By Michael Kelly
Catholic News Service
DUBLIN – Cardinal Sean O’Malley reportedly will tell Pope Benedict XVI that the Catholic Church in Ireland is “on the edge” of collapse due to the fallout from clerical abuse scandals.
Cardinal O’Malley is one of several senior prelates charged by Pope Benedict with carrying out an apostolic visitation of the Irish Catholic Church following a series of highly critical judicial reports that revealed abuse by priests and a widespread culture of cover-up for decades among Church leaders.
Fr Tony Flannery, a leading member of the Association of Catholic Priests, revealed at a conference of laypeople on 12 February in the Irish capital that “Cardinal O’Malley told the association the Irish Church had a decade, at most, to avoid falling over the edge and becoming like other European countries where religion is marginal to society.”
Fr Flannery said Cardinal O’Malley gave a commitment to the priests’ association that he would deliver the frank assessment to the Pope in a confidential report to be submitted later this year.
Admitting to being previously sceptical about the apostolic visitation, Fr Flannery said that in light of Cardinal O’Malley’s undertaking, “there may be some gleam of hope.”
Cardinal O’Malley could not be reached for comment.
In a mid-November statement, the Vatican said it would issue a comprehensive summary of the investigations’ findings when they are completed.
Fr Flannery said that while the association was ready to campaign for radical change, it was apprehensive that it would be viewed as “a new clericalism.”
The association, which represents more than 400 of Ireland’s 4,500 priests, was formed in 2010.
It has proposed a re-evaluation of the Church’s teaching on sexuality and the inclusion of women at every level within the Church.
The first phase of the visitation should be completed by Easter, and it is likely the visitators will meet with senior officials of the Roman Curia in the spring to discuss what Jesuit Fr Federico Lombardi, the Vatican spokesman, described as the next phase of the “path to renewal.”
l An Irish Bishop has called on parishioners to “reform and renew” the Catholic Church toward a future that is more transparent and in which leaders are accountable.
Bishop Noel Treanor of Down and Connor, the diocese based in Belfast, Northern Ireland, launched a new “listening programme” across the 88 parishes of the diocese on 8 February.
The programme is aimed at giving laypeople a chance to have their say about the Church.
“The history of the Church includes moments when the people of God are called to reform and renew the Church,” Bishop Treanor said. “This is one such moment.”
More than 50 parishioners have been commissioned to lead listening sessions in anticipation of a diocesan assembly at Pentecost in 2013.
While the process is seen as a response to the widespread sense of disappointment and anger felt by Irish Catholics in the wake of the child sexual abuse scandals, Bishop Treanor insisted that “even if the scandals didn’t happen, even if there were just as many priests now as there were 50 years ago, this process would still be necessary.”
“We have been grappling since the 1960s with the whole idea of how we make the Church more participative,” he explained.
“This will be a step toward that, a step toward a Church that is more open, transparent and where there is accountability.” Bishop Treanor said he wanted “to live in a Church where someone can feel free to say exactly what they think to a Bishop and where a Bishop can be free to say exactly what he thinks.”
The Bishop, who worked as the Catholic Church’s representative to the European Union in Brussels for 20 years before being appointed Bishop in 2008, said he was “greatly inspired by the faith of people in difficult times.”
“What you notice on the one side is the obvious feeling of disenchantment and disappointment – sometimes horror – at the scandals in the area of child sexual abuse and the non-management, inadequate management and sometimes cover-up, but at the same time, and often in the same people, an amazing commitment to living out the faith in God incarnate,” he said.
Although young people are encouraged to participate in the listening process, special sessions are also being organised for teenagers, young adults and for those who feel estranged from the Church, the Bishop said.