Limerick diocese's new synod told to forget its 'unusable past'

Members of the first diocesan synod in Ireland for half a century should challenge Catholics about being part-time Christians who are simply clients of “an ecclesiastical franchise”.

The Diocese of Limerick has announced it will hold its first synod in 70 years in 2016 to address its future and has already commissioned 350 delegates from 60 parishes ranging from teenagers to those in their eighties. These include politicians, doctors, students and people who are unemployed.

Fr Paul Philibert, a Dominican friar from the United States and expert in pastoral theology, told a gathering of the delegates on Saturday at Mary Immaculate College that the synod should pose fundamental questions to Catholics.

“Do you want to be clients of an ecclesiastical franchise? Do you want to be observers of sacred, sacramental rites performed for your inspiration and spiritual comfort? Do you want to continue to be part-time Christians who visit churches but live in a lusty world? Or, by contrast, do you want to be an active member of a mutually-ministering community that has the world and its culture in view?” he said, adding: “The synod will help us to name the unusable past and to aim for the necessary future.”

Fr Paul said people must stop calculating Christian life in terms of “Masses, rosaries and novenas alone”, saying they should “let go of thinking of the saving sacrifice of the Mass as something done for us but without us”.

The Church in Ireland is facing a growing crisis with declining numbers of priests and falling Mass attendance. Fr Paul said the synod could herald a “new age of hope” but said recent decades had seen a major decline in Christian formation.

“During the last 50 years, a downturn in vocations, often flawed catechesis (or worse, no catechesis), the onslaught of pathological media, and generations attuned to vacuous overstimulation have created a populace addicted to excitation and starved for religious formation,” Fr Philibert said.

The synod will be officially launched at a special Mass on Sunday 7 December in St John’s Cathedral.