THE FUTURE of the Catholic Church was a question which went beyond the effects the abuse scandals had on it in Ireland, historian Diarmaid Ferriter said at the concluding session of the Merriman Summer School yesterday.
Speaking on the theme “From Cullen to Connell: the rise and fall of the Irish Catholic Church”, Prof Ferriter, professor of modern history in UCD, said Ireland was a very small jewel in the Catholic Church crown in the context of its sex abuse scandals.
It would take time to absorb the sheer enormity of what was in the Ryan, Murphy and Ferns reports, but the issues were not unique to Ireland and were now being raised in other countries.
“It may well be more pronounced within Ireland for a whole host of different reasons that are relevant to the 19th and the 20th century in terms of the Catholic culture that was developed,” he said.
The Vatican’s refusal to accept the resignations of the two Dublin auxiliary bishops had been a public humiliation for Archbishop Diarmuid Martin, “which is ironic given what he has done and the way he tried to change the language that was used before”. He believed Archbishop Martin might become a fall guy to the structure, power and control of the church. “Diarmuid Martin can be jumping up and down until he is blue in the face but there are certain things he won’t be able to change on his own.”
Another issue was how long the church could sustain its structures as they were, he said. “They don’t have priests. It has been admitted that they are going to need more and more lay involvement to keep parishes running. The question is, ‘Are they [lay people] actually going to get any say?’
“Thankfully, it is not the job of the historian to predict the future.”
The future of much historical research would be within a comparative international framework, he added. “We have tended to look at ourselves in too insular a way and we do tend to think we are unique in all sorts of ways. And we are in some ways, but in other ways we are not. That is going to be a serious research project for a generation, I think.”
In regard to the church’s historical role, he said while Ireland had appeared to be a Catholic country for Irish people after independence, the reality of how it had been experienced was more nuanced.
Instances of dissent and difference were identifiable both privately and at government level, he said. Attempts to promote mass public devotion, such as during the centenary celebrations of Catholic emancipation in 1929 and the Eucharistic Congress of 1932, had a legitimising effect, but the State had had its way in many church-State tussles.
A 10-year campaign ending in 1935 to have legislation introduced regulating public dances had raised the question of why there were so many unlicensed dances. “You have got to remind yourself when you are talking about denunciations, there was a hell of a lot to be denounced.
“There is a case to be made that a lot of Irish people remained unreadily anarchic in their very daily behaviour.”