The vote in Ireland has been to legalize same-sex
“marriage,” an outcome that suggests a loss of moral clarity among the
majority of Catholics in the Irish Church. I am left asking the
question: Is the Irish Church dead?
I know this may sound shocking, and some may accuse me of alarmism
and defeatism. However, sacred Scripture is clear that, though Our Lord
has promised to be with the universal Church until the end of time
(Matthew 28:20), it is possible for a local Church to die.
The Book of Revelation contains the locutions and visions Our Lord
granted to his beloved disciple, St. John the Evangelist. Our Lord sent
seven messages to the local Churches, one of which was addressed to the
Church of Sardis, which reveals the awful possibility of the death of a
church:
And to the angel of the church in Sardis
write: “The words of him who has the seven spirits of God and the seven
stars, I know your works; you have the name of being alive, and you are
dead. Awake, and strengthen what remains and is on the point of death,
for I have not found your works perfect in the sight of my God” (3:1-2).
In 2003, Pope St. John Paul II
urgently addressed
the exhortation contained in Our Lord’s Letter to the Church of Sardis
to the whole of Europe, including the Church in Ireland, “Awake, and
strengthen what remains and is on the point of death” (Revelation 3:2).
Twelve years later, it is clear that Ireland and many other European
countries have not heeded Pope St. John Paul II’s final warning, and, in
fact, many of the bishops and people have done the exact opposite: They
have weakened what remains to the point of death.
Weakening What Remains to the Point of Death
Pope St. John Paul identified the necrotic forces at work in the
European churches that 12 years later have tipped the Irish Church into
death:
“[There is a] serious situation of
indifference towards religion on the part of so many Europeans, the
presence of many people even on our continent who do not yet know Jesus
Christ and his Church and who are not baptized; the secularism which
poisons a wide spectrum of Christians who habitually think, make
decisions and live ‘as if Christ did not exist’” (Ecclesia in Europa,
26).
There have been three key moments in the recent history of the Irish
Church when leading bishops and priests could have chosen to strengthen
the faith of the people. Instead, poor choices and inaction have
weakened what remains to the point of death.
The Apostolic Visitation of the Irish Church
The first key moment was Pope Benedict XVI’s
apostolic visitation
of the Irish Church in response to the crisis caused by pedophile
priests and the bishops’ widespread cover-up of crimes of child sexual
abuse. Pope Benedict’s “
Letter to the Catholics of Ireland,”
announcing the need for an apostolic visitation, clearly stated his
judgment as the Successor of St. Peter that his brother bishops had
failed. He said this was a failure where “grave errors of judgment were
made and failures of leadership.”
The apostolic visitation report was mainly a snapshot of the Irish
Church that summarized safeguarding measures that the Irish episcopacy
and religious orders were already putting in place. It also made a
number of reasonable recommendations, including: the updating of
safeguarding guidelines in accordance with the norms established by the
Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith; the reorganization of
ecclesiastical tribunals; the formation of seminarians; and various
formation, spiritual and administrative changes for religious orders.
One paragraph of the report stands out in light of the open dissent
among Irish priests supporting, or remaining neutral towards, the
legalization of same-sex “marriage” in 2015:
“Since the visitators also encountered a
certain tendency, not dominant but nevertheless fairly widespread among
priests, religious and laity, to hold theological opinions at variance
with the teachings of the magisterium, this serious situation requires
particular attention, directed principally towards improved theological
formation. It must be stressed that dissent from the fundamental
teachings of the Church is not the authentic path towards renewal.”
Instead of welcoming the balanced findings of the apostolic
visitation, Archbishop Diarmuid Martin harshly criticized it two years
after its publication, giving the impression that he had shelved it. He
told
The Irish Times, “The Irish Church has to find the answers
for the Irish Church, and where it has done so it has done so well.” He
also attempted to shift blame onto the apostolic visitation, saying it
“actually, in some ways, delayed reforms in the Irish Church,” without
providing any evidence to support such a serious claim.
The archbishop’s rejection of Pope Benedict’s apostolic visitation
gave the misleading impression that the Irish Church’s problems lay with
Rome and not within herself. He even went so far as to unfairly imply
blame lay with Pope Benedict XVI, when he told
The Irish Times, “That isn’t a criticism of those who carried it out, maybe a criticism of those who planned it.”
Enda Kenny’s Abortion Law
The second key moment that has weakened the Irish Church to the point
of death was the failure of the bishops to act over Catholic
politicians who supported the legalization of abortion. The fact that
Enda Kenny continues to receive holy Communion after spearheading the
legalization of killing unborn babies through abortion is an ongoing
public scandal. In 2013, Kenny received Communion in the presence of
Bishop John McAreavey of Dromore, Bishop Noel Treanor of Down and Conor
and Bishop Christy Jones of Elphin.
Even
The Independent newspaper, no friend of the Church,
commented that this was in defiance of the Code of Canon Law, “915,
which states that anyone who supports abortion legislation is
automatically excommunicated.” What makes the inaction of the bishops
even more incomprehensible is that, as cardinals, both Pope Benedict XVI
and Pope Francis had insisted that pro-abortion Catholic politicians
should not receive holy Communion.
The shocking scandal attendant to Kenny’s abortion law was compounded
by a number of Catholic hospitals publicly agreeing to cooperate with
the provisions of the law. When Dublin’s Mater Misericordiae hospital,
named after Our Lady, Mother of Mercy, announced that it would “comply
with the law, as provided for in the act,” Archbishop Martin’s spokesman
said he would “seek further clarification on the exact meaning of the
hospital’s statement.”
Nineteen months later, Irish Catholics are still waiting to hear
Archbishop Martin’s response to a Catholic hospital agreeing to provide
the morning-after abortifacient pill and performing medical abortions.
