The Catholic Church is much better off now than it was in "thegood old days" when crimes of child abuse were being perpetratedand covered up. Now it is losing friends it should never have had, maintainsDesmond O'Donnell
FACED with the manifest evil of clerical child abuse, many church members lament the disappearance of "the good old days" - sodalities, full churches, bursting seminaries, unquestioned clergy and nuns all over the place. Yet it was during the good old days that the crimes of child abuse were being perpetrated and covered up.
In my opinion the good days are just emerging. Maybe the church has not been in such good shape for a long time.
A cancer discovered causes anxiety but joy comes with its excision however painful. Any church worth its incense must surely celebrate this present frightening disclosure of the serious cancer of child abuse. Thanks in part to the media, the church is now hopefully on its way to surgery.
In the good old days if confession of "missing my morning prayers" was an indication, more prayers were said than today but often because it was the law. However, the sales of The Glenstal Prayer Book show that there is more authentic and clearly more spontaneous new prayer movement alive in Ireland today. Small prayer groups are coming together in homes, and retreat houses are busier than they ever were in the good old days. In fact, most of them did not exist then. The church is not people saying prayers or listening to prayers being said at Mass; it is people praying, and this movement is growing. A recent survey shows that 40 per cent of educated young Ireland prays every day and only 5 per cent say they never pray. In the good old days too, apart from clergy, religious education ended at graduation from primary or secondary school. No longer. At least five former seminaries have hundreds of people studying theology in each of them and asking how best to nourish faith in others.
In the good old days women were silent and the whole church was only half nourished. Now women are studying and teaching theology in once exclusively male celibate institutions. Serious attention is at last being paid to the spiritual enrichment which feminine spirituality can bring to the church. Women's voices are being heard even if they are not always being attended to seriously yet.
In the good old days apart from the men-only St Vincent de Paul Society, Catholics were not directly involved with the poor. Now in the church generally there is an increased awareness that without good works for the less privileged people faith is phoney. In the good old days even nuns who vowed to care for the poor, sick and ignorant confined most of their work to their institutions or to schools. Although diminishing greatly in numbers many nuns are now living and working side by side with people on the margin.
EVEN after Pope Leo XIII's statement of human rights in 1891 the church of the good old days was slow enough to move beyond exhortation. Now John Paul II has encouraged social criticism of "systematic evil" everywhere. In Ireland, CORI and some bishops offer the only constant critique of Government social policies, with the media giving good coverage to their call for more social justice in Ireland.
In the good old days for most Catholics the bible was a Protestant book but now the insights of Catholic and Protestant scholars are available in every religious bookshop in Ireland. A recent book of scriptural prayer by a Catholic priest - Psalming the New Testament - has been highly recommended by the leaders of the five churches in Ireland and has already sold over 5,000 copies. In the good old days Liturgy was the priest's exclusive domain. Women especially were kept outside the altar rails except to arrange the flowers. Now any Sunday Mass and our recent Easter ceremonies demonstrate the growing participation of lay people in the scared mysteries everywhere. Married deacons are near the top of the agenda too.
Unlike the good old days, the early Christian church had numerous martyrs but the good old days were minimally confrontational and maximally comfortable with secular powers. In most Catholic countries we courted the system for selfish reasons; we kept away from Calvary. The good news for the church now is that it is rapidly losing friends it should never have had. It is beginning to offer - at most - critical co-operation with any political system. Throughout the world there have been more martyrs in the last 30 years than in the previous 300. These martyrs from Romero to Declan O'Toole opposed the rich who oppressed the poor.
For today's church the news is clearly bad and it is not only because of recent scandals. Mass attendance is down and going down. Vocations are nil in many dioceses. Many people are getting married away from church or not at all. Is this grace or gravity? Is it gravity pulling the church downwards or is it grace inviting it upwards?
TO me this looks like grace. The real church is not the number of people at Sunday Mass, not the number of men in seminaries, not its diminishing control of hospitals and schools, not even its priests and bishops. These can be manifestations of the real church but they can also be deceptive indicators. The real church is the quality of people's relationship with God, with themselves, with one another and with the environment.
I see grace continuing to call the church to move away from the good old days and move into lived faith, deep prayer, adult education, involvement with the poor, social criticism, biblical studies, lay ministry, feminine spirituality, faith communities and less fear of martyrdom in any form. In the meantime let us all have the courage to carry the cross of deserved humiliation and shame when we hurt children or one another in any way.
Desmond O'Donnell is an Oblate priest in Inchicore, Dublin. He is also a registered psychologist.