The crisis in the Irish Church is deeper than the lack of vocations it is experiencing, Archbishop Diarmuid Martin warned at a Mass to mark the centenary of the foundation of the Missionary Society of St Columban.
“The bigger crisis is that of the growing alienation between young people and the Church,” he said. At the open-air “Family and Mission Day” Mass in Dalgan Park, Co Meath, the Archbishop told 2,000 Columban missionary priests, Sisters and supporters that priests find it hard to communicate with young people about religious matters, and at the same time parents who are Christian are also struggling to transmit their own faith to their children.
He said that the Columban celebration of “Family and Mission” was part of “a new drive to restore confidence in the family as a way to transmit the faith”. In a tribute to Columban missionaries, he said that the Columban tradition embraced a “unified mission of preaching the name of Jesus, caring for the poor and addressing the root causes of poverty and damage to God’s creation”. There are more than 400 Columban missionaries in 15 countries including China, Myanmar, Peru, the UK and Ireland.
At a second event, marking the foundation of the Missionary Society on 29 June 1918, the former president of Ireland Dr Mary McAleese spoke to Irish Times journalist Joe Humphreys at Dalgan Park about the Columban legacy. In the wide-ranging conversation, Dr McAleese revisited her criticisms of infant baptism. She said she herself was not opposed to it. “I think it is a very beautiful thing. All my children and grandchildren have been infant-baptised. But it is mandatory in our Church.”
In Dr McAleese’s opinion, the Church needs to discuss infant baptism and the obligations it imposes on those baptised to obey the magisterium. This obligation treated the infant baptised as if they had “agreed openly and freely and voluntarily and personally to embrace the faith”.
In a tribute to the Columban missionaries she said they had provided “an amazing legacy”. “No other religion in the world does the NGO work that the Catholic Church does,” she said.
Of Pope Francis’ coming visit to Ireland for the World Meeting of Families, she revealed that the McAleese family did not feel wanted at it because her son is in a same-sex marriage. She said the editing out of gay-friendly material from resources for the World Meeting of Families had caused her to lose faith in the event.
She described Pope Francis’ stance on women priests as “disappointing” and said that he was “no different to any other pope on women”.
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