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Next Month, Ireland Faces a Battle for Its Soul
Many on Ricochet have asked me, as Ireland’s de-facto representative on this, what happened to the Catholic church in Ireland? That would be a long, long post which would put you off reading anything of note or interest. Rather instead, I will summarise it like I do with my high school students when they finish a historical topic. Brace for impact:
1. The sex abuse crisis. Sadly, abuse of teenagers and children has always been rife in Ireland and abroad. In Ireland, the numbers are much higher than most countries. Which, of course, alcohol and the vindictive character of some Irish have had a role in creating. It’s now known here that are 1 in 12 people have been abused or assaulted sexually, the vast majority by members of their family. Unfortunately, many disgusting priests and brothers contributed to this evil. Many raped or sexually abused the most vulnerable children in their care, be it in church schools, church hospitals, orphanages, or church-related activities. Oddly, very little sexual abuse was done by religious nuns. These were primarily, as in America, committed by men on teenage boys and the number of victims runs into the tens of thousands. Worse, and this is probably the worst part, many clergy members knew about it and many in the hierarchy moved priests or brothers around, covering it up, and then forcing silence on the victims and their families. Many times the abuser would go on defiling kids across the island after he had been moved.
2. The church ran many of the educational and social services in Ireland since foundation of state in 1922. Since the early 1930s, there were Catholic whistleblowers warning about the problems with industrial schools, orphanages, and the Magdelene laundries where pregnant, unmarried woman would go to have their children. Nevertheless, their warnings were ignored. Much sex abuse occurred in these places but, even worse, much physical abuse bordering on neglect and torture took place here at a far greater level. Very few people in Ireland remember all the nice brothers and nuns. Many nuns and brothers behaved sadistically towards children. The cruelty of a minority has warped modern Ireland’s views of many brothers and nuns and did enormous damage to many charitable church activities.
3. Ireland’s mother and baby homes and Magdelene laundries were where young, unmarried, pregnant women were sent to have their child to protect the name of the family but not the welfare of the teenage girl. (Many were impregnated by relatives.) Here, many clergymen, nuns, and brothers behaved appallingly to these people and their children. The level of care was awful and, where the care was good, it was only for those women who were selling their kids abroad. In recent times in Tuam County, Galway, a mass tomb of babies was discovered of unknown quantity which has brought further disgrace on the church.
4. Very poor catechism. Many Irish people go through Catholic schooling without ever being challenged or taught what Catholics believe. They don’t know their own faith. Many times they don’t seem to care.
5 Moral deism. Many Catholics in Ireland are Catholics in name only. Included in this are Catholics who go to Mass. Ask them what they believe and I doubt they would know even the most basic dogmas of the church. Many both in and outside the church have swallowed this moral therapeutic Deism about a God who forgives us regardless of our sins and our ignoring Him and His church. This isn’t Catholic. Worse, in long run, it will destroy people’s faith as they are unprepared for the hardballs the world throws at them, so they walk away. Or their children do.
6. Uninspired leadership. Many Catholics feel under siege as they are regularly mocked and abused by the secular media and figures in entertainment in a way no other religion is. They see their values spat on, their Saviour mocked, and their religion ridiculed far beyond satire. The bishops say nothing. Instead, they allow the ignorance to continue, or worse, leak to anti-clerical newspapers for egotistical purposes.
7. The rapid economic progress in Ireland. This brought about massive changes in Ireland with more choice than ever before and more freedom. Sadly, rather than using this to pursue knowledge, many have been corrupted by it. The church provides a token voice against such abuses but man sees the money as offering something the church cannot and uses this to walk further away from the church.
8. The media and popular culture hate Christianity and Ireland’s press are no exception. They love to bash faith — especially the Christian faith. Two talentless comedians make a point on their Twitter feed of saying every time they attack Catholics that they get people asking them to attack Islam. Ironically, their cowardice is spoken in their sarcasm.
9. Catholic parents. Many parents swore before God they would raise their kids Catholic at baptism and teach them the faith and bring them to Mass. Many have not done this. Leaving their kids spiritually undone.
