FOR THOSE who were there, the Eucharistic Congress in Dublin appears to have been an unqualified success. Workshops and debates at the RDS, along with the concluding ceremonies and musical performances at Croke Park, provided images of intense commitment and loyalty to a faith that still burns brightly, in spite of recent vicissitudes.
As Breda O’Brien noted in this newspaper: there was a real hunger for spiritual and intellectual nourishment. No attempt was made by the organisers to avoid the contrast between the outpouring of popular fervour during the 1932 Eucharistic Congress and last week’s events, reflecting a focus on internal church discipline under new circumstances and a commitment to renewal.
Popular fervour has waned, as has the practice of religion as “a matter of habit”, following a succession of scandals within the Catholic Church. Empty seats and missing parents and individuals from the 30- to 50-year-old age cohort told their own story. The triumphalism evident during the 1932 congress, when church and State were closely allied, has evaporated. The task now set for believers is to deepen faith and promote it in an increasingly materialistic world.
In a special message, Pope Benedict lauded past contributions made by Irish monks, martyrs and missionaries and said they had known how to strive for holiness and constancy in their personal lives. Such a great history of faith and love had, however, been damaged by sins committed by priests and consecrated persons against those in their care. Those activities, he said, had undermined the credibility of the church’s message. Posing the question: How could those religious who regularly availed of the sacraments have offended in this way, he concluded it remained a mystery. How church authorities at all levels had also responded so inadequately to reports of abuse was not addressed.
An apparent linkage between the Second Vatican Council and subsequent church controversies and scandals is likely to cause concern in liberal quarters. For those who engaged in child sex abuse, the pope said, their Christianity had become “merely a matter of habit”. The Vatican Council had been intended to overcome this form of Christianity, he added, and while a great deal had been achieved in engaging individual members in the church’s mission, there had also been “misunderstandings and irregularities”. It would appear that the struggle to reimpose orthodoxy and centralised control from the Vatican grinds on.