For the sake of Catholic nurses, doctors and staff working in these
hospitals, it is imperative that Archbishop Martin breaks his silence
and addresses them as their pastor.
Not only should Enda Kenny’s legalization of abortion and same-sex
“marriage” rightly incur the pastoral intervention of excommunication,
but his public admission of heretical beliefs on Irish television makes
the bishops’ inaction all the more inexplicable. Kenny has admitted that
he doesn’t believe in a personal God or in the physical, real presence
of Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament. Yet Archbishop Diarmuid Martin
refers to him as our “Catholic Prime Minister,” and he continues to
receive holy Communion.
The consequence of the failure of the Irish hierarchy to act over
Kenny publicly promoting and cooperating with abortion is that it
signals to clergy and laity that the Church doesn’t really take
seriously its own moral teachings and laws. Simply put, if politicians,
hospitals and bishops can break the Church’s teaching on abortion, then
it mistakenly appears that any of the Church’s moral laws on marriage
and sexuality can be ignored without consequences.
Kenny’s Same-Sex ‘Marriage’ Legislation
For faithful Catholics, the referendum has been a heartbreaking
catalogue of failures on the part of many bishops and priests, which has
tipped a weak Church over into the point of death. What we have
witnessed is either an unwillingness or inability of some to live up to
their duties as bearers of the triple
munera (duties of
ordained ministers) of Our Lord — the ministerial powers of teaching,
sanctifying and leading in conformity with the fullness of faith
safeguarded and explained by the magisterium.
- A number of priests misused their positions of leadership within
the Church by publicly supporting the same-sex “marriage” campaign, and
by so doing encouraged Catholics under their pastoral care to join them
in voting for its redefinition. Such priests include: Redemptorist
Fathers Tony Flannery and Gerry O’Connor, Augustinian Fathers Iggy
O’Donovan and Gabriel Daly and Father Pádraig Standún, parish priest of
the Archdiocese of Tuam.
-
- The newly appointed Bishop Donal McKeown caused immense confusion
and anguish among faithful Catholics when he said during a radio
interview: “People have to make up their own minds, and I’m quite happy
that people can do that in front of God, be it Yes or be it No. … I
don’t doubt that there are many people who are practicing churchgoers of
whatever church background who will in conscience vote Yes, and that’s
entirely up them. I’m not going to say they’re wrong.” Bishop McKeown
appeared to have forgotten that, according to the Catechism of the
Catholic Church, people can be culpable for committing immoral acts even
if acting according to conscience (1791). By talking about conscience
in such a way, Bishop McKeown has surely added to the cross carried by
homosexual Catholics who are seeking to live chastely according to the
teachings of the Church.
- Archbishop Martin’s advocacy of the enhancement of homosexual civil
unions, as an alternative to same-sex “marriage,” is clearly at odds
with the 2003 directives of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the
Faith. Archbishop Martin said, “We have to find ways in which gay and
lesbian people can have their love fully recognized in an equal but
different manner. We have to find ways of examining that. and I don’t
think we have done that far enough. I think civil partnership is not
adequate; I think it could be tweaked.”
However, the
CDF document,
“Considerations Regarding Proposals to Give Legal Recognition to Unions
Between Homosexual Persons,” concludes with these words from Cardinal
Joseph Ratzinger, on behalf of Pope St John Paul II:
“The Church teaches that respect for
homosexual persons cannot lead in any way to approval of homosexual
behavior or to legal recognition of homosexual unions. The common good
requires that laws recognize, promote and protect marriage as the basis
of the family, the primary unit of society. Legal recognition of
homosexual unions or placing them on the same level as marriage would
mean not only the approval of deviant behavior, with the consequence of
making it a model in present-day society, but would also obscure basic
values which belong to the common inheritance of humanity. The Church
cannot fail to defend these values, for the good of men and women and
for the good of society itself.”
The tragedy is that by not only publicly accepting civil unions
between homosexual persons, but also advocating their enhancement,
Archbishop Martin has inadvertently obscured basic values of marriage
that he sought to defend.
With Every Death There Is the Hope of Resurrection
Every faithful Catholic knows that death is not the terminal point of
life, but is the necessary condition for participation in Our Lord’s
glorious resurrection. This is not to underestimate the pain, suffering
and anguish that come with death — total incapacity, complete loss and
impoverishment in extremis. We are grief-stricken at the weakening
towards death of the Irish Church and the loss of sanctity, truth,
goodness and beauty in the lives of so many Irish people.
However, Our Lord’s Letter to the Church of Sardis also contains words of hope and consolation:
“Yet you have still a few names in Sardis, people who have not soiled
their garments; and they shall walk with me in white, for they are
worthy. He who conquers shall be clad thus in white garments, and I will
not blot his name out of the book of life; I will confess his name
before my Father and before his angels. He who has an ear, let him hear
what the Spirit says to the churches” (Revelation 3:4-6).
Out of a population of nearly 5 million people, 682,932 Irish
citizens voted “No,” despite the unrelenting propaganda from the Irish
media, celebrities and political parties. Many who voted “No” also
campaigned and canvassed unambiguously to uphold the truth and dignity
of marriage entrusted to each one of us by God.
It is among these 682,932 people that the hope of the Catholic Church
in Ireland's resurrection is active and alive. And it is in this spirit
of hope that we must pray daily for our bishops during these hard times
for the Church.
Maranatha: Come, Lord Jesus.
Deacon Nick Donnelly is a contributor to EWTN Radio's Celtic Connections
program. This article originally appeared in Catholic Voice Ireland and is republished here with permission. It has been edited for style.
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