Finally some people have asked me why I remain a Catholic in so far as the above. It’s very simple. I’m a history teacher. Bad things done by vile wicked men or women don’t summarise a church which for good and evil is the one set up by Jesus Christ. After all one of the first bishops was Judas, it’s first pope a denier and it’s greatest missionary a murderer. Also being Irish Protestantism has no appeal.
Oh and it happens to be true. Here endith the lesson
Published in General
Paddy, to what extent is Irish faithfulness falling before the rather stunning secular success of modern Ireland in the 21st century? Per capita GDP is headed towards $70,000, PISA scores are closer to Norway than the US, crime is nearly non-existent, and every measure of economic freedom puts Ireland at the top of the league tables. If the state church is abusing and bullying you while educational, economic and technological success is broadly available for the first time ever, it is any surprise that the Irish are more focused on worldly pursuits?
My two best friends are Catholic, and I have to fight the urge to ask them how they still can be, after all the church has done and facilitated. I totally don’t get it. Oh, yeah, human error, human evil–but wouldn’t you expect to find less of that, not more, in a religious institution?
And in Ireland, with the abuses toward women you mention–they were as bad as the Taliban. @quakevoter, I’m anxiously awaiting the response to your eminently logical question!
Rod dreher an ex Catholic and Orthodox Christian summarises my feelings as seen below. I’ve read tracts of his book actually. I fully accept he had genuine points here and there but his book overall was historically bankrupt.
Anyway here’s dreher comments.
Maybe. There were terrible exceptions.
But problematic clergy isn’t a new problem, is it?
Sorry, Mike-K, can’t agree with you at all on this. As Paddy S points out, this is primarily a homosexual problem. Read the John Jay report – it’s all there.
The bishops of the world are to blame for all of this – they still don’t get it. As after the Long Lent, this still goes on today – see Pope Francis and the Chilean abuse crisis – what action will be taken against the bishops?.
It is disgusting. And it is good it is brought into the light.
Ireland is not alone here Paddy. Yet I think that one thing that the disastrous Pope Francis papacy has done is to alert us to this:
The era of the lukewarm “spirit of Vatican II church” is coming to a close. Francis has drawn the lines. May Ireland remain strong.
The Great Amen stands at our door. Be not afraid. Hold fast to the faith.
Why would married priests and admitting heterosexual men to seminaries not be a help ? You would sound more knowledgeable if you had read that book I recommended. Heterosexual men were being forced out of seminaries if they attempted to defend boys who were being abused.
Funny, my wife thinks it would be a disaster.
And there is the problem. Put not your trust in Princes. In men who cannot save.
But there are married Catholic priests! Some of the Eastern Rites that are in communion with Rome have a married clergy – celibacy is what is known as a discipline, not a doctrine. There are good reasons for celibacy, and if it was such a hindrance to good men who wanted to serve as priests, one would expect that those rites who have a married clergy would be far greater in numbers than they are. Nor do I understand why it would help anyway, as the problems were, by a great margin, caused by homosexual priests. Banning homosexuals from the priesthood would be more to the point.
Also, the rates of abuse by Catholic clergy is about the same as that of Protestant clergy. And both are far, far lower than the rates in other professions such as teaching, though of course we do expect more from men of God.
This is rather hilarious – the Church has survived for 2000 years, despite plenty of sinners and incompetents in the heirarchy and the laity. She will survive this too….
Of your list, Paddy, I would actually place affluence and poor catechesis as the main problems. The others are horrible, of course, but I think the Church can survive sinners – it has, after all, for 2000 years.
“The single change that might have made a huge difference in this tragic story is if priests had been allowed to marry. ”
According to Thomas Cahill if memory serves , the Catholic Church in Ireland, founded by St Patrick in the fifth century allowed Priests to marry and even had a woman Bishop. Rome didn’t bother I think to make contact with the Irish Church until the ninth century and things began to change. Of course Ireland had a pretty rough history after Henry II conquered them.
I remain a Catholic because I think it is closest to being a follower of Christ. The Church is not without it’s faults though.
I never understood the reason for the doctrine of Papal infallibility, aside from the obvious greedy grab for power by a bureaucracy in the nineteenth century. It seems out of step with the teachings of Christ. Christ made St. Peter the head of the Church, essentially the first Pope, knowing full well Peter would deny him three times. If Peter was so fallible in that time of Christ’s need, how are we to expect future Popes to behave better?
