Little flowering from seed the Pope scattered

Looking back one finds it hard to explain: not just the fact of the huge attendance, but the total sense of . . . the only word I can think of is the biblical shalom . . . a kind of universal completeness.

It lasted through the liturgy and the vast picnic which followed as the Pope travelled around the crowd in that ridiculously marvellous vehicle . . . and even through the inevitable downside, when the visitor left to go North and the rest of us travelled home. Or most of us did.

For late on that Saturday evening, far later than had been scheduled, hundreds of us hacks, of press, radio and TV, from all over Europe and the world, stood waiting and waiting in a northside Dublin convent hall. And when the visitor appeared, this hard-bitten gang burst into For He's a Jolly Good Fellow and he thanked us and said he hoped that at least he wasn't an altogether bad fellow!

There was another day and a half to go. Is it hindsight that makes me believe that during those packed hours of Sunday and of Monday forenoon, as the focus shifted from Clonmacnoise to Galway to Knock, and then to Maynooth, Limerick and Shannon, for me the magic seemed to fade?

That what I heard and saw (and commented on) on TV and radio came to something performed at a distance (and not just geographically). Not something experienced. Much of it, of course, was moving, but rather as a play or a film might move. Or a great demo.

I think especially of Galway, where youth was in the ascendant: singing and smiling and full of freshness. Touching the heart as always. But even there I was doubtful. Doubtful when the visitor exclaimed: "Young people of Ireland, I love you!" And doubtful when they responded in full voice, near-deliriously. Nor did I doubt they were, on both sides, sincere.

One does not doubt the sincerity of the crowd on that first Palm Sunday. Nor of 1,000 or 10,000 or more of the triumphs of history. But mass response is more often loud than deep. As to the Pope's own words then, and at other points on his journey - and throughout many journeys since - for me at least style and substance have not always matched.

But my concern here is with popular response. In Dublin I and a million others were caught up in a mass triumph. As, no doubt, were a million more in Galway and elsewhere. Nor should we undervalue the extent of this response in time and detail, from the first preparations, begun some weeks before, involving a considerable complexity of logistics and resources - human and material - and a quite remarkable degree of administrative discipline, precision and, let me add, imagination.

Whatever there were of errors and omissions were almost entirely of policy. Like the decision not to go North of the Border or to the interchurch gathering in Dublin's St Patrick's Cathedral. In both cases, I am convinced, sadly wrong. On the ground everything seemed to be right.

It was a triumph of vision, of organisation. A triumph of popular appeal. Something to be proud of.

It was good for our morale and for our international standing. North and South, we all felt the better of the visit: being that high on the Pope's list gave us an edge.

But what effect had it on the Roman Catholic majority here, on all Christian life in Irish society? Can we say that faith and work and worship were enriched or renewed, especially in the generation that has come to maturity in the last two decades? What of the "young people of Ireland"?

We cannot, of course, attempt the improper and impossible task of judging hearts and minds, but I'm afraid that available statistics, as well as general observation and experience, add up to a rather negative verdict. As far as one can judge, the fruits of the visit were scant while a disturbingly large number of the young seem to "grow out" of church and church-going.

In fact attendance at public worship has continued a general decline. Certain sectors appear to be especially vulnerable: notably, intellectuals and the urban poor. It remains to be seen whether the first of these may in time become positively influenced by new departures in religious studies (including academic theology).

But as we approach the end of the millennium, there is hardly an Irish writer or opinion-former of stature whose work bears an explicit Christian witness, and I don't mean pietism or propaganda.

Indeed, religion and religious values are commonly ignored at best, and often ridiculed. And this obtains at all levels, popular as well as serious.

As to the urban poor, we may look to the fact that the most significant voluntary work on their behalf is that of religious sisters, priests and other Christian activists. But again, only time will tell whether this will serve to renew religious sentiment or observance among those who were for so long (too long?) seen as the "backbone of the church".

That latter phrase reminds me of that "better half" of the faithful whose loyalty and reliability were proverbial, and from whom the great majority of the devout are still recruited. The women of Ireland have not as a body deserted the church, but those Catholics who have been moving away are by no means totally or even largely male.

And among the committed, there has developed a split and mood of criticism of the exercise of papal authority, in some detail. The charismatic presence of John Paul II as "seen plain" on those September days did not inhibit this spirit or mood, or serve to soften the often sharp reaction to his statements on women and their vocation.

Vocation in the context of the church's ministry and the "religious life" is another matter to which the Pope devoted his attention when visiting Maynooth College on the third morning. What he had to say was heard by 1,000 seminarians and religious, drawn from houses all over the country. A similar event today would bring together only a fraction of that number, and there don't appear to be many recruits in the offing.

So bleak indeed is the prospect that a distinguished member of one religious congregation has seriously suggested the wind-up of not just his, but all such congregations, orders and societies.

In his worldwide pilgrimage, the Pope's journeyings have been little short of heroic. But to resort to a common biblical image, in Ireland at least, the soil he watered, has brought little flowering.

What there has been is short-lived as Michaelmas daisies.

Dr Sean MacReamoinn is a writer, broadcaster and commentator