Rite and Reason: Trust has been broken and "it will take a long time to undo that damage", Father Harry Bohan tells Frank Shouldice
In the course of researching Community and the Soul of Ireland: The Need for Values-Based Change it became evident at an early stage that Father Harry Bohan had seen change coming for some time. Working as both priest and sociologist it had not taken institutional scandals in Church and State to galvanise his sense of outrage or urgency, but perhaps the sheer scale of public disenchantment now makes it easier for him to get his message across.
"What we are confronting is a crisis - a virtual breakdown in society," he contends forcefully. "We have an opportunity, a challenge and an obligation to do something about it."
The idea of confronting problems and initiating a process of values-led change is a cornerstone of the Céifin Institute which he founded five years ago. Céifin held its annual conference last week on the theme: "Values and Ethics: Can I Make a Difference?" With over 1,000 people gathered in Ennis last Wednesday to hear the opening address, it was obvious that Father Bohan is no lone ranger.
He recalled a woman asking him, after the 1998 conference, who was going to rear the next generation. "I think what she was saying is something all of us feel - that change has come so extraordinarily fast that it's almost impossible to understand it," he reasons.
"She was pointing out how we have become a very work-friendly society but not family-friendly. But she was also touching into the disconnecting of people generally from institutions of all kinds - family, community, State - and how the world of the marketplace, or the world of money, had become central to people's lives."
The 1990s boom brought major change - much of it good, he hastens to add - but Father Bohan and other Céifinists feel that material prosperity has the potential to cultivate spiritual bankruptcy. Working with Bishop Willie Walsh in the diocese of Killaloe, the Feakle-born priest is untypically forthright about the impact of ongoing scandals within the Catholic Church.
"It has been a horrible experience for us," he admits. "I think we have all been hurt and damaged - both by what the victims had to suffer and by the way Church leaders handled the situation. There has been a massive toll and there's no doubt the constant stream of scandals has really sapped the morale of priests." It is such straight talking that lends authenticity to his campaigning with Céifin.
"Indeed," he adds, "there is some confusion among priests - and among people generally - as to the essential nature of the priesthood. It doesn't help that even within the Church the priest's role has become blurred.
"There is a feeling among clergy that the role has become more complex yet more ambiguous and more isolated. A lot of support which existed in the past no longer exists and I believe there is a clear need for the church to take far more care of its clergy in modern Ireland."
In a sweeping analysis of present-day Irish society he wants to enrol other troubled institutions - family, State, education, banking - into confronting history.
In keeping with American cultural commentator Robert Putnam, he holds that "one of the most critical problems facing our society is what values or ideas are being passed on to young people. Most people agree this is a key issue but in our present culture we find it almost impossible to work this out in a practical way.
"Trust has been broken. It's as simple as that. People who held - and still hold - positions of power betrayed the confidence people placed in them. The key to betrayal is that a younger generation was betrayed by an older generation. It will take a long time to undo that damage."
Ever since setting up the Rural Housing Organisation in 1972, Father Bohan has witnessed and campaigned against the erosion of socially binding ties. As he often says, by way of explanation, people need people. He maintains he is not anti-progress but feels core values are being thrown away at great cost. He does not use the word crisis lightly.
Through turning Céifin into a national movement for values-based change he insists the case is far from lost. "I'm not pessimistic because we're in a position to do something about it," he says, referring to Eric Hoffer's maxim, "In times of change, learners inherit the earth while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists."
Frank Shouldice co-authored Community and the Soul of Ireland: The Need for Values-Based Change with Father Harry Bohan. It is published by Liffey Press, €12.95.