Also if Papal infallibility was so important would’t have Christ been more explicit about it?
They and all the other Priests are human after all and subject to the same temptations that tempt us all.
I’m Catholic – a cradle Catholic. I go to Mass every Sunday and holyday of obligation. I can’t answer for your two best friends but I am still Catholic because of the sacraments. As a Catholic I have the Word and the Eucharist. I am part of faith tradition that is two millennia long and was instituted by Jesus Christ.
Certainly not one of the courageous, but I did try to do a little bit. Some years ago I collected signatures for the referendum here in CA that would have put on the ballot the Abortion Waiting Period and Parental Notification Initiative for minor’s abortions. (Sadly it lost 52/48%.)
Besides trolling the neighborhood, I visited several churches and spoke with the pastors, ministers, etc., to request that they let their parishioners know about this and to request that a signature sheet be made available for those who supported the initiative.
To my amazement – and dismay – more than a few said they could not participate. Their reason? It might make their pro-choice members uncomfortable. I politely suggested that those pro-choicers should feel uncomfortable (for all the obvious reasons, and given that state law required parental consent for minors’ ear piercing).
BTW, I donated the monies earned for the signatures to the Right to Life League of Southern CA. To me, this was a labor of love because I felt so strongly about it.
Being married is not a vaccine for sexual sin and predation. The heart of humanity is broken, we see it everyday.
St. Brigid was an abbess of a monastery, not a bishop. And again, there are rites within the Catholic Church which do have a married clergy.
With all due respect, I don’t think you understand papal infallibility. It has nothing to do with “behaving better” – in fact there have been some pretty shady popes. Nor is it frequently invoked.
There are lots of doctrines we accept as Christians that Christ wasn’t explicit about.
Of course they are! Why would anyone think otherwise?
As my comment stated, the abuse of minors was primarily a homosexual problem – why would you think I would be opposed to admitting heterosexual men to seminaries?.
And with your great knowledge, you know that Pope Benedict XVI addressed this in 2005 with his Instruction Concerning the Criteria for the Discernment of Vocations with regard to Persons with Homosexual Tendencies in view of their Admission to the Seminary and to Holy Orders
I don’t think a married priesthood is the solution to abuse of minors nor do I think it is a solution to the problem of shortage of priests in parts of the world. But Pope Francis seems to think it might be and as you know will add clerical celibacy to the agenda of the October 2019 Pan-Amazonion Synod.
Yeah, but I don’t know if you heard: you can talk to Him yourself.
I think that is her point –
Like Majestyk said, this deeply tragic story “didn’t spring out of nothingness”. It sprang from the father of lies, the real destroyer of souls, whose vileness was present from the beginning, as the Book of Genesis describes. To think there is nothing left of faith, even in the Catholic Church, is to believe more of his lies. Don’t do it. Think Screwtape on steroids. Evil is present everywhere there is good and there’s plenty of good. Good destroyed Hitler and Mussolini and Stalin. Faith drove the bus and still does.
Bella Dodd said she was personally responsible for thousands of communist infiltrators in the Catholic Church, even at the highest levels. Go back to the Bible – read it – know your faith and hold clergy accountable – dust off your army boots. Thank you Paddy for your courage and teaching truth.
Which I do. All the time. But a relationship with God is more than just talking to Him:
“Jesus said to them, “Amen, amen, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life within you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him on the last day. For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink.Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him. Just as the living Father sent me and I have life because of the Father, so also the one who feeds on me will have life because of me” (John 6:53-57).
And this is an important thing I get from the Catholic Church.
Let’s not misinterpret what I’m saying here: I’m saying specifically that my suspicion (using historical knowledge guided by experience) is that the incentive structure which the church and its clergy has had since time immemorial has been wrong. Corruption of this sort is inevitable when you have what boils down to a state-mandated monopoly.
This is as much a story about that as it is about the fact that the veneer of holiness is merely that: a veneer. And frequently a shield with which people in positions of authority hide their much deeper perfidy.
