely inspired, though he uses the term "providential".
I hope I have not exaggerated or distorted Fr Heaney's thesis. I have read his article several times and this is the only logical interpretation I can draw from it. He admits that the reason the Church has lost its power and influence is because of the "scandals", with which we are all familiar. However, instead of advancing this weakened state as a golden opportunity to preach the good news, could he not find it in himself to express a little remorse and even shame for the horrors that have been revealed over the past 10 or 15 years?
I appreciate that Fr Heaney is blameless personally, but he writes his article as a Cistercian priest. So whether he likes it or not, he speaks for the church.
Does he accept that the church - and by that I mean the institutional body rather than the sum of its members - has betrayed the teachings of Christ in a fundamental way, not because all priests are paedophiles, but because the church protected those few who were and failed to protect their victims?
Can he grasp the level of anger and disillusionment felt by many ordinary Catholics when they read articles such as his, suggesting that the present crisis in the Church offers the prospect of a new dawn for the Gospel?
People are not fools; and while they may yearn for nourishment for the soul, they are very unlikely to seek it from an institution that has shamed itself as comprehensively as the Catholic Church has. - Yours, etc,
JIM BRUCE,
Shankill,
Dublin 18.