Archbishop Dermot Farrell has said “more” is demanded of the faithful, in order to welcome the future offered by God, than just citing what this pope or that pope has said.
Criticising the inadequacy of such a response in the face of a rapidly changing country, the Archbishop of Dublin said in a message to mark the Feast of St Kevin that the effects of change were felt across all aspects of ecclesial life and expressed very clearly in some of the recent census findings.
Noting that there had been many eras of turmoil over the last 2,000 years, the archbishop referred to the ruptures in the Church in the nineteenth century when “an aggressive and insolent faction”, as St John Henry Newman described them, “made unquestioning obedience to hyper-orthodoxy the sole test of Catholicism”.
“At play were different visions of what the Church was, and how the Church was to be in the world,” said Archbishop Farrell, and those in positions of leadership in the Church found themselves “tossed and torn in the turmoil of the times”.
He said in the present time of change and turmoil, the clergy and engaged laity have to work out what and where the Church is, as Newman had.
“We are called to do the same for our place and for our time, this Dublin of 2023, this culture, this changing Ireland. Newman had to do this for himself. There was much at stake for him. In a way, it made him the person, the saint, he became.”
Adult disciples, he said, are called to a mature faith in which “it is no longer adequate to cite the Pope and say, ‘The pope says this …,’ or to cite another pope and say ‘This other pope says that.’ No! More is demanded of us.”
Recalling the words of Cardinal Jean-Marc Aveline of Marseille, who said the mission of the Church is not be a religion which succeeds according to the world’s criteria for success, Archbishop Farrell said that the mission of the Church is to cooperate humbly with the Holy Spirit “in order to be at the service of that love with which God loves the world”.
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