“With all due respect, I don’t think you understand papal infallibility. It has nothing to do with “behaving better” – in fact there have been some pretty shady popes. Nor is it frequently invoked.”
I know there are all sorts of Church legalisms that govern the use of Papal infallibility. That still doesn’t address why is there a need for the doctrine. The Church existed for almost 19 centuries through some pretty turbulent times without it.
Furthermore, the primary job of the Church is to preach and spread the Good News of Christ. Why resort to some legalistic fallback position that in the end undermines your preaching? Everything the Pope does is and will be under scrutiny by the jury of public opinion and will be ultimately judged by God, not just that portion of what the Pope does that some Vatican select committee judges to be important. Also, somehow through all the legalistic positioning the elephant in the room, the Church’s abominable behavior towards child abuse by Priests still has not been handled in a Christ like manner.
What a snarky thing to say. Yes, we do know that, as you no doubt know.
No, the Church did not exist for 19 centuries without it. You might not know this, but often in Church history, doctrines that may have been held for centuries are only “officially” defined when there is a challenge to it or the times require it.
I don’t understand what you mean here.
I think there has been a reckoning and policies put into place. Millions of dollars have been given to victims and their lawyers. Dioceses have gone bankrupt. What more do you want?
“I think there has been a reckoning and policies put into place. Millions of dollars have been given to victims and their lawyers. Dioceses have gone bankrupt. What more do you want?”
I hope new policies have been put into place. I have not heard any discussion of them. Please inform us. The church was forced by legal action to address the victims plight, and did not of it’s own volition. The Church had to be dragged in the past kicking and screaming through the legal process to help victims. It did not behave with Christian charity , as one would expect of Christ’s beacon to the world, towards the victims of this horrendous abuse. That sin of omission deeply strained the Church’s credibility. I hope this situation has changed. Apparently it has not in Ireland according to the testimony here which was the subject of the original post.
Although papal infallibility was defined at the First Vatican Council, it doesn’t hold that 1870 was the date when the doctrine became true – @painterjean has already pointed that out – it has always been a part of the Magisterium.
I think one can argue that Jesus did speak of papal infallibility when he gave Peter the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and said to him that what he binds on earth will be bound in heaven and that what he looses on earth will be loosed in heaven (Mt 16:16-19). Another case would be when Jesus told Peter that he prayed for Peter that his faith would not fail so that he would then strengthen the brethren (Lk 22:31-32).
Papal infallibility is a negative charism – it only allows for preservation of what has already been revealed. The teachings of the Church are not true because they are Catholic; they are Catholic because they are true. Papal infallibility conserves this teaching.
My only quibble with @painterjean is the use of the word “official” for Church teaching (although she did not use it in this sense). Fr. Z has a good post where he points out how the word “official” can be used to undermine teaching acts that are infallible and the teachings that are irreformable.
A question from the outside. I’m thinking about tendencies toward abuse of others, in particular little boys, and wondering how one becomes a priest or a nun or whatever: Is there an examination? Is their background looked into? Is there a periodic examination of lives and lifestyles?
Everyone involved in parish life – teachers in parish schools, volunteers, parish staff — all have to undergo background checks and attend instructional courses about sexual and other exploitation of children. This is MANDATORY. I have had to go through this training, which is instituted at the diocesan level and put into practice at the parish level. If you’re unfamiliar with it, it means that you don’t read your diocesan newspaper (because this is brought up frequently) and are not involved in your parish. If you were involved in your parish, you would have first-hand knowledge of these programs.
Yes, it initially did not confront the issue in a forthright manner. It has since done so. What more do you want?
Yes, it has, for the most part.
I don’t know if that is what Paddy said. I don’t think he mentioned what the current attitude of the Church is in Ireland. Perhaps they have instituted policies such as we have here in the US. I hope so.
Teachers and clergy all have to have mandatory screening now before they work with any child. The abuse crisis in iReland is now a historical problem there are no recent cases of abuse but rather accusations from the past. The church should pay any compensation that is fair. However to say they’ve done nothing is inaccurate. In fact they are far more proactive about this issue than state bodies which continue to let abuse occur and without sanction. Hundreds have died in state care and hundreds abused probably more since 1990s