Archbishop’s memory of ‘huge numbers’

Had a bit of sympathy for the Archbishop of Dublin when he noted that:

The decline in priests and practice among Catholics in Dublin “confronts us with something new, but something we do not clearly understand. We feel perplexed, even that the Lord has abandoned us. We feel that we have lost our way. These are important parts of our journey,” Archbishop of Dublin Dermot Farrell has said.

The “memory of huge numbers, and of a secure, strong Church”, can be “a very painful learning for us,” he said.

He was speaking at the Church of the Sacred Heart, Donnybrook, on Sunday evening at a ceremony where 45 lay people received certificates following completion of a year-long course in Catechesis (teaching Christianity). “Generously, you have given of your time – to engage with your faith,” he said.

He continued that “even 20 years ago, hardly anyone here could have imagined an evening like this”.

 

A bit of sympathy. Not an unlimited amount. Because so much of the plight the Catholic Church finds itself in is of its own making. Rigid, unyielding, unsympathetic, consumed by sexuality, and that’s all long before we get to the various scandals and cover-ups.

And I doubt that 20 years ago people would have found the realities impinging on the Catholic Church such that there would be a massive decline in vocations and so on difficult to countenance. In the 1990s I knew someone, very casually, who had joined and then left an order. Even then the numbers were in free-fall. I think if I recall correctly they were one of a couple of people who were going through the process and the order spoke of the old days when there were scores of people. So thirty odd years ago the dynamics were well in train. And the outcomes were predictable.

“One of the contours of this new place we are brought [to] is the diminishing number of priests available to serve in the parishes and other ministries in the Archdiocese, and a reducing number of people who celebrate the sacraments regularly, and the increased resources required to maintain the existing parish infrastructure,” he said.

This meant “it is no longer possible for me to appoint a resident priest to every parish.” It would mean greater co-operation between parishes in providing sacraments and pastoral care, and required “a much greater involvement of the lay faithful in the partnerships of parishes to enable them to fulfil their mission and ministry.”

But as noted on here not that long ago, the tide was already going out long before that. I could see it in Kilbarrack where growing numbers of men, in particular, did not attend Mass in the 1970s. I’ve wondered at that – clearly there was a loosening of society, a broadening too in some respects. It’s easy to say it was television, or social mores changing in the 1960s. Or Vatican II. Or the illiberalism of the religion leaving it isolated in an increasingly, if partially, more liberal world. Increasing societal wealth was a key factor as well. In so many ways the Catholic Church – all religions, all larger religions, found themselves ill-prepared and structured for those challenges. 

Again, all this before the scandals and cover-ups. 

John-Paul II’s arrival on these shores was a high-point that concealed intrinsic weakness. And those huge numbers – what did they actually mean? Were they truly representative of a mass adherence to Catholicism? Or were they the result of embedded social pressures? Because the glum truth, from his perspective, might well be that given a choice people walked out of churches when they were given the opportunity to do so and largely never walked back in.