The church needs to come out of the locked upper room and offer people hope, writes BREDA O'BRIEN
THE WHITE Queen loftily declared she often believed in as many as six impossible things before breakfast. When thinking about the Irish bishops’ visit to Rome, I realised that while believing six impossible things might not be necessary, knowing many more than six apparently contradictory things about the Irish Catholic Church is essential to understanding it.
Take, for example, the bishops. In an important sense, they don’t exist. Certainly individual bishops exist, but as a corporate entity, they meet four times a year, issue statements that are often quite bland, and then virtually cease to exist until the next meeting.
The media discusses the bishops as if they were a political party or a business. Neither model fits, and not because the bishops are high-minded creatures with loftier interests. No, the model does not fit, because no Irish political party could survive if it operated like the bishops, and no business would escape bankruptcy.
In John Allen’s excellent article here yesterday, he pointed out the obvious steps that need to be taken. Unfortunately, when there is no centralised leadership, only prelates acting in what they perceive to be the best interests of their own diocese, coherent action is very, very difficult.
John Allen also highlighted the need for the pope, the only one the bishops are answerable to, to be seen to act decisively. But even the pope cannot personally monitor every action of thousands of bishops worldwide.
Ian Elliott is the chief executive of an independent body, the National Board for Safeguarding Children in the Catholic Church (NBSC). He came to public attention when he revealed the problems in the Cloyne diocese, with the result that John Magee had to stand aside as bishop.
Ian Elliott made an important speech last October (http://www. safeguarding.ie/news-1/address byianelliottatthekeepingchildrensafeconference). As a Presbyterian, he said he had only a rudimentary understanding of the nature and structures of the Catholic Church. He believed it to be one large but single body with an overall head in charge here in Ireland. He discovered that it is not a single body but rather a number of quite separate ones that are linked. There are dioceses, religious congregations, orders, missionary societies, prelatures, and religious institutions. In all, there are 184 parts to the church in Ireland and each has its own head. In a very real sense, no one is in charge.
Ian Elliot discovered that formal communication channels are slow, difficult to access, and very limited. And in my words, not his, the informal ones aren’t any better. The extraordinary thing is that they managed to get the 184 parts to agree to a single uniform standard for child protection, and to have it monitored by the NBSC, a body independent of all of them, although still funded by them.
Of course, it was often in the church’s interests to pretend to be a monolith, but that pretence has been shattered in recent times, not least after the publication of the Ryan and Murphy reports. Quite unbelievably, the religious orders had no common policy worked out in advance on how to respond to the Ryan report. The bishops were no better after Murphy.
So, dear reader, in many ways the Catholic Church in Ireland is a disorganised mess, at times verging on the shambolic. So why would anyone even remotely sane want to be publicly associated with it? I must admit I often ask myself that question, and I keep coming back to a really embarrassing answer. I believe in the founder. I believe in the message.
The church’s social teaching in particular has shaped me. And every time I research issues such as asylum seekers, or kids with special needs, or prostitutes, or prisoners, I come across committed Catholics working in those areas, usually perfectly harmoniously alongside humanists and atheists. And who is picking up the slack in post- Tiger Ireland and softening the impact of often savage cuts on already disadvantaged people? The Society of St Vincent de Paul and other church organisations.
Further, as a lazy, self-centred, lukewarm believer, with more doubts than certainties, I need a community to keep me even vaguely on track, and I have been lucky enough to find a parish that grounds me, and helps my husband and me to bring up our children with Christian values.
Like most Catholics, my faith is nourished at local level, and in many ways, what the bishops do or don’t do is irrelevant. Except, in yet another of those awkward contradictions, it isn’t irrelevant at all. Catholics in the pews are ashamed and saddened that the church they love has failed children, and they desperately want to see that lessons have been learnt, and that there won’t be further appalling revelations.
I have probably met more bishops than most. Despite their public image, in my experience, they are not power-hungry, but tired, often elderly, men, feeling under attack from all sides. They sometimes slip into a sense of self-pitying victimhood, but most of the time they struggle to do the right thing, and are desperately conscious of their failures.
So if anything comes out of the trip to Rome, I hope it is this: an acknowledgment that the church is the whole people of God, but please, take some concrete steps to make it a reality. We are in a situation where many are hanging on to their faith and practice by their fingernails. Give us some hope. Show us proof that things have changed. In Gospel terms, come out of the locked upper room.
In 2006, Benedict urged the bishops to establish the truth of what happened, take whatever steps were necessary to prevent it from occurring again, ensure that the principles of justice were fully respected and, above all, bring healing to all those affected by these egregious crimes. Those Catholics still in the pews could only say a heartfelt amen to that.