Catholicism in Ireland as I See it Now

Having been in Ireland for almost six weeks, early impressions of the country and of the Church here are starting to crystallize into larger patterns and perceptions in my mindset.

Beyond the interactions with people from our choirs and those we see around the parish, I've really enjoyed grabbing a copy from the stack of newspapers in our parish lobby. The Irish Catholic is a really great weekly edition that turns up on the table outside the sacristy for me to enjoy.

The newspaper is long and not short on quantity of stories. A healthy blend of columnists, national reporters, and local reporters combine to create a newspaper full of stories long and short, micro and macro, opinion and fact.

One of the repeated features has been a two-page spread in the middle, profiling two opposing national journalists' opinions as told to a reporter in separate interviews - the question: is the Irish media biased against Catholics and the Church?

The answers have been largely what you'd expect but given from a perspective of professional legitimacy and experience. This week's responders gave some typical insights but with some new tilt. The man defending the media championed the watchdog element of journalists, not giving free passes or deference to the Church. The fellow criticizing the media put a new spin on "don't shoot the messenger," suggesting that this phrase implies the messenger just passively relays something true and discovered; he suggests not using this phrase for the media, since the media constantly makes decisions about what to pursue, what to report, how to report it, etc.

The long and short of it is that different people will give you different answers, and no consensus will really emerge I don't think. The Irish Catholic does a wonderful job of pursuing a variety of stories relevant to Catholics, from health and family to politics to ministry, but at the end of the day, they're overtly Catholic in their reporting. They give a lot of stuff at face value, but their evaluation of the information and columns are building the Kingdom, as they should - good for them for providing Catholics a good periodical. I'm certainly a grateful reader.

What I'm starting to learn from readings here and on RTE online and from conversations and perceptions is a view of the Church that is pervasive. Whether among Catholics who've lapsed or shrunk away or among non-Catholics or even non-Christians and seculars, the feeling I get is that the Irish people are ready and eagerly desiring Catholicism to fall away into a societal niche.

It seems on a national level that, regardless of the rhetoric or precision of his words, PM Enda Kenny's summer speech against the Church in light of governmental investigations was welcomed by the people. The country seems to embrace a pushback against a Church that has enjoyed such entitlement, if not institutionally/formally but certainly socially, personally, and culturally.

I don't think I'd go so far as to say that people want the Church to disappear or for Catholicism to shrink. It just appears that people wouldn't mind it stepping off to the sidelines and becoming more of a bit part than a lead actor.

A small thing in the defender's response in the two-page feature tipped me off to something - he described himself as an Irish Catholic agnostic. Beside the fact that this is an impossible thing to be, it demonstrates a growing viewpoint: Irish Catholic is no longer a flavor of Catholic devotion; rather, it is a secular, everyday classification that people put on without a desire to add to it a depth of lived faith, lifestyle, or outlook. It exists now more so as a modifier to a classification.

The Church as it stands seems destined to remain a large body but one where a few people carry the burdens of upkeep, outreach, and ministry while the vast sum desire to baptize and confirm their kids at least, or at most, pop in and out of Sunday mass before the inner community can subsume them and invite them personally to become active in some way.

This all in the larger picture of the country wanting the Catholic Church to become more like a charity or benevolent social organization, fading from its place as a prevalent institution in the national landscape to the boy who has taken his punishment, learned his lesson, and sits quietly in class, trying to answer questions correctly now and then, offering a meek helping hand, and trying not to make trouble.

This is not meant to incriminate the Irish Church or its Catholics or to imply that the Church in America is above these problems. The same push-and-pull plagues America, a nation founded on Protestant Christianity that aims to be affirming of a watery, civil, deist, vaguely Christian civil religion that embraces plurality and tolerance. And our parishes are full of inner/outer dichotomies, parishes that struggle to bridge the gaps between twice-a-year-church-goers, in-and-out Catholics, and the ones who decide to dedicate themselves more fully to faith in community.

The challenge for us - American Catholic volunteers living among this Church - is to figure out what ways, if any, we can draw upon our sensibilities to guide the Church into its rightful place in society. Pope Benedict XVI recently suggested secularism can do some good for the Church inasmuch as it helps to purify the Church of its overly worldly ties - cozying up with government preferences, taking advantage of taxes to name a few.

At the end of the day, the best renewal comes from people choosing lives of faith in the Church out of their own freedom. So the general solution is to work with the people already involved people in Church life to try to provide welcoming opportunities to the people in the heart of the community as well as those on the fringes.

In this vein, in a concrete way, tonight we are starting a three-evening sequence of "Conversations on Being Christian Today - Adult Faith Formation" (or at we've been calling it CoBCT-AFF). We're rolling a simple intro question into simple presentations into group sharing and some prayer to give adults a simple but hopefully useful venue to plug back into exploring their faith, knowing that some or many may not have done much since their own confirmation except baptizing their own children. We'll cover vocation (universal/baptismal call to holiness), liturgy, and tough stuff (problem of pain and so on). We may not get tons of people to come or much participation from those who do show, but our aim is to have prepared and offered it faithfully to give the people in our community a chance.

So if the Church is destined to fall out of the default Irish perspective and assume a place characterized more as peripheral or one in a chorus of moral, charitable, or spiritual voices, let's hope that the committed lay people and the steadfast Irish clergy can speak the heart of the Gospel in their lived faith and help to rebuild the Catholic image not through savvy PR or rhetorical tactics but through humble self-offering.

I'm not rendering a verdict that this change is bad or good or even that I've made a mostly accurate assessment. The role of society and family in cultivating an atmosphere based on Christian values, morals, and faith that it has found to be life-giving remains paramount, but I will say that embracing a culture where spirituality, Christianity, Catholicism, and our Church are embraced freely is a good thing. Though the culturally foundational place of Catholicism is a beautiful thing and an integral part of Catholic (and I'd hope Irish) Tradition, an environment where people choose Christ freely is beautiful. I'd hate for the Church to shrink or contract, but I welcome an increase in the likelihood that people's Catholic faith can come from their decision to live out the things began at their baptism and affirmed in their confirmation.