Intellectual talk grips Dublin
When Diarmuid Martin, Archbishop of Dublin, lambasted Ireland for its lack of Catholic intellectuals last week, his outspokenness caused a few raised eyebrows. Some suggested that the Church only has itself to blame, given how alienated many thinking people have become over its record on issues such as child abuse. Others wondered at the archbishop’s timing: might it have anything to do with a conference at the Loyola Institute in Dublin next week that will examine the Church’s place in the public square?

Loyola has never been Martin’s favourite institute: when it was launched  in 2012 (with the cooperation of eight religious congregations), he criticised it as not a proper place for Catholic theology, saying the vocation of the Catholic theologian was an ecclesial one and theology teaching cannot be conducted “independent of reference to the teaching authority of the Church”. Among the intellectuals speaking at Loyola is Cardinal Reinhard Marx of Munich.