Breda O’Brien: Maybe Ireland is not secular enough yet

Expectations for the World Meeting of Families must be modest. This is not a full-fledged papal visit, like 1979. Pope Francis is here to attend the world meeting and will visit the Capuchin Day Centre, say the Angelus in Knock and celebrate Mass in the Phoenix Park.

It is a flying visit, so to speak, although no doubt journalists will be panting to get on any planes or helicopters that they can with him, given the pope’s penchant for off-the-cuff remarks once in the air.

The Catholic Church is battered after a referendum result which showed that a significant number of those who identify as Catholic reject one of the core teachings of the church: that no matter how devastating the circumstances of any pregnancy may be, there is always a better answer than taking the life of an innocent member of the next generation.

The church is battered, also, from its own abject failure to live up to its own ideals when it came to the protection of children already born.

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The Irish abuse crisis showed a weak, indecisive church more concerned with protecting its reputation than the welfare of those who were abused, much less protecting children from the threat of future abuse. The Eighth Amendment referendum result is not unconnected to that failure.

Vital work

Slowly, painfully, attitudes have changed and now there is a veritable army of volunteers who ensure that the church’s safeguarding policy is more than an empty promise. It is unglamorous, sometimes thankless but vital work.

But the damage will affect the church’s credibility for generations, even before you factor in recent stories of bishops in other countries abusing people less powerful than themselves. People are hoping for some significant gesture from the pope, something that signals the church is serious about zero tolerance of abuse of children or vulnerable adults.

But even if that gesture comes, it will not be enough to address the vast challenges.

Irish Catholics believe they know everything there is to know about the church and react with fury if that view is challenged

Oddly enough, it may not be anything that the pope does that gives people hope. It may come from the international nature of the world meeting. The church is not the Vatican. It is a vast, international movement found on every continent.

Irish Catholics are curiously parochial. We focus on our own little patch, all but oblivious to the challenges facing Christians in Syria, Somalia or Pakistan.

We are also often oblivious to positive developments. For example, the Catholic Church in Africa and Asia is growing rapidly, but even in secular Sweden it is also growing (from a tiny base, admittedly).

Cardinal Anders Arborelius is Sweden's first cardinal, having converted at the age of 20 from the Lutheran Church.

Officially there are only 116,000 Catholics in Sweden, but Cardinal Arborelius estimates there are at least twice that number because every year between 3,000 to 4,000 immigrant Catholics register. About 100 people convert every year, too, leaving the Swedish Catholic Church in the unusual position of scrambling to create Catholic parishes to meet the need.

Ecumenical relations are excellent and Protestant churches are very happy to sell empty church buildings at bargain basement prices to their new Catholic neighbours. The Swedish church is very much a church of the poor and immigrants, just as Francis says it should be.

In one of the most secularised societies possible, Cardinal Arborelius reports young people are open and curious about a faith they have never experienced.

Similarly, Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry, a Frenchman who writes for America magazine, among other outlets, has said that another of Europe's most secularised countries, France, is experiencing a resurgence of faith among young families. Maybe the problem in Ireland is that we are not yet secularised enough. Gobry also uses the image of inoculation, where you expose someone to a weakened version of a virus so that they never catch the real thing.

There is probably nothing better to prevent something going viral than to present it as old, stale and already dismissed.

Significant moments

Irish Catholics believe they know everything there is to know about the church and react with fury if that view is challenged. But, for many, Catholicism is a cultural means of marking significant moments such as birth, marriage and death. It is not a powerfully counter-cultural movement demanding personal commitment and sacrifice.

Christianity is not about being nice to people. It is difficult, demanding and transformative. It means you displace comfort from its status as your personal god.

Francis has a powerful vision where the fragile ecosystem of the family is as worthy of protection as the fragile ecosystem of the planet. Freedom is not the freedom to do anything you happen to want but the freedom to silence the whine of selfishness.

Francis has a tremendous ability to communicate the Christian message in a fresh way, one that makes people take a second look.

But that in itself will be useless unless there are communities where people can come to explore further and experience Christianity as something life-giving. The World Meeting of Families will not work miracles in itself but it may bring a new sense of mission to a dazed and bewildered church.