The scandals of child abuse have undermined the Church’s ability to communicate its message on marriage and the family, the Primate of All Ireland acknowledged at the World Meeting of Families in Dublin on Wednesday.

The International gathering is taking place at the Royal Dublin Society (RDS) this week amid a crisis in the church over clerical abuse and mounting anger over the lack of accountability for the mishandling allegations.

“There are those who feel they can no longer trust our message, perhaps because they have been directly hurt and betrayed in their families by their experience of Church, or because the revelations of such heinous crimes have shocked them to the core,” Archbishop Eamon Martin said in Wednesday’s keynote address.

The Irish Primate replaced Cardinal Donald Wuerl of Washington as the keynote speaker after the Archbishop of Washington announced he was withdrawing last weekend, following criticism of him in the Pennsylvania Grand Jury Report over his time as Bishop of Pittsburgh.

In his address, the Archbishop of Armagh recalled Pope Benedict XVI’s 2010 ‘Letter to the Catholics of Ireland’ in which he said the sins and crimes of sexual abuse in the Church have not only had tragic consequences in the lives of victims and their families, but they also obscure the light of the gospel. “For me, that is particularly true about the Gospel of the Family,” Archbishop Martin said.

At a press conference earlier in the day, Archbishop Diarmuid Martin of Dublin described the number of people sexually abused as children by clergy and abused in church-run institutions in Ireland as “immense”.

The Archbishop, who is president of WMOF2018, said the number was so large because it included victims of industrial schools, the Magdalene laundries, mother and baby homes and children abused by priests in parishes.

He underlined that victims who have come forward are only a proportion of the real figure for abuse and that there “are many people who are still holding in their hearts the sadness of abuse”.

In his address, Archbishop Eamon Martin said the Church was challenged to find and learn new ways of communicating “our sincerely held perspectives” about marriage and the family and other matters. 

“Into this complicated ‘topsy turvy’ world we have the joy and challenge of communicating a clear and positive vision of family and marriage, the Good News that human life is sacred, that each human being comes from God, who created us, male and female; that we are willed by God who loves each and every one of us,” he told thousands of pilgrims gathered in the open-air arena.

The church is also challenged to communicate the message that chastity is achievable, healthy and good for our young people and that the giving of oneself to another in marriage for life is “special, rewarding and a wonderful symbol of Christ’s forgiving, faithful love for his Church”.

He said there was no getting away from the fact that communicating the family can appear increasingly counter-cultural in many parts of the world, including Ireland. 

This, he said, had been accelerated by the erosion of social supports for traditional marriage in the form of constitutional guarantee and positive legislation.

He also highlighted how in presenting God’s plan for marriage and the family, which includes God’s plan for the transmission of life itself, the Church sometimes is accused of being exclusive or lacking in compassion.

Young people were easily drawn towards an overly emotional and romantic concept of love and marriage and face considerable pressure to resist becoming ‘tied down’ by commitments, relationships or attachments and to delay or avoid lifelong commitments, including marriage and having children for as long as possible. 

“They are surrounded by a contraceptive, anti-birth mentality with its increasing indifference to abortion,” he lamented and said that when later they earnestly desire to have children, they “struggle with a technocratic, commodification of child-bearing which, if necessary, can be accessed independently of any sexual relationship”.

Archbishop Martin called on the State to support the family, and especially “the uniqueness of the faithful and exclusive union between a married man and a woman” as a cherished space for the bearing and upbringing of children.

“How can we better assist young people who wish to establish a family, mortgage a home, take out insurance, but who may sometimes be convinced by economic policy to remain single?”

Public representatives, he suggested, should be challenged on policy support for family such as a proper work-life balance, which respects the role of mothers and fathers, and how welfare policies and benefit programmes support families who are most in need and who are targeted and exploited by loan sharks and other criminal elements.  

The Tablet at WMOF2018

The Tablet is at the World Meeting of Families. Come and say "hello" –  the main exhibition area - stand 91