The Church in Ireland is facing the "biggest crisis" it has "faced in its history" a delegation of bishops was told by representatives of the Association of Catholic Priests at a meeting on Thursday. It was the first meeting between the two bodies in two years and it saw the Association of Catholic Priests urge the bishops to back their call for a national synod for the Irish Church.
Speaking to The Tablet, Fr Brendan Hoban said the Association believed the meeting was significant because the bishops were "beginning to engage with us seriously". He said the priests were calling for a realistic projection of the situation in the Irish Church for the next five, ten and fifteen years. "We want to plan for the future – we don't want to let the Church continue in freefall and we don't want to sleepwalk into oblivion," he said.
The bishops’ delegation was led by Archbishop Kieran O’Reilly of Cashel & Emly and he was accompanied by Bishop Ray Browne, Bishop Philip Boyce and Bishop Denis Nulty.
The ACP’s proposal for a national synod envisages a process that would move from discussion and consultation at parish level to diocesan level to national level.
According to Fr Hoban, the association would like to see the Irish Church hold a process similar to the synod in Limerick, where issues could be aired openly and transparently, and the outcomes from this would be sent to Rome as “representative of the mind of the Irish Church”.
Dublin priest, Fr Dermot Lane highlighted that the process of engagement is central as it presents a model of Church where everyone works together.
He also outlined to the bishops the critical situation in relation to the decline in practice and the decline in vocations. He said people were asking “what’s the plan to deal with the crisis?”
He called for more data to be gathered on the situation and the resources available which would show what needed to be prioritised and he also urged the bishops to train lay men and women for ministry and called for greater cooperation between bishops, priests and people.
Killala parish priest Fr Hoban told the meeting that the ACP was becoming increasingly aware of the growing problem of the well-being and care of priests.
He said many priests were struggling to cope with the mental and physical pressures of age, isolation, an ever-increasing work-load and demands of ministry, low morale, despair as vocations decline so massively, little free time, ill-health, and a lack of confidence in dealing with difficult emerging social issues in parish work.
This was having a knock on effect on younger priests "distressed by the reality they faced". He warned that many were struggling. He also highlighted the stress many priests felt over the fear of false allegations of sexual abuse and said many priests had lost faith in the goodwill of their bishops, because the supports of canon law were not always made available to priests, and that some priests had been "very badly treated and had suffered much".
Columban Fr Seán McDonagh urged the bishops to deal with the case of Ireland's 'silenced' priests. Criticising the ethos of secrecy in the current process, he said this meant that an accused individual wasn’t dealt with directly, didn’t know who his accusers were and didn’t even know when a process was initiated. The process he said made him "ashamed of his Church".
Fr McDonagh asked the bishops to take up a position on the Irish priests who had been silenced and to seek to develop a “more just and respectful process” for dealing with such cases as they arose. He reminded the bishops that the men involved had given life-times of service to the Church, were deeply respected and their continued treatment was regarded as “a source of great scandal by many Catholics in Ireland”.
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